Its Becoming a Trend

So I'm writing again, which means that I have a lot of work to be done which I am not doing (this is pretty much my last resort) and also that some awesome things have happened!

Well, last Thursday ended up being pretty much a wash, but the weekend was Awesome! Friday I woke up at 11 and hung out with Ryan, Caleb, and Jacob getting gear for our ski trip. Among other experiences I found a used, but quality, Columbia winter coat at Goodwill for 15 bucks and also got my ski rentals for free 'cause Ryan had these awesome coupon books. We eventually made it back to campus and I eventually went on my 3 mile run- I took it pretty easy, I didn't want to be tired for skiing. I don't really remember doing anything else that night....I think I did laundry and I probably watched The Office online and messed around on facebook. Not bad for a Friday.

Saturday was the real gem of the weekend. We met at Mac Court at 7:30 am, which I though was awesome- for some reason I really like being up in the early morning before everyone else is. We got Starbucks for really cheap on our way out because Callie works there so she gets a discount and she treated everybody, which was awesome. Callie, you are my favorite.

The best part about the drive up though was the tunes. We started out with "We Built This City" by Starship, which, if you don't know, is the Settler's theme song and therefore the NCM theme. That was on an excellent mix CD which Jenell made for Ryan at some point which has some killer tunes. When we ran out of awesome 90's rock, Disney songs, Journey, and Europop, the next CD was 90's BIG HITS cd. That pretty much says it all. Just picture Ryan, Drew, Jess, Me, Callie, and Callie's fiancee Ryan doing interpretive motions to "I'm like a Bird" by Nellie Furtado.

Yep, awesome.

Skiing itself at Willamette Pass was excellent. I was in the single digits temperature-wise and snowing most of the day, so there was a lot of powder- really perfect snow. I was kind of anxious about skiing because Ryan was the only other person with skiis and I was the only girl with all the boys- Callie and her Ryan hung out in the lodge reading Harry Potter and Shannara books (I can't blame them, that would be my second choice to spend a Saturday). So I was the only girl and most of the guys were snowboarders. Also, I hadn't skied in like two years and Sunday was my scheduled 6 mile run, so I wasn't in the mood to push myself.

Really, I needn't have worried because I remembered my ski mode really quick and had a blast. I didn't fall at all, but of course I didn't try anything really tricky like 360's or jumps or anything, and I went down the steep parts pretty cautiously- I didn't want getting hurt to interfere with marathon training. We started out on the bunny slope and then the green trail lift. Before lunch though we made two runs up at the top of the mountain, which is all blues and black diamonds. The Kaleidoscope-Perseverance route isn't too terribly rough though, but Kaleidoscope-Rosary was a lot harder for me. By the third huge steep part I was getting a but tired because I was trying to go kind of slow and controlled.

Compared to Alyeska, Willamette Pass isn't as high of a mountain or have as many trails and it probably doesn't always have as much powder as it did on Saturday, but it could probably keep me entertained for another couple of trips. There are like three other places to ski around here but none are as close (2 hours).

Ryan's going back on Friday and taking his son Zach, who's 8, and I was gonna tag along but then I remembered I have a doctor's appointment, which is lame. Oh well, we might find a weekend in February- I know Caleb and Jacob and Drew would probably go again.

So the trip back was pretty tame- we listened to an awesome selection of U2's best and probably had some intellectual conversation/ fell asleep. We also went and got ice cream at Dairy Queen, which was definitely ironic after being freezing cold all day, but hey, we all were in the mood for it...

So then Sunday at like 9 am Lindsey started screaming "Snow! Snow! Snow!" Everybody rushed out into the hall and then back inside to their windows- It was snowing like crazy! There was a mad rush to get outside and play in it. By the time I went outside an hour later to go to church the whole lawn was filled with frolickers. Everywhere you looked there were people having snowball fights and building snowmen and stuff. I rarely see another human being up at 10 on Sunday morning when I leave so it was pretty surreal. The roads were insane because by that point there was already about 5 inches accumulated and it was still cold enough to not have melted yet. Poor Jenell had trouble driving to pick up Katie for church in her little car so we followed her and helped her out. She was pretty shaken over the whole thing by the time we got to Harvest at 10:45 ish (service starts at 10:30).

They actually hadn't started the service yet when we showed up and there weren't exactly a ton of people there. Good sermon though. The best part was, because there was pretty puny attendance there were a ton of baked goodies left, which we (the college kids) got to finish off at dinner later. We never make it in time for goodies.

We decided to brave the roads and went to Taco Bell, per usual, and ended up getting in a big snowball war in the parking lot. Great fun. While we were there, Shantelle called. She, Gabie, and Bethany couldn't drive anywhere because they live on a scary icy hill and couldn't get out, but they had walked down and hiked like four miles to the Taco Bell near there house and wanted to see if we could meet them there, but we were already eating, so that was sad.

Anyway, we eventually made it back to campus, and everybody else had a hugely confusing adventurous day trying to figure out how to do everything with all sorts of different people and only two people who could drive...Meanwhile I was cleaning up and getting psyched up for my 6 mile run.

My feet got soaked walking over to the rec center, because by mid-afternoon the snow was nasty wet slush and it was miserable. However, I had new running socks that I got from REI. My first 2.5 miles were okay, but then my left foot and calf went completely numb, so I stopped and stretched really well. It was weird. The rest of the run went okay. I really didn't want to be running, and my favorite podcast hadn't updated on schedule and I felt icky. My last mile though, surprisingly, was amazing. I ran it was faster than I ran the previous 5 miles, listening to Barlow Girl's "Enough" about three times in a row. It was awesome. I actually wanted to keep running when I done, which is crazy.

I need to remember how awesome some of those worship songs are to run to. The problem is that some of them really aren't so awesome to run with, and if I have to interrupt my stride to find another song I tend to slow down or at least screw up my form and get tired, so I like podcasts, because they last a full 30-70 minutes some of them which is just perfect.

Jessica, my roommate, had a pretty crappy weekend and she's likely to have a rough week though, so it was kind of a downer to get back to my dorm room. It'll all work out, but there's a lot of drama right now.

Therefore, I was very happy to get out of there and head over to Ryan's for dinner. It took an age to get there though because Caleb ended up being the sort of taxi cab for everybody who would usually drive but couldn't. We made it though, and we had meat sauce with a side of spaghetti noodles and lots of baked goods. A very well carb-loaded meal. It was a smaller group so we just played Settlers, no movie and no football, and me and Shantelle totally lost. It was actually a really close game except for our team haha. We had good strategy, but bad luck.

Then we made our way back to campus and I stayed up kind of late hanging out with the Alexsondria /Alison/ Ryan crowd and we eventually watched South Park (my first time! it was...as I expected). Everybody was hoping that it would snow over night and all day today and our professors would cancel class, but no such luck.