I know I'm way overdue on weekend updates, stretching back for many months if not years.

This past weekend was the start of drewuniversity's spring break. While my co-workers were struggling with the email server, I was hitting the slopes with jenniever. What says spring break more than skiing? jenniever's mother had talked to some friends and ski club buddies, and between them and her father, I had just about all the gear I needed. I picked up some goggles and gloves Friday night, then we crashed at her mother's place. The ski club her mother belongs to had a bus leaving from a nearby town, which took us up to Windham Mountain.

The only other time in my life that I've skied was eight years ago with chiquib, back when we were dating. That was a weekend at Mount Snow in Vermont right after a snow storm, skiing down fluffy powdery fresh snow under bright clear skies. Friday of that weekend I did the bunny slope for a while, then struggled down the mountain with chiquib and her brother's girlfriend, finally getting motored down by the staff like a total tool. Saturday, after a bit more on the bunny slope, I was up and down the mountain on green and a bit of blue without any problems beyond falling every so often.

I was fairly nervous about jumping into things under much icier conditions almost a decade later, but held up fairly well. After a few runs down the bunny slope, I was making my way along the slow wandering trails, rarely falling at all. I think having tiny skis helped. jenniever, the competitive racer, gave me some pointers along the way while her mother and sister braved the single and double black diamonds. I'm glad we were at the family-friendly mountain instead of the Benny-filled testosterone festival down the road for my second time. Plenty of kids, and the only snowboarder to slam into me this weekend was an eight year old apologetic kid, instead of the blind asses who slammed into me my previous time. There were only really two bad moments.

1. At one point, before lunch, during my second long run down the mountain, I fell into a creek. There was a hill I was riding along, but couldn't get enough momentum to crest over to the opposite side of the hill that lead further down. My only options were to stop, or to slide down to the edge of the path. I figured that it wouldn't be a problem, I could push off against the hill bordering the path, and be back on my way. That theory held, until the ground no longer held my weight, and I found myself knee-first in a few inches of muddy water. My pride was hurt more than anything else, and I chuckled at the parallel tracks leading right into the muddy hole on my remaining runs.
2. On my next to last run, I took a nasty spill, and had some problems getting back on. It's rough to get back onto your skis and get going on a steep face, and I ended up spilling again.

So, for the most part, things went well. One of our rides up to the top, we watched one of the funniest skills I've ever seen. Some guy managed to lose his skis, his poles, his goggles, his gloves, and more. It was an impressive painful cartwheel, leaving a long trail of gear. The guy we were riding with stared in disbelief. Another guy we were riding with shared mountain reviews with jenniever, and gave us a name of a great sleeper mountain in Pennsylvania we'll have to check out.

Before our final run, we stopped for a while at a lodge half-way up. I had some hot cocoa, and we took photographs. After the club's pizza party we caught the bus back to Jersey. Along the way we listened to some sad bitter tales of romance, then had a good conversation back at the homefront about relationships and age. jenniever and I visited her father, then crashed back at the_boke.

The next day I was beat. My knees, sides, and neck were killing me. After a day of lazing about, jenniever and I caught a bite at Rue de Jardin. Then we joined petemagyar and Bob de Bob, making our way to the studios over the Hammerstein Ballroom in midtown, where melasippo_mysp was having a birthday gathering.

Despite being fashionably late, we were still the first people there. The next people to show up looked familiar. I called melasippo_mysp over to ask the woman's first name, confirming that it was damnitnicole and degnernj. As the former said, we keep on running into each other on teh intarweb. Every time there's some trendy journal or discussion, we usually both end up posting to it, right before it breaks. We've got some overlapping friends, and she's from where I grew up. Finally meeting with her in person, we determined that a decent number of the girls I slept with in high school went on to sleep with the guys that she slept with. It's a small state.

So the two of us shared stories, bounced names and locations off of each other, and talked LiveJournal for a good deal of the night. It's always great to meet someone as LJ-demented as I am.

After moving to the VIP room in order to talk, and getting drowned out there, we all called it an evening and caught the PATH back to our respective Hudson County destinations.

Next, a wideathtrip, which I just have to linkify.

So, how do you people write entries? We've talked in the past about the current music thing. Some people put in whatever was playing when they started writing, some use what's playing as they finish up, some people write in an appropriate song whether or not it's playing, and some just totally lie. So when do you post entries? Do you write them up ahead of time and throw them up when you know you'll get more comments? Do you save them to a second journal (like some of you do) or private entry (like I do), leaving them waiting in the wings until you know people are reading? Do you just not care, and just post when the mood strikes, going straight from your fingers to teh intarweb without a holding position? How do you do it?

DAMN YOU NC8000!!!!

Feeling: hungry
Listening to: Megadeth, Devil's Island