Winter update

So it's been a rather busy winter. The biggest story for us has been several ski trips. I'm likely to clock 15 days this season. That may be chump change for those living near the hill, but for some one that came into the season with four days lifetime, I think i'm doing pretty well.

I'm heading out this weekend for Timberline, OR to ski with Zach. Kirsten's gotta work. Otherwise Kirsten and I have done all the other trips together. Peter also was able to get a couple days in with us as well.

We started out at Big Bear, Sunday, the day after one of the biggest snow dumps in 20 years. Epic, for Big Bear.

Next we headed up to Tahoe. Northstar, Alpine Meadows, Homewood, and the photo is on Sunday from the slopes of Homewood looking out onto the lake. Yeah it feels like your going to ski right into the water.

Next we went to Colorado. Breck, Vail, A-Basin. 3-6 inches of freshies each morning. I set back my bindings 3/4 an inch, and adjusted the angle + a couple degrees to max out the pow. Sometimes it was so fresh I would just keep riding, and sinking, and riding, and finally lose speed cause it was over my knees. Wish we could have spent more time in Blue Ski Basin at Vail, but with the fresh snow, runs like steep and deep were no fun for Kirsten on her racer ski's. Also at Breck I took my first double black. Fun, but I take all the terrain so slow still, a hard blue or easier black still my favorite for now.

Three days at Timberline this weekend, all for $109, thats the cost of the spring season pass. I guess the snow was not the best so far this year. Still a 130" + base and fresh snow fall in the last 2 days, I'm ready!

Were back to Tahoe again in a couple weeks, likely same locations. We like those places!

And finally, back to Big bear to close things out. We have some discounts for the day pass we need to use.

Boston trip

More of a log to help me remember the trip. We sure did a lot of stuff and had a great time.
+++++++++
-walk along the Charles river
-leaf peeping
-Walk the Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, Old State house, Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, walked by USS Constitution, more old buildings...
-Grave yards, including the granary and Cobb's hill. Sam Adam's grave, John Adam's..ahem..headstone..also later on in the week a scary late night haunted grave tour, which I would highly recommend
-Both Mike's and Modern pastry for cannolis, I prefer Mike's slightly, both great.
-How many amazing dinners? Legal Seafood twice at the wharf, Helmand for Afghan in Cambridge, Limoncello for Italian in the North end, LoLa for swishy American/Asian fusion on Nantucket, Brotherhood of thieves on Nantucket for some great seafood, Brasserie Jo in the middle of Boston for some hearty French
-Pretty legit Irish pub complete with an Irish band, drunk dancers doing a jig, a shot of Jameson followed by a pint of Guinness
-ridiculous view from mother in laws downtown building, overlooking the Boston commons, Charles river, beacon hill, the state house, and a view downtown. Spectacular!
-High speed fairy out to Nantucket for the night, hit the only brewery/winery on the island for some tastings, decent stuff, bought a bottle of syrah.
-stayed in quaint bed and breakfast, seven seas, chatted with the other people, pretty much everyone on the island is 40+
-road bikes around 2/3 of the island, pretty much everything is just straight off a postcard or calender. Very calm, quiet, isolated, unique.
-Museum of Fine Arts, saw some great American art, Coppely, etc
-some shopping, picked up some cold weather clothes, boots, jeans.
-visited some of the fine schools in the area, Emerson, Umass, Harvard, MIT
-rooted for the Red Sox to win on Sunday, so we could catch the next game on Monday...didn't happen...
-Saw a play at the Cutler Majestic, theater amazing, the play...well the theater was amazing.
-JFK presidential library, first time to one of those, would highly suggest visiting.
-still made time to watch USC beat the Irish
-hmm feels like i'm missing stuff...was a busy week...

speakers

Intimus 4T Hybrid SD - modified

Front Speakers: 2 Intimus 4T Tower Speaker

2 Intimus 4B Satellite Speaker

1 Bravus 8D - Dual 8" Powered Subwoofer

Intimus 5C Center Channel Speaker

powered by PioneerVSX-1019AH-K

Well Ive had these set up for about a month now, but let me just say there is 0 buyers remorse.

Kirsten made sure I stayed close on budget, but I was still able to set up a high quality, and high volume system that can make my neighbors complain.

Having high def speakers is actually a really dramatic change. It's very similar to that feeling you got when seeing HD TV for the first time. It's like "Wow, I didn't know there was so much more out there."

However, if you ever find yourself complaining about lack of HD content for your TV, wait till you start checking the audio compression rates on the back of the blue ray box. Yeah... 96k is quite common, and never sounded so bad. It's like watching a non HD Chanel on the HD TV, just looks even worse.

Anyway, in the rare case where you find both inputs in high quality, the output is a remarkable experience.

Lake of the Ozarks

So Kirsten and I went out to Lake of the Ozarks the weekend past with her parents and extened family. Record setting low temps left us wanting a little more, as it was cooler at the lake then back home in LBC.

As you can see, its a long stretch of water, I heard 1200 miles of shore front. Mainly a local weekend get away from KS and St. Louis, I was not sure what to expect.

let me asure you, there was none of this happening at all.

drive by snaps - fresh on the scene

Progressive on the scene asap! LOL. Notice how the small sedan is pretty deep under that heavy truck, and pushing it out of the lane? Yeah that means the blue car was going too fast at time of impact.

Why would you sit like this???

Why not, looks comfortable enough.

Man the AA guns!

This is from the Naval museum in San Pedro.

I love Progressive

Spotted this on the back of a buddies car from work, I guess Geico wants to play hard ball.

Happy as a.....

Over this past weekend I went up to Oregon to visit my buddy Zach, and also to see my family.

The plan was to go fishing, and claming, and just have a wild time.

Fishing didn't work out, something to do with the river levels being to low. Blah!

However, we did make it out to the clam fields on Sat morn. This is a generic file photo from the internet, but they all look just like this out there. Called Razor clams. About 4 inches long, and 1 inch thick. They move quick! As soon as you start digging for one, they dig deeper stright down into the sand.

Sweet seats

Over Easter weekend we were down in San Diego visiting Kirsten's parents and friends. We had the chance to go to the Padre's game in the dug out seats!

This is a photo of the golden glove award, which they were giving to Padre player that night.

Back at it, Beast sighting!

Well, it's been a couple months since I posted here. Got out of the groove I guess, busy with other things so the blog slipped...

But then I spotted this beast the other day, and it all came back. Purpose restored, faith refreshed, goals set.

Sure a '96 Viper doesn't carry the same cache it did back in it's prime, but this machine is still pure grit and muscle. V12 engine up front, no door handles in back. The rocker warning labels say extra preventive maintenance is required if consistent race track use. Serious Nasty!

Chargers vs Colts

Plenty of football this holiday season. This was the only pro game I went to, but it sure was a good one. Playoff game with San Diego at home vs. the Colts. Went into overtime, with a touchdown run right into the end zone in front of our seats! Alas, no jumping high fives from Scroles.

Rose Bowl 2009

I started this blog with the 2008 Rose Bowl, so I had to make sure and get a couple snaps from this years game for the blog.

We sat on the other end of the bowl this year, but pretty much every seat in the house is decent views.

We were at the VERY top row, but we had the wall behind us to lean on, and no knees in our back, so a solid trade off.

The game of course rocked, and USC looked solid as ever.

Went with Kirsten, but saw a couple other TKE's and friends at the game. Overall good times.

Poinsettia Bowl 2008

This is a snap from Peters seats. 45 yard line. Not to shabby, but see below why I settled for seats farther back.






TCU vs Boise St. with TCU squeaking out a win in the last two min.

We also had some tix for the Qualcomm box suite, so caught most the game up there. It was help yourself to the fridge.

Off the sidelines!

Well with all the turmoil were are hearing about in the markets, it may seem like a bad time to dabble in speculating. It probably is...
But, cash is king right now, and so with that, I opened a brokerage account last week to try my hand.
Ameritrade, with a month of free trades. Once that goes away, it's going to force me to pick longer term positions to cover my service costs since my investment size is still junior league.

fat dog - USC game

Saw this dog at one of the home games. Tried getting a shot with better perspective, but the dog was not standing, and everyone was kneeling down. Anyway, it was cool in person, and thought it was something fun.

Election day

Yeah I know it's well after the event, but for posterity's sake, here was the line in downtown long beach at 7am. Voting started at 7am btw, took about an hour and a half to make it to the front.

Football game last week

Here are a couple snaps of the good and bad that comes with game day.

Crazy large cork board

Was over at my bud Pecks place last night. He has this cork board in his studio for acoustics, but in my opinion the main benefit is aesthetics.

How many bottles of wine?

Santa Ynez

Here is a photo of Kirsten next to a sign for some wine tasting.

We went up with Kirsten's' dad Peter and his friend Brian for the day. We ended up hitting 9 tasting rooms, including a couple on tasting room row which is where this photo was taken.

The wine was great, we learned a thing or two about the region, and brought back a couple bottles for some evening in the future!

One interesting note, this area is where the fun film Sideways takes place. We visited the Foxen tasting shack where one of the memorable tasting adventures happen.