This Is More Like It

So after two days of rain, we got snow all day today and it's still coming down! I woke up to about 4 inches , which was about 6-7 up at the base level. We probably got another 4 inches or so throughout the day and the forecast is for 8-12 more overnight! So I'm happy but a little torn between wanting a better season and just wanting the season to end! I really wasn't gonna feel too bad if they had to end the season early because of bad weather and slow business! So I guess htis is what I get. I'm cool with it though. We definitely needed it. And now some random photos for those of you that don't have facebook and may not have seen them.

Random self portrait inspired by workplace boredom.

The walk home today. I decided to take a picture of myself which is a really bizarre thing I've been doing lately. The best thing about this photo is the snowflake that was captured right as it passed my nose, making it look like snot was running from my right nostril! I actually thought it was until I came home and uploaded the pics... I totally did a snot check!

The coolest part of my job. This is a short hike from the Enchanted Forest where the kids learn to ski. So technically it is not part of my job at all but something that I do when I'm bored at my job! But either way it's a pretty cool pic!

And last, the most embarrassing part of my job. Every Thursday we have to switch out the old port a potty for a "fresh" one. So we have to tie the old one to the back of the snowmobile and drag it across the resort and then drag the new one back. As you can imagine this gets more than a few chuckles, smirks and a fair amount of finger pointing from people to whom this just beats all! Now, if you remember, Christmas and New Years 'conveniently' fell on a Thursday so in honor of the birth of Christ and the ringing in of yet another year, I dragged a crapper! How many people do you think can say that?!?!? 

Rainy Days and Mondays

My apologies to the Carpenters for the blatant title rip off!!

So there hasn't been much going on here in 'lovely' South Lake Tahoe. I think we're moving into that ugly shoulder season where things are just wet and muddy. It started raining yesterday at about noon and kept it up all day today! So much for my streak of never working on a rainy day. I'm glad today was my day off though because it was pouring! The only bad thing about it was that I was stuck inside all day. 

Last night when I went to bed I was a little stoked because I figured the rain would have slowed or stopped today and maybe I could wander around and take some rainy day photos. But when I got up this morning it was pretty obvious that wasn't going to be possible. It was raining way to hard and I was afraid I might ruin my gear (which would probably tick Emily right off as I would then have to shoot her wedding with a disposable camera! lol).

 So today was a lazy sit around the house day. Pretty soon those days will be much quieter. My brazilian roommate is leaving on Friday! I hate to sound excited about that, but I will not mind seeing this one go. We get along ok, but I have never met anyone louder or more crude, which may come as a shock to my family who say the same about me! lol. So yeah, not to be rude but I am counting the hours until Friday and hope that the story doesn't change this time like it has half a dozen other times. I also managed to pick up two more brazilian roommates for a couple of days. They are only temporary as their lease ran out at the end of Feb and they leave on the 3rd of March and they just needed a place to crash. But they are actually sharing my room which is a switch after all this time of being by myself. You can imagine my surprise when I came home from work on Saturday and found the other two beds in my room made up! 

So that's about it. Not a very exciting month. The ski school is still struggling with less people coming and the lack of snow. The weather is just not cooperating this year. Every other resort is getting snow, just not us! I really could be a jinx! I feel a little like Jonah, maybe if they threw me overboard the weather would clear up! 

I am pretty much ready to go home. Sadly enough I have been counting the days for the last week. I really like it here, but I can't seem to establish connections like I have back home. Either I'm not trying or it's just not working for me. I dunno. But I miss my home! lol. So, 49 more days...

Jack of All Trades

So today was another slow day at the office. I wouldn't have even gone in had there been another option. I woke up feeling pretty not good due to what may have been the first hangover of my nearly 29 years of life. Now before everyone tells me how disappointed they are, it won't be happening again! I do not want another morning like this morning. I don't even like beer so I'm not sure what was going on. You see where being sociable gets you? So anyway, we only had about 30 kids today so I had some free time to wax skis. So here you go... photographic evidence that I do sometimes work. And a look at my sweet uniform. Now you can understand why I was stoked to get black pants instead of red. You know it's bad when I'm taking pictures of myself!

Busy, Busy Day

Today was another painfully slow day on the mountain. I ended up taking like 20 pictures during work. Some of them are in my photo blog. As a matter of fact this afternoon while hanging out in the kids' instructional area, me and a couple of coworkers spent our time messing around on a 90 cm snowboard. To understand how ridiculous that is you need to know that I normally ride a 150 cm board which is a full two feet longer. So I spent the afternoon proving that I am still a child with a guy 10 years younger than me and a girl 8 years younger! It was actually unbelievably fun! So there you have it... I get paid to do nothing and/or screw around and do things that will potentially cause me to hurt myself, which is important because I don't have insurance... not good! But I'm having a heck of a lot of fun doing it!

**Obviously still feeling a bit manic! Sorry about that. Also a shout out to my sister Amanda and yes it is because she shamelessly begged me to!

Too Much Time in my Head!

So today at work I find out that everyone is getting cut back to three day work weeks, hopefully just for January but no guarantees. The problem with this is I already have way too much free time during my four day work weeks. What the heck am I going to do with an entire extra day?!?!? The thing is it's dangerous for me to have this much free time. My brain goes manic and I start kicking out bizarre ideas that translate into, often, more bizarre master plans (which happens to be how I landed in Tahoe).

Case in point, during my last couple of four day work weeks I have decided to live in a van, looked at 'vintage' (read: cheap and often older than me) motorcycles hoping to stumble on a cheap one that will run long enough for me to ride it back to PA in the spring, looked for a job at a surf camp for the summer (I don't surf either- sounds like another killer blog man!), considered camping all summer in Colorado while working as a river guide (no I don't do this either; but oddly enough landed a phone interview for the job- this getting a job over the internet thing is awesome!), looked at a summer photography school in Montana (only odd thing about this one is that it costs $7500, which is a lot of money to those of us considering vandwelling), looked into crewing on a yacht (you guessed it), and decided to backpack in New Zealand for up to a year. And those are just the ones I can remember, which means I dwelled on them. Imagine all of the other, much more insane thoughts that fluttered through my consciousness! If it's crazy enough to be immediately dismissed by yours truly, I'm sure most of you can't even imagine! Seriously, if anyone could refer a great psychiatrist... actually, I could probably get a lot of benefit from a mediocre one!

So, now does everyone understand why free time, while it sounds appealing to most, is not in any way healthy for some? Speaking of unhealthy, I wonder if I can blame some of the psychosis on my continuing Sprite addiction... sugar overload, I dunno.

So, if you love me, or are even remotely concerned about the mental welfare of a stranger... PRAY FOR SNOW!! (and of course an end to this whole economic slide!) I really need to be working!

Speaking of manic!! I apologize for the last several minutes of your life, you'll never get them back!

So I'm Practically a Snowboarder Now!

So this is not a great picture as I didn't take my camera, so this is off my phone, but this is where I took my snowboarding lesson. You could look right down to the lake! A guy I worked with at Home Depot told me that was the unique thing about Heavenly. At most of the resorts around the lake you ski away from the lake, but at Heavenly you ski toward it. Can't wait until I get better so I can see it from the top! One of the local guys told me that at the top of one of the lifts you can see for miles in both directions: the lake to one side and the desert on the other! That sounds awesome!

(And yes there is a hill there, though I will admit not much of one! We have to start somewhere!)

So, as I'm sure you've gathered, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and took my first snowboarding lesson. To this point my snowboarding experience was on a plastic board in my sister's backyard in Downingtown. There was plenty of falling and a fair amount of yelling! There's nothing quite as humbling as your 10 year old brother making a fool of you by being naturally gifted! So I was a little apprehensive as I waited for the lesson to start. 

Surprisingly enough, I only fell once in the three hour lesson! And that was just ignorance! I cheated and got up toe side after strapping both feet in for the first time and promptly went over onto my rear! Had I not been lazy and gotten up from my heel side like we were supposed to, I may not have fallen at all! Although in that case it's unlikely I could have walked home after my head swelled to ridiculous proportions! All in all though I was stoked about my first experience. It went much smoother than I would have dared to hope. I may even take a few ride breaks this week during work to practice so I can take a level 2 lesson next weekend. 

During the level one lesson, you start off super basic by learning to skate and straight glide with only one foot strapped in, which definitely cuts down on the falling and boosts the confidence level! After that we moved on to heel side turns and then toe side turns, both of which are a little scary and hard to get used to. Then we were ready to ride the magic carpet lift to the top of the not real impressive hill, strap both feet in and learn to sideslip. We ran a little short on time and didn't get much practice doing this or the "falling leaf" which is where you go back and forth across the hill and work on changing directions. So it was not a real impressive accomplishment to anyone who knows how to snowboard but I was stoked nonetheless. So I'll be practicing these last two skills this week and will be falling quite a bit I'll wager. It was nice having someone to tell you exactly what you were doing wrong. Figuring it out on my own while my butt is frozen will be slightly more challenging!

The most interesting thing about the lesson in my opinion is that I learned to snowboard in a t-shirt! I went up in my ski pants from work , a sweatshirt over a t-shirt, hat and gloves. Within the first half hour I ditched the sweatshirt, hat, gloves and opened the vents on my pants! The forecasted high was 57 for yesterday, but I have a feeling it topped 60! It was ridiculous! It was nice not to be freezing to death, but 60 degrees in January is pushing the limits of the realm of reason! I find it oddly depressing that the ten day forecast shows sun and 50 degree days all the way through! With no real snow since Christmas day, we could be in trouble if it stays this way!

So that's the big news for this week, I finally jumped in! Once I feel pretty comfortable with snowboarding I will try skiing and see which one I prefer. I find it hard to imagine that skiing could be as easy to pick up on, but I guess we'll see. There are 3 basic levels for each one so hopefully I can fit them all in during the January slump. Apparently in February we go back to mandatory 6-day and voluntary 7-day work weeks! 

One other tidbit is that I broke down and got the internet in my apartment today! It remains to be seen if that was a colossal mistake or not. But one good thing is that I will be skyping my face off from the comfort of home rather than from the deck at Starbucks in freezing temps!

More free time... good or bad?

So the holiday rush is finally over and with it goes six day work weeks! I think I'm pretty happy about that. The problem is that they go to four days for the month of January! Not so sure about that! I was pretty happy with my last paycheck! But you don't come out here to make money do you? 

So hopefully next week I can finally take a ski or snowboard lesson! I'm still undecided about which to try first, but I'm sure whichever one I choose will be brutal! So I guess a short week would be better as my bruised and bettered body will be needing some time to recover! I'm still a little cocky about trying since I've been listening in on lessons for a month! So I'm sure that I will have plenty of trouble!

Hopefully I'll at least be able to do something interesting so that I have something to talk about!