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Watch A Prairie Home Companion Movie trailer.

Garrison Keillor is one homely guy.

Spring is on its way

unfortunately, because it means no more snow. But more on that later.

Last October I went canoeing down the Kayaderoseras creek with Ken, a friend from work. This body of water runs (literally) behind my house, its origins in the Adirondack mountains. It took us about 3 hours to get to the Saratoga Lake. A lot of fun.




Now let's get to the reason why my posting halted for almost a month. Skiing. I'm addicted. How did it start, you ask? Well, everyone at work skiis. I'd see them put their skiing gear on and leave early on Tuesday nights, but never thought about going myself. Eventually Ken convinced me to try out one of the local Ski Discovery packages (lesson and bunny slope lift ticket). I loved it. Wasn't too good, of course. Even on the bunny slope I could barely make a turn. But of course, practice makes perfect, and on the third night all of a sudden it happened: I could make parallel turns!

Skiing is perhaps the single most fun thing one could do during the winter season.

These were taken two days ago at Jay Peak, Vermont. Eric (from work) and I drove 4 hours to Northern Vermont, where for some strange reason a snow cloud sits on this mountain all through March. In the past 3 weeks they've had 3 feet of snow. Even the forest areas were skiable: they get so much snow that the resort encourages you to ski through the woods, or glades. It was unbelievable. I'd be going down a regular tree-cleared trail, find an opening in the woods, get in, slow down (because the snow came up to my knees), try to avoid the trees, and then come out to another man-made trail.





That's yours truly under all those layers.

Update

1) Last weekend we had a powerful windstorm sweep through the north country, leaving about 245,000 people without electricity, including yours truly. During my morning run on Friday the wind was gentle but picking up, temperature mild at 57. At work we all went to a pub for lunch, and the lights went out while we were cheering the US women hockey team. That was the end of our work day, and we cheered some more, ate and drank and made merry, and then slowly trickled out of the increasingly cold establishment. I went back to my house. At 3:45pm, living room is at a stable 57. Took a nap, woke up at 9pm. Temperature: 51. Outside temperature: 12. Walked around in complete darkness, for alas I do not own a flashlight. Used my cellphone to pee. Then decided I had to get white gas for my camping stove.
After driving halfway to Boston I found a 24 hours Wal-Mart, bought a lantern, then hunted for kerosene, and drove home. By 5am there was a bright lantern glowing in my kitchen, BBC static coming out of a pocket radio, antenna wrapped in copious amounts of aluminum paper to increase the reception, and my MSR stove diligently boiling water. I drank lots of tea, filled my water bag with hot water, and slept on the couch, after closing all the bedroom and bathroom doors. Living room temperature at 5am: 47. Outside temperature: 9. Woke up at 10, still no power, living room temperature: 41. Started my stove again, made mac & cheese, and minutes before Bush's weekly presidential speech the lights came back on, at 11:55am. Enjoyed Bush's talk on nu-kee-lerr power.

2) Tomorrow I drive to Montreal, to see Belle & Sebastian and The New Pornographers! Am extremely excited. Show starts at 8pm, so I might have to sleep in my van before driving home.

3) Had one of the most exciting afternoons here so far: on Wednesday I had my coworkers wish me luck, and then walked to a sports bar to watch Chelsea vs Barcelona, on a big screen. The place was empty (it was 2:30pm). I suffered as we started losing, 1-0. Decided maybe soccer was a nonsensical activity, and was ready to walk back and give up on this thing. Then we tied, 1-1, and I was proud to be from Catalunya. I started talking to the screen, standing, with one hand on head and the other waving around. I yelled at my team, giving them directions, cursing the englishmen. When the 1-2 came I was ecstatic, pounding my fist on the fake wood table, three times, and yelled "GOOOOOOOOL!" twice.


Walked back to work with a huge smile, and programmed for the rest of the evening with a rather high heart rate. That night I slept with my Barcelona scarf under pillow. This is true.

4) I'm running a marathon, June 11. It should be fun.

I'm addicted to running. When I'm out there my joints and muscles give up long before I want them to, so I keep pushing. Every morning I feel like running forever, which is of course not possible, since I have to shower eat breakfast drive to work and code.

5) That's it for now. I have lots more to say, but will save it for later.

Northern border Fence

In a recent interview on "As It Happens", a republican senator whose name eludes me talked about the need for constructing a fence between the US and Canada, to keep out evil-doers. The proposed construction would run at about a million dollars a mile, and would, of course, be rather long. When he mentioned something about "ensuring that the resources are being used adequately to construct the fence" I couldn't help but picture this:



Let's hope they don't run out of villagers. I hate it when that happens.