Ski Season Begins...

Before I go into our first adventures of skiing this season, I'll cover a few other miscellaneous topics. First off, I got to go back to Virginia last week as part of a "business" trip. It was a lot of fun, I got to see family, old co-workers, and of course many Arlington friends at the house of Traci, Cassie, Christy, and Emily (or Emitrasisty for short). Now I just have to figure out how to continue to visit every two weeks...still working on that one.

And for your Volleyball update, our league team made the final four...translation, we won our first playoff game in a 7 team league. Although, we now have to face off against the number 1 seed, so its anyone's guess if we can keep this playoff run alive.

Back to the point of this post. Sarah and I did in fact make our first ski trip of the season at Keystone. Only about half of the mountain was open, but it was still pretty cool. One "run" consisted of going down the equalivent of 4-5 regular slopes all the way from the top of the mountain to the bottom (3.5 miles). Once we got our ski legs back everything was going great, I personally loved my new skiis, so then I came up with this great idea: "let's try this other blue slope that we haven't looked at before." Can you say "Worst Decision...Ever" (in the voice of Comic Book Guy).

We started going down, the snow wasn't groomed and a little choppy but everything was fine. Then you make a right turn and huh, there are lots of moguls for the next half a mile or so. These actually went ok, we were both being cautious but these were navigatable. Then it evens out and another right turn and...BAM, 3-5 foot high moguls for the next two miles (at an even steeper slope). Our legs were alrighty burning as neither of us really knows how to ski moguls, and this pretty much finished us off. We eventually made it down, but not without a few tumbles. To add insult to injury, the moguls got so high that a few small trees and even a rock or two were pertruding out of the "valleys." So our brand new skis even got a little scratched up.
We didn't actually bring a camera to capture these precious moments, but here is a picture from keystone of the top of this evil slope. As you can see, it looks fine at the top...

Not to let the mountain beat us, we actually did do one more long run on more normal slopes and quickly regained our confidence. So, if we block out that one long and painful memory, it was actually a lot of fun.

Blades and Booze...

Yes there were blades(some real and some plastic that caused a little stir when I tried to bring them in my carry-on bag), and oh yes there was booze (a keg of Satan's Pony, ice luge, rumplemintz, and even a pack of O'Doules*). With those two ingredients in place, the B & B party VIII was as successful as ever. Families were reunited downing shots over a large block of ice (who knew both McDevitts would be there), obscure movie and tv characters were again given a stage, and best of all no incremenating pictures were taken against the wishes of said people:*


It was a great party from start to finish. Sarah and I got to catch up with a lot of our friends, and get drunk in the process. Throw in a little Halo 2 playing and you pretty much have the perfect weekend.

Since I wasn't a judge this year, and although I would never question drunk judging, I have to recognize my favorite costumes that were eligible but didn't win a prize this year (thus eliminating Rob's masterpiece as Optimus Prime). In no particular order my favorite non-winners: Ben as Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite (Ben is definitely in the running for the "Most Good Costumes without Ever Winning" award), Sarah B. as the bar wench (DON'T call her the bar bitch), and Bonnie and Alex as Thing 1 and Thing 2.



Thanks to the planners for all their hard work and I can't wait till next year (you can check out the actual winners and many more pics at the B&B website).

*We may never know who took this photo, or who the man taking the ice luge shot was