Short Stories

I want to start this blog by thanking Nicole for keeping our blog alive; I have not been so diligent in contributing to the postings. In fact, my last post was on December 28, 2008 about our trip to Virginia to spend Christmas with my family. I am sad to say, but that post was also in response to harassment for an update, just as this one seems to be coming as a response from Nicole's previous post. I wish I had some valid excuses for my lack of contribution. I could blame it all on my busy school schedule, but this past week has been my spring break and I also did not spend all my time studying. I could blame it on the fact that nothing worth blogging about has happened recently, but that would be a lie. The only real excuse that I have is that I have just been lazy, the same kind of lazy that has kept me from using the newly purchased gym key I obtained. I always have good intentions of using it, I just never get around to it.

Sometimes Cheetos and browsing the Internet are very tempting. As I have closed the bag of Cheetos and settled my browsing to the blog I have decided to write several mini-posts in one, kind of like a series of short stories.

Spring Break 2009

This has been one of my first real College Spring Breaks. BYU-Idaho did not have a Spring Break, they had a Spring Weekend and it occurred during Conference weekend. UNLV had Spring Breaks, but I believe that Nicole and I had to use that time to get extra work hours in. So we did not really have time off. But here at Vermont Law School I had the entire week to do nothing! This was because Nicole still had to work, but it was nice for me because I got to just relax and do nothing. I do have to say that I did conserve water. I think over the course of the week I took only 2-3 showers and brushed my teeth only when necessary. Sounds gross, but I did conserve water and that's what Spring Break should be all about.

Bike Build

I have decided that I 'need' a bike (since I regretfully left my old one in Vegas). I know it's not the smartest thing for me to be doing while living on a tight student budget, but there are so many reasons to justify this purchase. A few would be that the weather is warming up and its really nice outside, I need to get back in shape, better than driving a car, and there many good trails in Vermont. To offset the cost of buying an expensive bike I am buying all my parts off of Ebay and then I will put it together myself. So far I have found really good deals on parts.

As I get more parts and the bike begins to take shape I will post updates on the progress. So far I have the frame, a wheel and some smaller components. I really enjoy putting things together and I am excited about building this bike and being able to ride something that I put together.

East Coast Ski Season

Despite how much I enjoy the nicer weather and doing things outdoors I am sad to face the fact that the ski season is coming to a close. The past few weeks have brought warmer weather along with rain, which melts the snow and makes for bad skiing. There is still a chance that some more snow may come and I may get another day or two of skiing in, but overall the ski season is ending. Despite the depression that this brings me I did have a good season. I was able to get a season pass to Killington and I attempted to ski every Friday and a few days in between. On a few occasions I skipped class when the big storms came through. Although most of my ski days were spent skiing alone, Nicole did come with me a few times. I have to say that I had very low expectations about skiing in the east, but I was very surprised. When there was a good snow day the skiing was good, but I have to say that there are a lot better ski days in the west and I look forward to going back out west to ski.

Killington Resort has over 100 different trails to ski, but of them all my favorite was the Double Black Diamond 'Devil's Fiddle' run. In the above picture is a portion of the run, I wish that I could have had someone with me to take pictures of me on the run. Typically my favorite runs are tree runs and there were several that I enjoyed, but this run was very technical with cliffs and boulders. On one of the days I skipped class it snowed almost 18" and this run was great. I was able to drop off the cliff pictured and land in almost 2" of powder. I had a great season and I secretly hope that spring gets postponed so I can get a few more ski days in. My biggest regret is that I did not get the chance to take advantage of all the Backcountry skiing here in Vermont.

Stories for the Future

For the sake of the length of this post I have decided to postpone several of my short story/mini-posts for the future. Some potential tales are:

Job Searching Adventures

Summer Agenda

Increased Memory, One Pill At A Time

Old Friends and Burned Bridges

No Spitz in the East

What is Brian Learning?