Pictures from Nevada City and Tahoe

EDIT 10/07/2007 --Re-mastered this video with a better quality song, reposted--



Here is a compilation of some of my favorite pictures from Nevada City and Tahoe that I've taken over the last 8 months.

The song is "Disarm" by the Smashing Pumpkins.

I'll miss you, Tahoe!

Alicia Birthday Pictures Linkie

Perfect way to spend my last day in Nevada City: Scott's Flat Lake

Memorial Day Weekend 2007 (Part 2--Saturday and Sunday)

We woke up around 8am on Saturday, in preparation for a long day of ultimate. We got to the fields as the first horn blew for the first round of games to start, but as hard as Schmed tried to get things going on "real" time... "Ultimate" time ruled the day. The first round didn't get underway for another 20 minutes, and we were nice and warmed up by the first point.

We played Red Hand, which was a mix of high school and high school alumni from some Bay Area school. They were pretty good, but reminded me a lot of my old junior's team. They had a few really amazing athletes and frisbee players, but half of the team was still learning a lot of the basics of the game. On the other hand, the Nevada City / Grass Valley pick up team I was on, was pretty much stacked with people who either knew how to handle the disc, or were great at running deep--and everyone played good defense. Red Hand had just a few too many novices, and we were able to capitalize on their turn overs. I think we ended up taking the game 10-7 after the hard cap ended the game.

The next game was Kristina's favorite game of the entire weekend, because it was against her high school alumni team--the team she would have been on if she hadn't been picked up by the NV/GV pickup team earlier. She had a lot of younger friends on the team, including three or four people I had met numerous times at Roxie's parties before--but never got a chance to play with or against. I knew they all had tons of energy, but I wasn't sure how good they'd be at ultimate. They were definitely the most spirited team we played, but again, the experience of the pickup team I was on overmatched their zeal. We won roughly 13-6 or so.

Our next game was against Reno college team. I had actually watched this team play the Saturday of the Davis Invitational tourney I went to a few months ago--and they were a great match-up for Mad Dog 20-20 team. Two girls from Tahoe City who played with us the first few points of the day defected over to the Reno team, because the Reno team needed more players, and the girls knew a lot of the players on the other team. We ended up taking half with a score of 7-1, but by the time the hard cap sounded, the score was 10-8--and we barely squeaked out of this one with a win. Kristina rightly pointed out that as soon as it looked like Keith purposely dropped a sure catch in the endzone, karma was against us, and we got steam-rolled. I think we lost the last six or seven points in a row--it was ugly.

Our last game of the day was against a high school team, who was probably attending their first tournament. I know how that goes, and we had our way with the team of newbies. My last point of play was at about the 9-1 mark. We were on defense, and there was a throw to the far corner of the end-zone, to someone other than the person I was guarding--but there was enough time to get over and snatch the disc away from the kid. I walked the disc up to the end-zone line, which just so happened to be on their sideline. I saw Joe running deep, so I pulled back and hucked it the entire field to him for a score. I overheard the kids on the sideline: "whoooaa" "crap" "daaaamn" I trotted off the field, then decided we had the game wrapped up, so Kristina and I took off to go get some food, then head back to walk Raffle along the ditch.

We stopped at an Indian Buffet for lunch, and it was amazing. Much like any other Indian Buffet, but it hit the spot, and I could barely walk to the car after having two big plates of naan, rice, chicken curry and potatoes. We headed back to her place, and I promptly fell asleep from the running and the large amount of Indian food.

Three hours later, still groggy, I wake up to find an empty house. I sort of expected Kristina to be doing the report cards she kept talking about, but then she walked in with Raffle. They had been tossing the ball out front, but were ready for a walk at the ditch--so we drove down to the ditch and went for a couple-mile walk before dusk. I went walking with Raffle and Kristina a lot when I was living in Nevada City, so it was nice to get back there in Spring to see the differences. It was a beautiful walk, capped off by Raffle jumping in the water, getting stuck in the current and before I could offer to hop in--Kristina was in the water after him, trying to haul him out of the water. Raffle has probably jumped in that stream hundreds of times, but in the Spring, the current is a lot swifter, and there were no points with a low enough bank for him to hop back out of the water. Poor dog.

We headed back to her house and played some crazy eights before bed, and she continued her crazy 8's dominance. I lost a few bets, but nothing too humiliating, because I can't recall either of them. I hit the hay, not sure if we'd be playing any ultimate on Sunday.

Got woken up early on Sunday to a chipper Kristina, ready for some more disc. We got to the fields late, but it turned out we got a first-round bye, because the Nevada Union alumni team (which we played 2nd on Saturday), skipped town early, and wasn't able to field a team. Our next game wasn't for another 90 minutes--and we hadn't had breakfast yet, so we zoomed over to South Pine Cafe--both Kristina and my favorite breakfast spot in Nevada City.

Kristina had actually forgotten her cleats at home, so she dropped me off to place the orders, and she raced back to the house to get the cleats. A few minutes after she arrived back at the cafe, the food was brought out and we scarfed down our favorites. We made it back to the fields with plenty of time to spare, and warmed up for our first game of the day, which also turned out to be the semi-finals of the tournament... against...

Reno! I was a bit scared for this game, because they were the team that ran off a string of six or seven points against us the day before. I only saw one of the two Tahoe ladies, but I said "hi" and we talked about the Tahoe ultimate scene. Apparently, there is a pretty hi-level pickup game in Truckee on Thursdays. Liz said it wasn't on any website, but if I'd give her my number, she'd give me a buzz with directions.

I'm thinking about riding up to Truckee tomorrow to check out the game, but there is a chance of T-storms, so I'm about 50/50 right now. She hasn't given me a call yet, so I'm thinking if she calls, I'll make the trip and if she doesn't, I'll stick around Zephyr Cove tomorrow.

We actually handled Reno pretty easily in the Semi's, much in part to the fact that they partied much harder than we did the night before. Also, due to the addition of Patrick from the Nevada Union alumni team which ditched him. Patrick is about to graduate from Santa Cruz, and recognized Jeremy and Sam's names from Santa Cruz ultimate in years past. Two guys I played junior's with. Patrick was a BEAST!

We assumed we'd be meeting up with Red Hand again in the finals, but they ended up losing to a Nova alumni team, which was chalk-full of high-aggro college guys. They only had one lady on their team, who they rarely threw too. I felt a bit sorry for her, and understood why no other ladies wanted to play with those guys.

We traded points points for a while, then they took half 7-6 after we had a 6-4 lead. That was a bit depressing, especially because two of the points involved me getting sky'd in the end-zone, or close to it. No fun there! Most of their scores were huge, soring skies above a couple of our guys, and most of our scores were methodical works down the field to an open man in the end-zone. Neither team could really stop the other, but we got lucky on a few points, and we were up 8-7 in a game to 10 after the soft cap horn blew.

We scored to bring it to 9-7, a point away from victory--then they scored the next two points to make it UNIVERSE POINT in the championship game of the tourney! High drama for sure, and I got to play in the last point. We received the disk, worked it down the field, only to throw it away out the back of the end-zone. I felt strongly that we could get a D, but when I saw the huck go up to one of their most athletic guys, I thought we'd lost the game. Then Patrick flew out of nowhere to knock the disc out of bounds! Woot!

On our second-life, we worked the disc down the field again, and had a really good shot at putting Nova away. Patrick got a pass in the end-zone, but tried to play it safe and catch it with two hands, which ended up twisting his torso awkwardly, forcing him to drop the disc. He kicked himself because if he had just gone up with one-hand, he was sure he would have caught it in a more natural motion. He made up for it on defense though, by getting a hand-block on their best player on another almost-sure score. Double-woot!

We worked the disc down the field one last time, and the disc finally made its way to Mark in the end-zone for the final score of the tourney! There was a bit of controversy--as Nova thought you still had to win by two, but the rules clearly stated that once the soft cap was on, you add two to the leader's score, and play win-by-one to that point total, which was 10 at 8-7 our favor. The Nova team was a bit too agro for my liking, but I still had a good time. It was fun to win a tournament--I'm not sure when the last time I won a tournament was--maybe a Hat Tourney in Seattle?? Reno ended up beating Red-Hand in the 3rd place game, so that was a cool upset, and I was glad the very nice and spirited Reno team beat the relatively aggro Red Hand team.

Kristina and I helped clean up the fields a bit, then we headed back to her place. She got a call from her brother, saying that he could take care of Raffle on Monday--so we could head to Marin to play with the Sacramento team! Kristina was still on the fence as to whether or not she wanted to play three days of ultimate in a row, but the dog-help from A.J. sealed the deal. We met A.J. on the way to Davis to spend the night with Kristen.

Kristen is awesome. Her and Conor have two cats: Ebony and Ash--and guess what colors they are? They also have a game cube with Mario Party 4 and 5, so after a really good pasta salad and foccacia bread appetizer, Kristen, Kristina and I played a game of Mario Party 5. Conor was away on a business trip unfortunately, so he didn't get to play both Mario Party and in the ultimate tourney the following day.

I confessed to playing before, so Kristen gave Kristina a 2-star handicap, and we also played against an "easy" Mario. Of course, I chose Wario, cause he is the bestest... "Meeeehhh!" Kristina just trounced us. Kristen dominated me, and I only got one star, which I stole from Mario to put him in last place. Kristen won all the bonus stars at the end of the game, but still wasn't able to catch up to Kristina, who won nearly all of the board-game stars. Kristen got an absurd 230+ coins, after winning a few of the 30-coin "battle games". I won the 50-coin battle game, but was at zero, so I only ended up getting 100 coins, and Kristen came in 2nd and got 40 of her 50 back--bah! It was the "accurately trace this line" battle game, and I somehow lucked into a 93 (out of 100?), which beat out Kristen's 89. I'm a bit worried about playing Kristen and Conor at a later date... I think the only mini-game out-right win besides the big coin battle for me was the underwater breathing one--which is just a button-masher. I held my breath for 9 seconds, but Conor somehow managed 13 seconds! Good Grief!

After Kristina's victory dance, we were all pretty tired, so we headed up to the master bedroom for a slumber party. Unfortunately, I fell asleep before anything interesting happened. We had popped in "Dave" the movie, and I was out a few minutes later. When I went to sleep, I was completely cocooned in my sleeping bag, but when I woke up later, the sleeping bag was at my feet--so the two ladies may or may not have taken advantage of me. Either works!

Pictures:

1) Jordan trying to catch a bagel with his mouth. He was the son of the father/son duo on the NC/GV pickup team, and one of our two high schoolers (we called them token 1 and token 2--after all, it WAS a high school tournament!).

2) NC/GV pickup teammates (Peter, Kristina, Corryon, Rory, Denise)

3) Corryon looking sexy in preparation for a point with the Nevada Union Alumns!







Bed time, Monday/Tuesday tomorrow~ Many more ultimate pictures to come!

Memorial Day Weekend 2007 (Part 1--Friday)

Quite the weekend!

Nikki whisked me away Friday afternoon after work. I got a jump-start on the non-existent Memorial Day traffic. Everyone was going the opposite direction, so I didn't have much trouble on the highway to Nevada City. The ride to Truckee was pretty uneventful--it was the first time I tried bungee-cording my sleeping bag onto the back passenger seat, and it held nice and tight the whole trip. The backpack was a bit heavy, and I can see it being an issue on the trip to Vegas--but it wasn't bad for 100 miles.

I was used to the roads leading to Truckee--I've been around the lake twice already, and rode down to Markleeville, so I'm used to the 40mph and 55mph roads. But between Truckee and the turnoff for Highway 20, I'd be riding on Highway 80, which is the big 70mph highway that spans from San Francisco to Ocean Park, Maryland. There is a sign when you're heading East on 80, just outside of Sacramento that says, "Ocean Park, MD: 3023 miles".

The bike handled great! It marked the first time I hovered around the 10k-11k rpm mark, climbing Donner Pass... and like I've read, the 250cc's run amazingly from 9k up. The first time I got up to 6krpm on the drive home from the dealership, I thought the bike was about to explode, because I just wasn't used to the engine going that fast. 6krpm is red-line on the Explorer! Going 80mph on a bike is quite the windy experience! I have still yet to be too hot on the bike, and going 80mph on 80 made my shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket almost not noticeable--and it couldn't have been much cooler than 75 degrees out.

I rolled into Nevada City around 4:30pm, and Raffle was happy to see me (after a brief barking episode). It had to be over 80 degrees on the other side of the Sierras, so I shed 2/3rd's of my clothing, and Raffle and I tossed the ball, then headed inside to wait for Kristina to get off work for the weekend. I flipped on the tube, and was pleasantly surprised to see a rerun of the Heroes finale I missed last Monday. Two minutes later, I hear Kristina's Yaris rolling down the gravel driveway--no Heroes for me, poop!

It felt great to see Kristina again, and be in Nevada City. Her place is as close to ideal of a place to live as I've experienced--especially in the Spring, when it is sunny and 80 degrees outside. I secretly wished I could come back for the summer, especially with the crazy party-roommates, but I'll survive. We catched up for a bit in her kitchen, which probably keeps cool the best out of anywhere in the house, due to the tiled floor. 80 degrees outside, 65 in the kitchen, and probably 85 or 90 in her Solarium.

We talked a lot about teaching, Tahoe, frisbee, and the Ninja. I hadn't really thought about it until we talked about it on Friday afternoon, but I might spend a few weeks with Kristina on my way up to Seattle, and observe her class in Yuba City. She offered if I still had hours to observe by the end of my time in Tahoe. Her classes end this Friday, so she's very excited for her Summer. I guess her class this year was great, and she's not looking forward to a few of the "trouble" students coming her way next Fall--but it was hard for her to look past the Gin N' Tonic's out on the porch-swing all summer long :) I must say, that summer vacation is a nice little perk to teaching!

Her frisbee had been going so-so. She wasn't too happy about her league team down in Sacramento that had just started up. The chemistry just wasn't there, and I don't think they have won any of their games yet. Both Kristina and I could really care less if our teams win games, as long as we're having a fun time. Sadly, the two usually go hand-in-hand.

She also wasn't too hot about the motorcycle. Don't get me wrong, she thought it was great that I was having fun, but she wouldn't ride a motorcycle if someone paid her to. The fun and thrill isn't worth the greater chance of death and dismemberment (although girls don't even have members, so I'm not sure what she's worried about!). We eventually agreed to disagree, and we also came to the conclusion that we are both pretty stubborn, but she's more stubborn.

As planned, we headed out to Northridge Pizza for their yummy Popeye pizza. I forget exactly what is on it, but it is a Vege pizza that I actually like... I know! My favorite pizza is pepperoni and sausage, so a Vege pizza that I like is pretty rare. The Popeye pizza from Northridge has pine nuts, Feta cheese, and I think maybe spinach? I don't even like spinach, but this pizza is gold. We got some jalapeño poppers for appetizers, and washed down the pizza with a pitcher of Newcastle. MMM Newcastle! We made a deal that she'd drive, she'd have all but one popper, and I'd have all but one glass of Newcastle.

I thought the deal was a no-brainer, but the deal quickly went south when she couldn't finish the poppers, and I was hungrily awaiting the pizza. After we polished off half of the pizza, we still had about 2/3rd's of the beer left (I suck), so we switched up that part of the deal too, and she probably ended up having more of the Newcastle than I did. I just couldn't drink it very fast for some reason, and I love my Newcastle!

Since we didn't do well on the "one person stay non-tipsy", we took a long walk to the local video store to grab a movie for the night. It was a really nice walk, which took us from one side of Nevada City to the other, through downtown and over a few bridges. I didn't have my camera at the time, but we would have had some really nice shots as the sun was starting to hide behind the mountains.

We only spent a few minutes at the Video store, as the poster for Will Ferrell's "Stranger than Fiction" leaped out at us as we walked into the store. The guy manning the counter was playing a trumpet along to a recorded tape from presumably his band. He was good! Local video stores rock :) Not only are the prices twice as cheap as Blockbuster, but you get some nice horn accompaniment while you peruse the videos!

We made our way back to the car, much happier about this video purchase than our last one at this store--"War of the Worlds" don't get me started... Kristina was still tipsy 90 minutes after drinking two beers, so I drove us back to her house. She still had the gin in her freezer from three months ago, so I guess the light-weightness made sense.

The movie was pretty good, and it had laughs and kept me guessing. I really like both Will Ferrell and Dustin Hoffman, and the scenes they were in together were some of my favorite. The waif-ish object of Will Ferrell's attention was pretty cute too. The even cooler thing about "Stranger than Fiction" is that it was written by Zach Helm, who grew up in Grass Valley, and was one of Kristina's sister's (I won't say which) first kiss!

I didn't bring my laptop with me for the trip, but we watched the movie on hers, then I showed Kristina all the pictures I'd taken up in Tahoe on this here blog. I hadn't really thought I'd use the blog for that reason, but I'm glad it can double as a slideshow if you skip over all this drabble! And yes, I have a few frisbee pictures to share later.

Even after the movie, which ended around 10pm, we weren't sure what exactly our frisbee plans were for the weekend. Kristina wasn't too hot on the idea of playing both the Nevada City tournament AND the Marin tourney, but we finally decided on playing Saturday, then working it out as the weekend progressed. We called it a night, and seconds after my head hit the pillow, I was off to dreamland, dreaming about skying people the next day :)

Putting the Eeee! in Weekend

Yesterday, Pam didn't show up for work. No phone call, just didn't show up. So when I went in at my normal 1pm on Wednesday, I was told there might be a possibility Pam wouldn't show up for her shift on Thursday. Tuesday/Thursdays I only work from 8am-11am normally, but today I stuck around until 5pm. I didn't mind though, and today Pam actually called in and asked--so I was able to weasel a free 3-pack of Haagen Daas Chocolate/Dark Chocolate out of her for covering her shift (GOOOOAL!).

I had some crazy dreams last night. One involved me being 12 or 13 years old, running back from an afternoon at Andrew's house. I pass by this other jogger and I do a little wave, but he just looks at me and keeps jogging past. I keep going, then look over my shoulder about 500ft later and he's turned around and running after me. I'm about a block from my house, and he's gaining on me. I make it to my front lawn and shout, "DAD!!!"

And then I wake up from my dream and immediately cover my mouth. Did I really just shout? I'm pretty sure I did, but I'll never know.

Another dream I had was leaving at my normal time from work, and spraining my ankle at basketball. Then not being able to play frisbee this weekend over in Grass Valley. So when Pam wanted her shift covered, I quickly agreed (after proposing the Haagen Daas payment). No sprained ankle for me! Take that, nightmare world!

So I was zooming through the day at work, excited for the weekend, when I decided to check my cell phone voice mail just in case the middle school had called me back about observation. I'm not having much luck getting through all of the red tape these damn schools put up to keep weirdos out. On Tuesday I went and talked to the front office at South Tahoe Middle School, who sent me to the District Office down the street. The District Office then sent me back to the Middle School to get approval from the principal. So, I walked back to the school, and of course the principal was not around. I left a message with the secretary, but I'm still waiting for some sort of response.

No voicemail from the school, but a shocking two other messages. The only voicemail I get is from Dirk, who hasn't found out that I use email instead of my phone for my primary mode of communication. And neither message was from Dirk!

First message was from Kristina, trying to figure out when I'd be heading over to Nevada City on Friday. Second message was very unexpected and amazing--from Kristen, a Sacramento frisbee'er, wanting to know if I, or possibly both Kristina and I, would like to play with her team at a one-day tournament in Marin (near the Bay Area) on Memorial Day!

I got off work and rode to Kahle and immediately called Kristina about the revelations. I guess our signals were a bit crossed about the Grass Valley tournament--because I thought she was for sure playing on Saturday and Sunday--and I would be sort of tagging along with her on the team. In fact, she wasn't planning on playing at all! Oops! So, I'm not sure if I'll be playing in that tourney, but Kristina sounded very psyched about the Marin tourney on Memorial Day, and said she's in.

After chatting with Kristina for a bit, I called up Kristen with the good news. Kristen is part of the team I would definitely be playing with if I lived closer to Sacramento. Some of the most amazing people from the area decided to make a team when they weren't happy with the leadership of the only team in the area. They are some of my best friends in Sac, and I can't wait to play with them on Monday! Also, Kristen said that their turn-out has been smaller than expected, and that they would most likely have spots for future tournaments, if I wanted to play--and since they are short on people, the practices that I wouldn't be able to make (because of distance) wouldn't be an issue! Niiiice!

Really looking forward to the bike ride over to Nevada City tomorrow afternoon. I should be getting off work around noon, and I'll try to beat the Memorial Day traffic (although most of it will be heading in the opposite direction). It'll be fun to play with Raffle a bit before Kristina gets home. Something tells me Paige and Jackson will be huge--even though it has only been three months since I saw them last (Kristina's sister's kids who live next door). Also--Northridge pizza tomorrow night! Mmmm~

In motorcycle news, I changed the oil for the first time today--the oil pan I got was just big enough to hold all of the oil--got lucky there. I took out the oil filter too, but it looked brand new still, so I just put it back in. I had to add more oil three times, to make sure enough oil is in for the Nevada City trip. I took a test-drive down to Safeway and it was running amazingly smooth. Not an incredible difference, but it definitely felt smooth.

You know what else is smooth? Guinness. And I bought six of those and a bag of doritos, which I brought back home to enjoy. Polished off three Guinness's and half of the doritos. Nacho Cheese is my Achilles Heel.

I might have screwed up my laptop tonight :( I was eating dinner, and I had to move my laptop off my lap to go put away my plate, and I grabbed it form the bottom. I heard a sound like a fan sputtering to a stop from where I grabbed it on the bottom. Not good. It seems to run OK normally, but the battery died super fast tonight while I had it in the other room, and when I tried to play FIFA tonight, I was only getting about 2 frames per second. The computer scored on me and I didn't even know I had lost the ball! Hopefully sleep does the computer good. Ichi and I are heading off to sleep land right about... now. zzz

Ani (and the list takes another hit)

Notes about the three videos:
1) "32 Flavors", great quality
2) "Hypnotized", nice quality (Henry Rollins Show)
3) "Studying Stones", home-made and the sound is sharp at the beginning, but the song is amazing







Friday, the 13th of July--at a little venue in Grass Valley, CA--I'll be watching Ani live.

"See Ani DiFranco Live" replaced "See Pearl Jam Live" on my list of 5 things to do before I die, after attending the PJ concert at the Gorge last year. The Pearl Jam concert was easily the best concert I've ever been to, and I can't wait to see Ani. I know Pearl Jam's songs a bit better than Ani's, so I'm not sure if I'll be hollering along this July like I was at the PJ concert--but I'm sure I'll make a peep or two.

Stacey, any interest in a ticket? I see that it falls into 7/7-8/7, for your month of fun--but I'm not sure if that weekend is already taken up by BC w/ Tessa or Blonde Midget's wedding?

SNOW!

Onward!

At the beginning of March I'll be moving from Nevada City to South Lake Tahoe to live for an undetermined amount of time. I've loved my time in Nevada City, but I can't wait to get to Tahoe. I'll be paying a ridiculously low $300/month for a room in a four-bedroom house in Zephyr Cove. Right now, I've got two ladies for roommates, with a probable fourth roommate to come soon.

It'll be fun to live close to a casino, and it will be interesting to see if I can find a job in the tourist-heavy area. I haven't done much work in the service industry, but with all of the tourists who come to the area for summer, it almost seems stupid not to work in a place where you can get tips.

The next few weeks in Nevada City should be a lot of fun. I've got to get up to Boreal two more times before I leave, to take advantage of the deal Kristina and I signed up for. Then Andrew comes down at the beginning of March to ski, hang out, and help me move to Zephyr Cove.

D-Tran and I hit Squaw for a day this week for the annual Google ski-party, which was a lot of fun. Got wasted on Guinness while watching my Blue Devils lose to the Tarheels, and having to pay the tab. After the game, we hit up the party and played some foosball while watching this guy with a chainsaw ice-scuplt. I got mad at getting scored on by D-Tran and his lady-friend, and in a fit of drunken stupidness slammed my head down in frustration... onto the corner of the foosball table.

Didn't realize until the next morning that I opened up a nice little cut on my forehead. The blood had dried by then, so it looked nice and pretty. I spent most of the next day hung over while we drove to South Lake Tahoe to gamble away our money. We each lost about $100 playing $3/$6 with all of the locals in about two hours. It was D-Tran's first time playing at a casino, and we played pretty poorly.

We took a break to get some food and mull over our loses. I called up Kristara about seeing the place in Zephyr Cove (I still wasn't sure if I would be making the move yet). After finishing off a tall, and I mean TALL glass of red beer for my hangover at Sam's Place, we drove all of two minutes to get to my soon-to-be new pad in Zephyr Cove. Wow, it is sweet. It is currently a vacation home, that is being converted to a rental beginning March 1st. New kitchen, balcony area above the living room, two bathrooms, lots of parking--ideal. Kristara and Jen seem like a lot of fun too.

I definitely didn't expect such an awesome house and two great roommates, so I suggested that we try and win our money back at poker. D-Tran happily obliged and we set sail for Harvey's. D-Tran proposed that whoever won the most money was exempt from paying gas, which worked for me. We caught fire at the table. If I had played all ten of my first hands, I would have won about $250, but ended up winning about $100 on the hands that I did play. Two hours later we called it quits, and I had bled my winnings down to about $60. D-Tran won the bet with a nice win of $81, putting him at a respectable -$19 for his first day of live poker at a casino. It was a fun day, that capped with a snowstorm on Donner Pass. Luckily, we drove my Exploder, which had 4 wheel drive. They made everyone without 4 wheel drive put on chains. It was our lucky day (minus the first two hours of poker)!

Nevada City, January 18-30

The past two weeks have been a lot of fun. Not much news on the job front, but I'm not too worried there. Kristina and I have gotten a few games of pick-up in, down in Sacramento, which have been exhausting and fun--I definitely miss the Sac ultimate scene.

Kristina and I went to Sonoma for her friend's 30th birthday on Saturday, which involved wine-tasting and GUITAR HERO!!! Man, what a fun game. It definitely reminded me of DDR. I rocked the house, and on my last song of the night I hit 99% of the notes, with a streak of 102 consecutive... needless to say, I was THE guitar hero for the night. We all had a blast though, and I tossed in some high-kicks and back-to-back double-dragon style duets with Kristina.

Before the wine-tasting we played frisbee, and no--we didn't shower in between. We actually got towel-wipes and used a few of those, and lathered on deoderant--it was awesome.

Before the frisbee, we had lunch with my parents, who spent the night Friday night in Nevada City, on their way to Arizona for 3 weeks. It was great seeing them, and we had two really good meals on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Sunday, Kristina's brother A.J. and I used the chainsaw to cut down some "Widow-makers" on Kristina's property. We spent the entire day cutting down dead trees and sawing them up into firewood. Not many people spend half the weekend wine-tasting and half of it sawing up wood. What a weekend :)

Looking forward, I buckled today and bought Vanguard--the new Everquest. I'm in the process of downloading it from the library connection right now, so wish me luck... Looking forward to teaming up with Tyler, Mike, Guang and Marc for some fun-da-mo-neum.

Also, in my weird logic, I think having Vanguard will push me to get a job sooner, because I'll want to be able to support the money I'm spending on the game. We'll see if I convince myself...

Still playing a bit of poker every now and then. I'm having fun in the low buy-in SNG's, after realizing I've lost about $200 in the last two years playing online. I'll take it as money well-spent on entertainment, but it was sort of sad to realize I haven't made any money. Sticking to the low games until I prove to myself that I can beat the limit, before moving up. We'll see how long that'll last before the BOOM comes down. Darn government.

January 1 - January 16, 2007

The first two weeks in Nevada City have been amazing. It has been cold, Kristina never beat around the bush about that--but there has only been one little snow storm, which melted away relatively quickly.

Most of my time has been spent either relaxing or adventuring. Kristina, Hope, Raffle and I have been on a few hikes and a couple runs along "the ditch." Kristina and I even woke up at 8am on a Saturday morning to go jogging... in 20 degree weather!

Living out here alone would be pretty tough, but having Kristina's company provides a nice push to go out and do things. If it were just me and the dogs, I'd have a hard time motivating myself to go on hikes.

Not much on the job front yet, but today I ventured out to the library, where I currently sit, and found hi-speed wireless internet--which is only 10 minutes from home. A great place to upload pictures! Without further adieu, here are some of the best from my first two weeks in Nevada City:

Ichi exploring the roof:


Iced-over Indian River:


Raffle:


Hope:


Hope & Raffle:


Look forward to a few more photo-dumps, now that I found a place with quick internets!

-Chris

Pot Limit Omaha!

Found this new game last week, and I've been having a blast. Lots of gamble and lots of laydowns. I'm not really sure how it will affect my holdem game, but it can't really hurt.

For some reason when I got into the O/8 and Stud Hi/Lo, I never tried much PLO. Up to this point, I haven't played Pot Limit anything--so I'm getting used to both the new game and the new betting, but having lots of fun while doing so.

In two weeks I'll be in Nevada City. I'm excited--I have no idea what I'll be doing, but I can't see myself not having fun down there.