Thanks for the reminder that I've been ignoring this page for a while John. 8-)

The last week or two have been craziness followed by boredom, which is nice because it gives you a chance to catch up on sleep.

Two weeks ago was my 30th birthday. Besides the depressing fact of having to mourn the loss of my 20's, it was pretty good. A bunch of us got together at Josh and Andrea's house for a cookout and beverages, and a mellow fun evening was had by all. Julie got me a portable disc golf basket for my birthday, so now for all of those times when I'm driving along and say "Wow, that would make for some really good disc golf holes over there" I can stop and actually find out if I'm right or not.

Last weekend was the Tyrol Basin Ski Patrol banquet, which in and of itself was quite fun. Good food, good drinks. I got recognized for my work training the patrol candidates in the Outdoor Emergency Care class, and also was elected to an at-large position on the TBSP board, so a rather eventful night for me there. Of course, this was after a too eventful morning. I don't like starting my day (ok, it was around noon, but it was still close to the start of my day!) with calls from the Mequon Police Department. It seems that since my parents were in Atlanta, Nick's girlfriend Angie decided to stay the night, when she left that morning, that was the last anyone had seen her up to the point of the call to me from the PD. This was noticed of course, because her sister was getting married, and she was standing up in the wedding. When she didn't show up for hair appointments or anything else, that's when the PD got called in. After they talked to Nick in the morning, then he was nowhere to be found. So, I had about a half dozen calls from them throughout the day, and had to give them permission to break into my parents house to see if there was a crime scene. What fun. Very long story short, I got a call right before I had to go to the banquet from the PD saying that she and Nick showed up, both looking ok, and she said that she went for a walk and got lost. For 7 hours. And missed her sister's wedding. But that's all. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *shaking head* Anyways, they're both ok, which is the important thing for this story.

So now we have the aforementioned banquet, and yea it was good.

At 11:30 we leave the banquet and are heading home, and when we get to an area of North Rd. that is well known for being a more difficult area to navigate, due to a steep hump of a hill. After you crest the hill and start heading down, the road takes a sharp left. Well, we see a car parked at the side of the road...and a first year patroller that we know sitting in the field behind it...and behind him a flipped car. Yup. The day from hell that couldn't possibly have anything more f'ed up happen, just found a way to get worse. The driver of the car normally took a different way to and from Tyrol, and so didn't know about that turn. He was stone cold sober and wasn't speeding, but he just couldn't react in time, and his 6 month old Subaru Outback went off the side of the road and flipped after it hit a ditch. It slid a good 50 feet or so off the side of the road. The only plus of the story: everyone was ok. 4 of the 5 were wearing seatbelts, and the worst injury was a cut wrist that may have had some glass in it. We pulled out Josh's buttpack and got her bandaged up, and then sat back and waited for yet another contact with the cops. For variety this time it was sherrifs! It was freezing out that night, so we crammed everyone into a couple of cars and waited for the tow. The car was a total loss. All the glass broke, and the roof buckled in a bit. Which in a way was reassuring for us, since we drive an Outback. If we were to get in a crash, the car may not survive, but it looks like our chances would be pretty good!

On Sunday I slept. 8-)

More proof that United sucks.

OK, the other half of the trip. AKA poker. 8-)

We got in late enough on Friday night that we just got food and played a few slots at Harrah's and then went to bed. On Saturday I checked out the poker room at Horizon. It was pretty small, but very friendly. When I came in they had one game going, which was a 2-6 hold 'em. Not 2/4 or 3/6 like I'm used to but 2-6. As in you can bet 2 anytime or 6 anytime or anything in between. I've seen this in 7 card stud before but not in hold 'em. Being a smaller poker room, they also have a bit of a gimick to help bring people in. It's the hand of the day. If you get the hand of the day, you get $50 on the spot, even if you lose the pot. Today's hand of the day was a full house, Jacks full of 7's. Anyways, I came in at the same time as another guy and we both got put on a table that had 5 people on it. Who interestingly enough, were all travelling together. I was a bit afraid that they were trying to do some organized cooperation to take other people's money, but they lost so much and were so friendly that I think they just wanted to sit at a casino and play poker. For the ammount that they paid out in tips and rake, they should have just bought chips and had a home game, but that's up to them. Only one big memorable hand for the evening. I was in early position with Ah7h, and called. These guys rarely raised preflop, so why not take a look with a midling hand. Well, the flop came out JJJ. I'm figuring that my ace high is good, so I bet out 6. Only one caller, and the call put him all in. Turn comes a 7. I've got Jacks full of 7's. Remeber that hand of the day thing from up above? Yup, one fifty dollar bill coming my way. I couldn't flip my cards fast enough. River was a blank...don't even remember what it was. The lucky thing for me here is that the other guy was all in...because he had the fourth jack. So I lost a pot that had about $22-24 prerake in it, investing only $8 myself, and get the $50 side prize instead. They guy with quads got a mug for his hand. He kept trying to sell it to me for $50 for some reason. I declined to take him up on it. lol.

Sunday night I sat at Harvey's poker room for a few hours playing 3/6 hold 'em. This was a really nice poker room, and I had a lot of fun here. Although no really good stories from it. Some bad beat stories that make me miss no limit...fecking idiot calling down my flopped straight to runner runner a full house on me....gah. Correction. He raised on the turn when he hit trips, and i raised him right back and told him his trips were no good. fecking board paired again on the river...sigh. Still left up for the night, but nowhere near as much as it should have been. I'm only up $80 on poker at this point.

On Monday I was back at Horizon for their Monday night freeze out hold 'em tournament. We're about 1 hour in and the blinds are getting a bit high when I get KhQh in middle position. A guy early on raises, I call, and about 3 others call. Flop comes out K93 with 1 heart. I bet, the dealer calls, the rest fold. Turn comes 3h. I've got top pair with a good flush draw. I bet strong, the other guy puts me all in and I call. Flips over slick...dammit. No heart, K, Q, or 3 on the river so I'm done. The annoying thing is I was 3rd in chips on our table of ELEVEN at that point...but that guy was the chip leader for the table. Oh, well. Whatcha gonna do?

Go play blackjack, obviously! We went over to Bill's cansino, which if you've clicked on all the links so far you'll see that it's another offshoot of Harrah's. Yes, I'm sick of that music too. Bill's has the only $3 blackjack in town, and I didn't feel like playing for much on blackjack so Josh and I found a seat there. Well, the dealer was really fun and we had a great time, especially since we both made about $50 there, so I got to leave up a respectable ammount for the trip. All in all, not bad. Andrea even tried a little blackjack there, and it was her first time ever at a table we found out. How that is possible at...31 or 32 and being married to Josh who is like f'ing Yoda when it comes to blackjack I don't know, but she left up $10 and was bouncing off the walls with excitement for it.

Got some time to kill, so hey, how about updating this thing a bit!

This last weekend Josh, Andrea, Julie, and I went to Lake Tahoe for some skiing and fun. We left on Friday and came back on Tuesday. We learned one very important lesson right away. Never, ever, for any reason, fly United. To paraphrase a saying of Heather C.'s "They suck, they suck, they f'ing suck!" We had 2 stops on the way out, one in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the other in Denver, before finally flying into Reno. Once in Reno we found out that the airline deliberately rerouted our skis in Denver. But they promised to have them to us by 2am latest. And in the off chance that we didn't get them they would reimburse us for rentals and up to 50% for clothing. How generous (insert sarcasm here). Well, Andrea set an alarm, and when the skis weren't there at 2am, she called. Oh, they didn't make the flight that we thought they would. But they'll be there after 8am. By noon at the absolute latest. We decided not to take their word for it and rented instead of waiting. I had always wanted to try a pair of Salomon X-Screams. They didn't turn as well or ride as smooth as my Volkl 5-star's, but they were pretty good. Unfortunately Andrea and Julie didn't like their skis as much, but they got along fairly well on them.

We skied Heavenly the first day. That place is absolutely beautiful. Great view of Lake Tahoe. You can ski from Nevada to California and back. Pretty fun. Also really crowded since it has a gondola actually in South Lake Tahoe. But definitely worth skiing at least once. Funny story from there. We were making our second to last run down, and Julie decided to hit some bumps in some trees under the chairlift. Andrea and I were feeling a bit tired, so we went around. Well, we get to the lift, which was maybe 50-100 yards away, and no Julie. Wait for a while, still no Julie. We see some people in the line that she was taking and can see that a snowboard and crossed skis have been put up. Uh-oh. After a while of waiting and trying to get ski patrollers to let us know what was going on up there, we finally rode the lift so that we could see. I had tried hiking, but the snow was too soft and I just sank, so this was our only option. Well, we see Julie helping a local patroller splint an arm. Turns out that a snowboarder in front of her crashed into a tree and broke his humerous. Julie was first on scene. 8-) To make life more fun, there was a really nasty accident well uphill from us that was taking up most all local patroller resources, so the one patroller that did come was very grateful to Julie for helping.

When we got home from Heavenly, we found that our skis had been delivered. At 4:00. So much for the second absolute deadline. F'ing United bastards... Anyway, the next day we headed out to Kirkwood. All I can saw is wow. The skiing was absolutely amazing. Very challenging, very very fun. It was very windy that day, so a few lifts were closed, and so we couldn't ski The Wall, which is their famous double black run, but we still had a blast anyways. And to continue the trend from the last day, as we're skiing off at the end of the day, we find a guy on the ground near the village area with a badly broken wrist. Wisconsin ski patrol to the rescue! At least this time all of us got to do some work. To make life more fun, most of the group with the guy were from Madison, and had skied Tyrol a lot. Tyrol patrollers fixing Tyrol skiers in Kirkwood, CA! It was really kinda funny. A local patroller came by about halfway through and we all got the guy splinted up and on his way. Again, he was very grateful for the help. Very nice people on the patrols out there that we ran into. Oh, and Kirkwood gives NSP discounts! 50% off if you have your cards and a letter from your PR. We didn't have the letter, but the girl was in a good mood and gave it to us anyways. Possibly the fact that I flashed 4 different NSP cards convinced her that I really am a member in good standing...lol.

Monday Andrea and Julie skied Heavenly while I hit shops and casinos with Josh. I'll type more about that later today or next week, because there were some fun stories from there, but hey, it's lunch time, and I've already typed more in here than I have in the last 2-3 weeks at least. 8-)