Truckee!

Today was great. Work has been dead all week, because physical therapy is out of the office. This morning I drove the explorer to work, raced Alison on the 4-star sudoku in the Tahoe Tribune, then my work day was almost over. I won the race, and she gets to bring me a present of her choosing tomorrow. I hope it isn't a lump of coal or ball of lint.

After my two hours at work, I drove back home and Cody and I played a game of starcraft. We stomped the comps, then headed down to Carson City to pick up my bike from its initial service. Cody headed on to Reno for some shopping, while I took the bike for a little joyride up to Truckee.

Like I said in my last post, I wanted to get out and get some writing done for my screenplay, so I found a little coffee shop in Truckee and settled in for an afternoon of writing. I ate lunch in Kings Beach at Jason's Saloon and Grill, and had a very yummy burger-dip and a lemonade to wash it down. The view from the grill is amazing:





Those photos were taken from the parking lot, just between the beach and the grill. I had my laptop set up at a table and hammered out a few lines on my screenplay, but decided I needed a better spot to settle down and write. I tipped the waiter 30% because I remember Stacey saying something about when you stay longer than normal, it is nice to tip a bit larger because of the extra time you are taking up at the table. Makes sense to me, and I'll try to do so in the future as well.



I stumbled onto Truckee Book & Bean while waiting at a railroad crossing, so I decided to check it out. It was perfect! There were two separate lounge areas, tons of books, a nice assortment of beverages, and wifi for customers. I went up to the counter and saw they served italian sodas, which I used to have all the time. There was no cherry available, so I went with raspberry, and asked him to put as much whipped cream on top as humanly possible. He took it as a challenge, and this was the result:



Heck yeah! I love my whipped cream on italian soda combo!

Having hi-speed wireless was nice, but in reality it really cut down on my script-writing. I probably got 1k words in today, but with no internet it would have been closer to 2k or 3k. I chatted with Tyler a bit about starcraft and other stuff, and browsed the internet a bit when I could have been writing.

At one point, I went to check my phone to see if Kristina had called about joining me for ultimate in Truckee (I left her a few messages). She hadn't called, but literally a minute after checking, my phone buzzed and it was her. Good timing! We talked a bit, and she ended up having league night in Sacramento--but she didn't really want to go. I tried to turn on the Chris charm and woo her over to Truckee for some pickup fun, but she flipped the tables on me. She's got skills.

She asked about hiking next week. We had talked a bit about going hiking next Tuesday/Wednesday, because I have a 27hr chunk of time I'm off between 10am Tuesday and 1pm Wednesday. Perfect for a little mid-week overnight hike. We agreed to meet up in Truckee on Tuesday at 11am, and I'm in charge of finding a place to hike to in the mean time. Once we agreed on that, she quickly said: "Well, then I guess I don't have to come play tonight!" It was a setup! I should have known.

So, instead of writing feverishly in my screenplay, I used my surroundings to my advantage and grabbed a few "hiking in Tahoe" books to get some ideas for hikes. I'm thinking not more than 5 miles, and hiking to a lake. There are zillions of options around Tahoe that fit those parameters, but I think I found a couple worthy candidates.

By the time my search was finished, it was frisbee time, so I packed up shop and headed over to the fields. Not one frisbee player. And even worse than no frisbee players, I was ten minutes late and as I walked down to the fields, I see this:



Field closed?! Ouch. None of the other fields were closed, just the one we used two weeks ago. I tried to call a few people to see if they could look online to see if any changes had been made to the pickup location, but I couldn't get ahold of anyone. I sat around for a few more minutes, and luckily people started showing up, and we were going to play at a few hidden fields off the back side of the main fields.

Frisbee was fun, I didn't play particularly well, but I had a good time. It is always fun to run around and toss the disc. A group of frisbeers were heading to a Mexican restaurant, but I declined and decided to get a quick start on the road home. Kings Beach might be my new favorite town on the lake. The good saloon/grill, and then I came across this gem of a sign while stuck waiting for road construction:



The ride home was a bit brisk, but still very enjoyable. I was riding in the very last of the sunset, and couldn't resist pulling over to snap a shot:



Tomorrow might either be a full day or a half day at work, I'm not really sure which yet. Most Fridays, physical therapy is the only thing there in the afternoon--and they aren't around for two weeks, so it might be pretty empty once noon rolls around. I think I've gotten about 8 hours in at work this week, but it is coming off Vegas, so I was happy to have a little breathing room instead of hopping right back in to a 40/hr work week.

Even though I only worked 8 hours the last three days, I am still looking forward to the weekend :)

Fun with the Housemates

Fresh off a killer trip to Vegas, I'm not about to just sit around and stew in my room until Seattle and Coast Trip #3. Oh no! I was sent home from work on Monday about 15 minutes into my shift, because of my hacking and sneezing. They didn't want to get sick, and I didn't want to be there--we had a great understanding. I left, went home, and slept from 10am to 5pm on Monday.

That hit the spot.

Today was much better. Got up and worked for a couple of hours, then got home and found that George, Cody and Kristara all had the afternoon off, and were heading to Carson City. Just the place I needed to go! I led them over to Carson on my bike, and dropped it off for its 600 mile service check--you know, the check they do to make sure everything is running smoothly on a new bike. The problem is that this 600mi check is being done on my bike with oh... 2200 miles on it. Go Vegas! Oh well, I changed the oil before the Vegas trip and it should be alright.

We made a few pitstops in Carson, including the Verizon store, Costco and Trader Joe's. My first trip to Costco in a LOOONG time. We just sort of wandered around dumping interesting stuff into the cart. If money wasn't an object, I would have gone ape-shit in that place. Super-large tents for frisbee tournaments, hammocks, xbox360s, ps3's... man, I would totally dig a shopping spree in Costco. I did, of course, get my trademark dozen chocolate muffins. The best buy of the Costco run had to be my spotting of about 300 red "kegger" cups. I probably saved the house $20 on that purchase, because we go through beer pong cups like women go through toilet paper.

Speaking of women, Jen will sadly be leaving the house. I'm not sure when, and I ended up hearing it from Matt, a guy I hardly even know--but she'll be leaving the house sooner or later. That will, for the first time, tip the scales 3 males to 2 females in the house. Once upon a time it was 3 females to me. I'm pretty sure Matt is taking Jen's spot, so it will soon be 4m:2f, which is totally unacceptable. Glad I'll be getting out soon!

We ended up heading down to the beach for a BBQ tonight, which was an absolute blast. Jen, Kristara, George, Matt, Cody and I walked down with all the necessary ingredients for a BBQ: 2BuckChuck, Charcoal, Chicken, Sausages, Corn, Beer, Frisbee, Football. We didn't have any utensils, or plates, but we made do by using the frisbee as a plate, and plastic bags as plates. We rocked it. The chicken was amazing, and it was good to finally get out and toss the football with someone other than Marc, Andrew or Tyler. First time in AGES I've tossed without one of those guys being present. I wowed the ladies with my athletic prowess. Maybe because I'm such a skinny, dorky kid who doesn't look like he could throw a football 10ft--but I was putting on a show in the art of pigskin chucking. And... I needant discuss my frisbee talents here.

We finished by drinking the rest of our beverage of choice on the beach, watching the sun set. I took a nice spot in the sand, leaning up against a post and watched the sun go down for a good 15 minutes. Such a serene feeling to watch the waves crash and have your mind race from subject to subject, trying to make sense of the links.

I get home to find Brandon in the money in the Shootout event. No updates about him yet, but 28 of the 81 to be eliminated before the final table have fallen, and Brandon is somewhere in the remaining 53. Get lucky! Good karma for being such a gracious host the last few days!

Sunset Pictures

As Promised:

A few people brought their lawn chairs and beers out to the point to watch the sunset. I might just have to steal that idea sometime soon~

Back on the horse (hopefully!)



I've been on quite the hiatus here, but I'm going to try and hop back on the blogging band-wagon. It looks like my last post was a video of all the snow we got at the end of February in Nevada City. It has been less than two months, but it seems like a lot longer than that for some reason.

The move to Tahoe was a lot of fun, Andrew was in town visiting and we got up skiing twice. The snow was, and still is, pretty chunky. My original plan for Tahoe was to hit the end of ski-season here and possibly buy a spring season pass, but the snow has been so terrible that besides the two times with Andrew, I haven't gone skiing or boarding at all. I was just going to stick around until the end of summer, then probably head back to Seattle... but now I might decide to stay until the end of next winter and buy a season's pass. I'm still undecided, but I'm leaning towards staying in Tahoe a little longer than originally planned.

I've really enjoyed Tahoe so far, I found a job about two weeks after moving... again through a temp agency, but I don't really mind. It is working part-time (roughly 30 hours per week) at a fracture clinic in South Lake Tahoe--about a 15 minute drive from Zephyr Cove. I'm working up front with a couple of older ladies, which is nothing new to me. Flo and Alison are funny, nice and chatty, and I'm usually pretty busy throughout the day, so work goes fast.

Other than making some money working, I've been playing lots of basketball and joined a gym about 5 minutes from the house. There is a nice pickup game at noon three days a week, which I've been trying to make as often as possible. There are leagues too on weekdays, but I moved a few weeks to late to get in on those. I'm probably even-money playing poker in Tahoe so far--nothing new there either.

I'm planning to start writing more, and also planning to take some more pictures--so expect more constant updates in the future.

And finally, I took some pictures at the beach below our house in Zephyr Cove: