Renew Your Mind

Good news came last Friday as I was driving up to Mammoth. I received a phone call from the admissions director for the FEMBA program at UCLA. It was a nice surprise to get a personal phone call letting me know that I’ve been accepted.

Mammoth was great. It snowed both days we snowboarded but it was nice to ride some fresh powder. I got a new snowboard so I had to go back and make some adjustments before I was able to ride comfortably. On my first run on Saturday it took me about an hour to ride down. I had a hard time riding in knee deep fresh powder. Fresh powder is nice to fall on but it is difficult to get out of. The runs were much better once they were groomed. We broke down and bought face masks the second day although it wasn’t as windy on Sunday. The masks helped although they take some getting used to as one can start to feel claustrophobic. One thing I like about Mammoth is that even though you know it is crowded it doesn’t feel like it on the mountain. I’ve found that it people come in waves so if you wait for a group to pass you can have a run to yourself for the most part and not have to worry about anyone crashing into you. This was the first time I snowboarded two days in a row and my legs are feeling it today. Does anyone know what the deal is with the $100 for an entire weekend in Mammoth is? A lift operator asked me if I was interested, but I instinctually said no since it sounded like a scam, but I do remember other lift operators offering that deal before in years past but I never asked for more details since I was about to get onto the ski lift.

I did end up playing in my Monday night basketball game which we lost. I didn’t help by missing too many free throws in the second half. I’d like to blame the fact that my legs were tired after all that snowboarding and the 6 hour drive from Mammoth but my free throws haven’t been consistant lately.

Another year, another Valentines with my sweetheart. I took her out to a little french resturant, La Vie, in San Gabriel. As most resturants on Valentines day, it was packed. After we were seated, I noticed my wife kept looking over my shoulder at the patrons coming in and being turned away because the restaurant was booked for the evening. I was sure glad we were able to be seated. I actually made a reservation the week before, but when we arrived they were unable to find it. Luckily, we were seated anyway. Otherwise, I would have had to complain to the owners about how bad there reservations system was. They used a notebook and just scribbled in the reservations on the page. It wasn’t organized at all. My wife counted 10 couples who didn’t have reservations and were turned away by the time we left. The food was good as usual. I normally order the rack of lamb but I couldn’t pass up the prime rib special they had. My wife ordered the Cod but later said she preferred the Chicken Cordon Bleu (her usual). We both had dessert for change. As with the dinners, the desserts were very resonably priced (about $4.00 each) and I really liked the what I had. It was a banana and vanilla ice cream dessert but it was the sauce that was so tasty. The next time we go there I’m thinking of ordering the escargot. I always see other people ordering it there and I’m curious to see if I’ll like.

I installed the extened live archives today with all it’s AJAX goodness. Sweet.