A sign near my house...

Gotta love Lebanon High School kids getting all creative:

Vinatieri

I am not happy about this: Colts Sign Away Patriots Hero Vinatieri. Shit.

Procrastination

How to tell if I have a lot of work to do: you see me cleaning my desk and lab bench. How to tell if I really have a lot of work to do: I blog about cleaning my desk and lab bench.

Whaleback

Last night I went skiing for the first (and probably last) time this season at Whaleback. If you don't know, Whaleback was closed for the last couple of seasons, and reopened with a focus on freestyle snowboarding and skiing (it was bought by a former US moguls champion, Evan Dyvbig). For reference, it is even smaller than Pat's Peak, but it doesn't have the endless run-out at the end of every trail like Pat's. It is in kind of a cool spot overlooking I-89 the way it does. $10 with your student ID on Wednesday nights - a good deal, even if they only had like 4 trails open.

They have all sorts of jumps and rails everywhere to try to fill a freestyle niche, which I think is a good idea for a small mountain, since they have nowhere to expand. I had to try my luck at a big jump built at the bottom of the mountain. I wiped out hard, and of course it was right under the chairlift.

On another note, I think I may be the only person in the world who is skiing on non-shaped skis. It made it pretty easy to find them on the rack- at 200cm they tower over every other pair of skis out there. I remember when I was just learning to ski, I would look at those guys with the really old equipment (i.e. the bindings with straps attaching their skis to their boots) with a mixture of wonder and pity. Now I've become "that guy."

Puppy Curling

Puppy Curling!

Ski Jumping

Ann, Sadie and I checked out the US Junior Olympics Team Ski Jumping event this morning at Storrs Hill in Lebanon. Some of the kids were pretty damn good. Here's a picture of one of the jumpers:

RIP Hawaiian Isle II

RIP Hawaiian Isle II. I guess I'll never be able to take Sadie to see the turtle fountain and the plastic palm trees.

(Thanks to Lolly for passing on the sad news.)