Slopes again

It's finally that time of year again when things start warming up a little bit and it rains instead of snows.  Perfect time to plan a ski trip...  Couple of friends and I decided to head up to Cascade again this past weekend to hit the slopes, and despite the fact that the weather was warmer than some would have liked, we had a great time.  A friend of ours graciously allowed us to crash at his place the night before, and also treated us to many a homemade meal.  Can't ask for better than that.

These days I've been trying to adhere to a better schedule where I go to bed early and wake up early.  In other words, I'm getting closer to 30, but it does have some advantages.  It means that I wake up earlier than most without an alarm and catch some great photo opportunities.  Hence, then following three pictures:

You might notice that the lighting is super bright in all of these, and yet they sleep on.  I was going to put a couple more early morning pictures up, but I'm sure the girl wrapped in pink would have killed me.  While waiting for others to revive, I chilled with "smelly cat".

I also played designated driver for most of the trip.  This is me showing my displeasure at something.  Perhaps the fact that we're listening to that godforsaken Brittney Spears song for the 10th time.  Either that or perhaps it's the pink seatbelt guard that's sucking away my masculinity.

Here's the crew that drove together in Ritika's car.  All from the same lab except Alecia, a fellow homeschooler like me.  

I was so pumped.  Ritika was so "are you serious?"

After arriving, we met up with the rest of the gang.  This picture makes Ritika look like she's the boss or something.  More people from the great Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Ritika may have been the boss of the 1st-3rd year students from lab, but unfortunately she was not the boss of the slopes, despite her optimism.  I have to congratulate her though, because she continued to have fun throughout the entire day, whereas under similar circumstances, I definitely would have given up.

Notice how they give really short skis to really short people.

Getting to the top was no problem, it's just the coming down part that was a little tricky.  Well, coming down slowly and on your feet.  Fortunately, Ritika is a little more flexible than most.  This is the first attempt coming down the hill.

And the second.

On the third, she managed to stay standing by holding onto my arm, but the results were still a little iffy.

Oh well, we moved on to something that we both could enjoy.  Greasy food.

During lunch, a brief altercation erupted between two of my coworkers, and I think this is Matt giving a mean stare to Adam.  Don't worry, the altercation was about as fierce as Matt's look, as I remember it.

Matt had a much different face on the ride back home.  Worn out from the boredom of wimpy greens and disappointing black diamonds I suppose, since he's the best out of all of us by far.

He he.

At the end of the day, the entire Kenis lab crew caught a picture together.  Again Ritika is trying to look like she's boss.

And here's the complete group.

Thanks to everyone for a really awesome trip, especially Isaac who coordinated the whole thing, provided parents to cook for us, and also did an excellent job forecasting the weather, including the "frontal genesis event" that we had to drive through on the way back home.  Saturday: warm yet icy.  Sunday: Insane snow, getting the car stuck in the driveway, nearly dying in Wisconsin.  Sigh.

Muffler Melancholy

Those of you familiar with my current mode of transportation may have noticed the loud, rally-car type sound emitted from the back end.  You're also probably acutely aware that my car is definitely not a rally car.  The cause of the noise is a severe structural failure localized at the interface between the exhaust pipe and muffler.  While the noise may be somewhat embarrassing, I've also been petrified for the last month or so knowing that my muffler was hanging on to my car by a mere thread, just waiting to fly off and seriously impale the vehicle driving behind me.  It reminds me of having a loose tooth as a kid.  Only when you lose a tooth, you usually get a small amount of money instead of being sued for large amounts of money.

So the "good" news is that it finally flew off, but not on the expressway while driving 80 mph, and it didn't careen into any other person's car.  It just sort of plopped off in the middle of Neil St.

And I had a friend to document the walk of shame...

Not exactly a smiley moment, but I'm doing it anyways.

Me thinking, "This probably wasn't working great anyways."

Recent idea: buy a '95 accord with a working muffler for $1200...before anything else important falls off the civic.

Blizzard

There was a huge weather warning today.  Lot's of school closings, and even classes at the university were cancelled after 5pm.  I was expecting a near apocalypse the way people were describing it on the news.  Much to my dismay, it really wasn't that bad during the day.  I ended up staying at home when I really probably could have gotten some stuff done at school.  Well, maybe not a whole lot of dismay.  I did end up typing a little bit too.  It's still the way I remember it...extremely slow and painful.

These pictures aren't from today; rather, they're from a random warmish day this winter when it was raining liquid instead of painful frozen water.  Krannert center for the performing arts:

This is from today: a view of our front yard from my safe perch on the second floor around 3pm.

Same view, only 5:30.  Like I said, not too crazy, but the trash can took a tumble.  We'll see what tomorrow looks like.