• competed in a city league ski racing league, and our team won the whole season
• had the worst Christmas ever #christmasfail08
• been [positively] excited about a presidential inauguration
• played a UO officially sanctioned flip cup tournament with the club sports olympics, and we WON
• broke a slalom ski
• went from 5 down to 2 e-mail accounts, and one of those may be going a way soon
• met a girl, her name is Angela, many of you have even met her by now
• graduated from college!!!!!!!!!
• successfully survived a road trip with Angela through 9 states
  • Yellowstone, Ren Faire, Badlands, Wall Drug, SLC, etc…
• partaken in a few dancing lessons (ssssh! don’t tell anyone!)
• somehow convinced Angela to buy a Mac
• dealt with 2 flat tires in 2 different states I don’t live in, and neither one on my personal vehicle
• turned 27
• competed in 9 waterski tournaments in 6 different states, and waterskied in a 7th state
  • including Collegiate National All-Stars for slalom+trick, and AWSA Western Regionals for 3-event (and qualified for but didn’t go to AWSA Nationals)!
• upgraded my wordpress blog, twice, without posting anything
• volunteered with a church group on a construction project
• bought a Playstation 2 from a thrift store for $12.50 and repaired it myself
• sold my old DSLR and bought a spiffy new one, and taken thousands of photos with it
• attended a number of concerts
• given up on my football team, due to some unFavreable circumstances
• finally started getting my online portfolio and résumé up-to-date

…and some other stuff too, I assure you. But now that you’re updated on my life, maybe now I can get this site fully back on track again?

I’ve skied at Mint a few times, but only at the Emerald Valley’s Northwest Championships tournament. This was the first one where our club wasn’t as required to do the work. I still helped out with scoring and judging, it helps to practice at a variety of locations, learn the quirks of the computers and whatnot.

22nd ANNUAL MINT LAKE OPEN
TourID: 08W133C
Yacolt, WA
7/12/2008 to 7/13/2008

Slalom Rd 1: 4 @ 58k, 23m
Tricks: 810 pts (personal best!)
Jump: 64 ft (personal best!)
Slalom Rd 2: 2H @ 58k, 16m (personal best!)

I also took some photos from the site (click image above for gallery):

And I think I’ve come down with a case of senior-itis. 6 years into college will probably do that to a person. Granted I haven’t taken much of a full course load (averaging probably 10-11 credits a term). But I feel more apathetic towards my academics now than I normally do 8 weeks into Spring term. What can I say? Blah.

I applied for the Digital Arts program again earlier this month. If I don’t get in this time, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t recall how long the review process was last year. I just want to know now (and I want a positive response this time).

I blame my sweetie for my lack of blogging this last YEAR. I tried getting her to blog more, and that spurred I think one post on her decrepit LiveJournal(tm). On the brighter side, I love her more than anything, and she has been most helpful inspiring me to stay in this color theory class and actually doing some of the projects with me. I’ve got something like 5 paintings to get done for tomorrow though, so…. oh yea.. BLAH.

I’m not sure what else to say other than “blah.”

Last weekend Erin and I went our second skiing adventure. First going to Mt Hood Ski Bowl, and then meeting bits of my family and friends at Anthony Lakes for 2 days. This trip was a ton of fun, and also my nephew got to go skiing for his first time. Check the Pictures page for photos.

About a month ago I went on a solo skibum adventure to Mt Hood (Ski Bowl and Cooper Spur), and one of my tire chains broke.

A few weeks ago I went skiing with a friend to Mt Bachelor and got a flat tire on our way back to town (his fault, but I’m not one to point fingers).

The next Friday, I went to Les Schwab and they set me up with a replacement tire and new set of chains for no cost.

Tuesday morning I found ants in my room in THREE places, this set me back about an hour.

Then yesterday I got a flat tire on my bicycle.

I’ve also been finding myself sleeping in and/or falling asleep in class lately.

And to top it all off, Erin and I both walked away from NRQ’s Pray for Snow Party with some free ski apparel last night again.

So blah.

Then I drove around the mountain to Cooper Spur where I slept in my truck. I woke up a few times during the night and didn’t notice much of any precipitation on the windows, until I woke up at 8:45am. My truck was burried in about 6″ of nice fluffy powder. I rushed to the ski area, got my ticket and skied every run about 3 times by 10. They have one double chair, and maybe 10 runs. I kept at it until 11, when the crowds made the lift line take as long as the lift ride. Great ski area for beginners, and I had fun for those 2 hours, but it wasn’t worth waiting in the lift lines, and the snow was starting to get sticky, so I decided to drive home early.

I stopped at Summit on my way down, but they only had one lift as well, and looked to have less terrain than Cooper Spur, and the snow was getting really wet by this point, so I just drove the rest of the way home.

Was a fun trip. I look forward to doing a similar adventure to Mt Ashland, Warner Canyon, and maybe Mt Shasta if I can talk my cousin into meeting me there. I count about 10 days on the snow so far this season, at 6 different ski areas, in 2 states… Not bad for the middle of January.

Went waterskiing on Dec 11th with Mike and Todd. Twas a bit chilly. Twas a sh*tload of fun!

I took a vacation of sorts from Dec 17-26th, visited my brother&fam, and worked full-time the rest of the break. After rolling out about 24 hours later than I was planning on, I got to Mt Hood Timberline at about 7pm and proceeded to ski until 10pm. Only the lowest portion of the mountain was open, and it was really cold/windy, but it was infinitely better than not skiing. I always get a kick out of being told “ok, this is your last run”, and then getting another or 2 more runs out of it and “closing down the mountain” so-to-speak.

Got to Boise at some ungodly time in the morning, brought all my stuff in and crashed. Sunday was my brother’s birthday, so he woke me up and he, Maddie, and I went skiing at Bogus for a few hours. I took Monday off, skied Tues, Weds (crazy hot out), and Thurs (crazy hot and raining cats– was soaked after 4 runs), before the ski hill ran out of snow and had to close down for the rest of my trip. Anyways I can not complain about getting 5 days of skiing in a week.

I got my camera in the mail from Kristin around the 22nd. You ROCK cuzzin!

We celebrated Christmas on the 24th, because the girls had to go to their father’s for the 25th. Now for the l00t I guess… I got a hat, some baseball cards, and 2 shirts from my brother’s family, an extra 512MB RAM and a Vikings sweatshirt from my folks, a mint set of state quarters and a mega-opener (bottle/can/jar/whatever opener) from my other brother, a roll of duct tape from my dog in Minnesota, Ike, a Coke truck and a set of pliers/wire cutters from my sister-in-law’s parents.

We were going to go skiing on the 26th, but due to unseasonably warm weather, some resorts weren’t even open, and others had horrible conditions. I headed home in the afternoon, stopped at the video store and got 4 movies (buy-2-get-2-free), and was on my way.

note: This post was finally posted on Jan 8 2006. I’ve backdated it to fit more chronologically in the archives.

A weekend ago, I flew back to Minnesota for my grandmother’s funeral. It was good to see everyone again, but the circumstances were less than ideal. I think that some kind of reunion is in the works, and it sounds like it’ll be within a 500 miles of me in some direction, which is a good thing.

This past weekend I made excellent time driving to my brother’s for Thanksgiving. I got to Boise in just over 7 hours.

Now I’ll try to remember other things I was planning to write about.

Yada yada yada… Food & company were great. My brother and I made it up to Brundage to go skiing. Was my first time there, and it was pretty good.

Within 2 days of each other, I got a random mention on Jinkies’ blog, and a blatant mention in Torgie’s Webcomic! w00t for blogfame!

note: This post was started on I think Nov 29, 2005, and finally posted on Jan 8, 2006. I’ve backdated it to fit more chronologically in the logs.

A week before my trip began, I went to the Greyhound station in Eugene and bought my tickets. Ordering at least 7 days in advance gets a substantial discount, and came out WAY less than driving myself. Also by going to the station, I didn’t have to pay the will-call convenience charge (saved another $4 per ticket).

Then on Tuesday, June 28th my trip began, I worked until noon, then my kick-ass insanely awesome roommate drove me around to the bus station, where I was a little later than I should’ve been, but lucky for me, the bus itself was an hour late. So I took the opportunity to run down about 8 blocks to get my friends Andy & Amanda a wedding gift, from Oregon, made in Oregon. I got back to the station just in time for the final boarding call, and was on my way.

On the first leg of my trip (Eugene -> Seattle) I ended up talking to a truck driver, teenage kid, a trendy bitch (sorry, she was), and another guy about my age. Subjects went from politics, music, movies, sex, drugs, back to politics, to giving the truck driver shit for being whipped, and giving the girl shit for getting in trouble with her folks. Over the course of the rest of the trip, I met people involved in all kinds of hairy activities, which I won’t delve into here because I don’t want to I won $0.90 in a casino/café in Montana, and ended up chatting with a guy who was on his way to Chicago to be with his fiancee who was finishing up boot camp near there.

My folks and my dog picked me up in Fargo ND, so we picked up some fireworks for the Fourth of July, and then headed for home. I spent about $30 on fireworks, and my dad spent about $11 :-/ I arrived at my parents’ house on Thursday, June 30th about 10pm or so.

My brother and I sent the season out packing with a bang though. I picked him up at the Seattle airport Thursday morning, and we drove up into British Columbia. It seems the closest place to the border (Apex) closed already, and none of the others do night skiing anymore. We made it to SilverStar by about 4:30pm, then turned back to town where we stayed at a Super-8. I bought a medium pizza at Little Caesars for $5 Canadian (came to about USD$4.38), and my brother got a 6pk of some frenchie beer for dinner. Flipping through the channels, I made sure to stop on MuchMusic for a few minutes (even though it was some random rap video), to spite Justin.

Awake at 7:30am I jump in the shower, grab by continental breakfast (read: toast… no fruit, no cereal, no waffles, just toast and juice or coffee), and we’re on our way back to SilverStar. Snow conditions were very icy, but I enjoyed myself, as I’m from Minnesota, and grew up skiing on icy snow. Things loosened up a bit, after finding a patch of powder for a run or 2, we decide to head to Big White at about 11:30. We had “free” tickets to both these places (plus Apex and SunPeaks), but SilverStar and Big White are under the same management or something, so we only needed the one ticket for the day. We were driving in the clouds and snow for about half the drive up there, and the snow was excellent. We skied until close.

Then we figured we could either ski for maybe 2 hours at SunPeaks on Saturday (and risk my brother missing his flight if traffic was bad or something), or ski all day somewhere in Washington. We decided to take the full day of skiing. Neither of us really making a decision, we ended up at The Summit at Snoqualmie, and skied Alpental all morning (they have like 4 sections of ski area, Alpental is across the highway, has more advanced terrain, and had more snow, yay). Then around 2ish we drove around to Summit West and dodged the people and rocks for a couple runs.

We went to a bar in Seattle and each got a brew and some munchies before I dropped my brother off at the airport. Then I had to make the decision if I wanted to ski solo today. I did drive to Crystal Mountain, and slept for several hours in the parking lot, and decided about 4am that I would rather ski that place during a good snow year with better condititions.

So here I sit. At home. With people bugging me to blog more often.

My final count on the year: 20 days skiing, 11 ski resorts (Hoodoo, Willamette, AnthonyLakes, Bogus, Bachelor, Targhee (Cat ski), Tamarack, Meadows, SilverStar, BigWhite, Snoqualmie) in 4 states and 1 province (OR, ID, WA, WY, BC). Not bad for a shitty snow year. I’m trying to find my count from last year to compare, but this blog doesn’t go back that far. Stay tuned. [edit (9:23pm): Last year I only got 16 days of skiing at 6 ski areas in 4 states. I quote from my final skiing entry of last season, on April 1 2004: "Not too shabby considering my season pass was in a diffeent state, and I'm a college student without a lot of money."] Also, it looks like I may be participating in the alpine leg of a Pole-Pedal-Paddle competition next month, I sure am looking forward to it if I am indeed competing.

Aside from all that skiing stuff, I’m pulling together a waterski club sport team this year at UO. Woohoo!!

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