Thanksgiving In Mammoth

One of my college buddies, Tim Sullivan, let Jess and I use his family's condo up at Mammoth over the Thanksgiving weekend. We left Thursday morning and came home Saturday evening. It was a great time to rest, relax, and we even went snowboarding on Friday!

It was my first time snowboarding, so I knew it would be a rough day, and that it would be even more rough for me since I know very well that God did not build me to spend extensive amounts of time in 30 degree weather.

Jess had been snowboarding a few times, so she was able to give me the basics, and help me to get started. However, learning to snowboard is similar to learning to drive a stick shift, in that you can only have so much "book" knowledge, before you actually gotta get out there and tackle that unpredictable clutch pedal, and learn as you go.

According to Jess, I did much better than most beginners she's known, and by my fourth trip down the run, I wanted to document my progress, so I held my camera in my hand and took video of my descent. I usually fell pretty consistently towards the beginning of the hill, and then I'd get going ok, and even link a few turns, but the mountain was crowded (as only two runs were open on the whole mountain), and I was not confident in my skills of turning sharply or stopping, and I'd take the dive to avoid a collision, or to just stop when I thought I was going too fast.

True to everyone's words, my whole body was sore immediately following, and even as I write this, I'm still moving pretty slowly from soreness. I admit it, I am somewhat of a wimp. I don't like being really cold, and I complain when my limbs don't move without pain. Despite the pain, snowboarding was fun, and I may do it again someday (although I might like to try skiing, as the mechanics of skis just seem like they make much more sense).

We got a lot of reading in over the few days, and had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner of spaghetti on Thursday night. Other than the extreme cold, the weather was gorgeous, and the mountain was certainly majestic to take in.

So thanks to God for creating such an awesome, amazing place, to Tim for letting us use the condo, and to Seth for letting us borrow his snowboarding gear. Here's a few pics from the trip, including the video of my awesome snowboarding skills...

(blowing snow on the mountain Thursday night [the snow machines, not us])


(Jess and I; I'm already really cold here)


(Jess reading by my killer blazing fire)


(Jess on the slopes)


(Me towards the end of the day; my fingers are numb)


Here's my trip down the hill caught on video:

Radiohead Fan Video Causes Another Fan (me) To Worship!

Check out this video I put on my worship blog. It's a video made by a Radiohead fan, and it seriously points to God.

My Hair

Whenever I wear a hat or beanie, it makes my hair unravel and get all poofy. I wonder if it's time for a cut?

The problem with that is I don't like to "trim," in order to maintain a certain length or style. I don't like it because then you have to get another "trim" in another couple of weeks. I prefer to let it grow until it's slightly unbearable (both for me and for others), and then chop it all off. I'm talking like take some electric clippers, and go #2 all the way around.

Jess hates it when I cut it that short, but I like the convenience of not having to cut it again for 9-10 months.

-sigh-

Any suggestions?

Traffic School

Today Jess and I spent the day at home, thankful for the day off from work. What Jess was NOT thankful for however, was her online traffic school.

Each page of the traffic school has a timer that will not allow you to continue to the next page until the alloted time (30 minutes) was spent on each page. The couple of times I've done traffic school I've spaced it out over multiple days (or weeks), so it was pretty intense for her to do it all at once. But I guess that's the point that it resembles a real in-person course, which are usually 6-8 hours.

But after all the timed pages and chapter quizzes and her big final exam, she came out on top, finishing in only nine hours! True to her Summa Cum Laude form, she took extensive notes on each page, and passed her final with a 98%!

She's also said that after all this ordeal for her red-light ticket, she will never get a ticket again. (good luck right?) I wonder how many people have absolutely spotless driving records, I mean have never even gotten a ticket (when you do traffic school, the point doesn't go on your record, but you still GOT the ticket!). How many tickets have YOU gotten, and what were they for??

If anyone's going to be in Pasadena, near Maranatha high school this Thursday (11-15), I'm going to be playing with Facedown for one of their Spiritual Emphasis Week Chapels. It's Thursday from 11:56-12:36.

Interesting Ethical Issue

I just read a very interesting post from Al Mohler. It talks about those who are on life support due to being diagnosed with permanent unconsciousness, and whether they should be "allowed to die." Check out the post here.

Red Light Cameras

So last week Jess was stuck behind one of those huge trucks that blocks your entire forward view coming up to the intersection of Bouquet Canyon Rd and Newhall Ranch. They both got into the left turn lane and proceeded to make their turns. What Jess realized too late though, was that the truck had made his left turn at the very end of the yellow light, and as a result, Jess went through on a full red. Since she couldn't see the lights until the truck had turned out of her view, she didn't realize that she probably should have waited for the next green light. Sure enough the "photo enforced" intersection caught her, and took pictures of her license plate, the outside of her car, and even right into her windshield showing her behind the wheel (somewhat fascinating if it wasn't so awful).

Within a few days, her ticket arrived, and she owed $381! Wanting to just get it out of the way, she called the number on the ticket and paid over the phone. What we think happened was that she may have accidentally opted to pay the ticket without requesting traffic school, and so after she paid it, we were trying for hours to figure out how to request it from the court. She ended up having to take a morning off of work to go down to the courthouse. She got it all taken care of, but that $381 still hits hard.

What's funny is that we recently renewed our auto insurance, and when I did so, I updated our profile to our new address. What with moving to a safer neighborhood, and having a garage, our premium was less than it had previously been. But I guess whoever I spoke with didn't calculate everything correctly at the time, because we've now received three rebate checks for various profile changes in our insurance (safer neighborhood, garage, etc.). The first check was for $9, and the second check was for $120, but the third was for $260!

Jess was so worried about our insurance rates going up, and now it's our insurance who has paid for her ticket!

God is funny like that. :)