Snow Day with Treats

Yesterday, Treats (http://www.treatssf.blogspot.com/) and I headed up to the mountains for a lovely snow day. No surprise the place in the Sierra's that we headed to was Yosemite. There is a ski resort in the national park called Badger Pass. They have all kinds of winter activities available (cross country skiing, downhill skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, tubing, etc.). Our plan was to make a game time decision as to which activity we were going to do when we got there.

In preparation, I dusted off the old snowboard setup and threw it in the Benz Friday night. It has been a while since I have actually been to the snow, so I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to find all of my snow gear. I was also really looking forward to taking the Benz to the mountains for the first time.

We left at 5:15 or so in the morning. The drive was uneventful and beautiful. We did of course stop at the famous Scotty's Donuts for the traditional morning snack. I had my favorite maple donuts and we made a quick stop at Starbucks for some morning caffeine.

Once in the park we made some of the Signature Tanya stops. I was quite impressed at the amount of water that was flowing in some of the waterfalls (the first waterfalls of my 06/07 season). While we were stopped at the Upper Cascades pullout we checked the park literature to see if anything interesting was happening. We discovered that there was a ranger led snowshoe walk that started at 10:30 up at Badger Pass. We high-tailed it up to the resort so that we could be a part of that walk.

We made it just in time. I strapped on a pair of snow shoes for the first time (and helped out a couple of other people strap theirs on as well) and the group headed off on a 1.5 mile walk to a vista point off the old Glacier Point road which had a gain of 1200 ft. I never knew how much work snowshoeing was. I like it though and I will go again. I burned off 1100 calories according to my Garmin GPS trainer. The bad thing is I managed to irritate my right knee. This meant that my snow activities were pretty much done for the day. Treats wanted to go snowboarding so she tried on my snowboarding boots to see if they fit so she wouldn't have to rent some and they fit! She borrowed my board and did a few runs so that she could get the feeling of snowboarding again. She hadn't been boarding in quite a while either so she was just trying to get back in to it without getting hurt. While she was having fun with that I hung around and people watched. I did make a small snow man while I was hanging out. I named him Bob.

After we were done up at Badger Pass, we drove back down to the valley. We had thought we might go ice skating but the temps were dropping very fast. After a couple of pictures of Half Dome in the evening winter light we went to the Mountain House Lounge at Yosemite Lodge for some food and warm beverages followed by the long drive home.

It was a great day and I had a blast. Treats is always good company :-)

The Update, Part 2

So in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have been working a lot (no surprise there). Other activities however have been attending a two day seminar in San Jose about management, a cookie baking party, having early Christmas dinner with my mom, going to the track to bet on and watch the ponies, and updating my home entertainment system from standard to HD.

The two day seminar was fun and informative. I learned a lot and hopefully it will help me out with time management issues. December for accountants with calendar year closes are crazy. I hope that things will calm down for me by March. Then I can really get out there and do some serious hiking/waterfall chasing and perhaps some other outdoors activities.

I have been a bit of a Scrooge this year. In fact, it has been the first year in my life that I haven't had a Christmas Tree. I guess that is what working all of the time does to you - it totally gets you out of the Christmas spirit. For a girl that really enjoys Christmas normally, it has been completely uncharacteristic of me not to be in the spirit. So it is with many thanks that I give to my good friend Vivian for calling me on my Scroogeiness and getting me to have my traditional cookie making party. I have to say that I had a lot of fun once I got in to it. We had some bad cookie mojo in the beginning of the day but once we started with the spritz cookies we were cooking with gas! The cookies were tasty and the company was good as always. We even tried to help Vivian pick some baby names (yep, she is pregnant). It was a fun time!

This year it was decided to meet in the middle for our gathering for Christmas with my mom. We met at the Outback in Santa Rosa. It was good to see her and she kept up with the parent tradition of passing many small boxes of my old stuff to me :-) It was good to see her and it made me realize that I don't visit her enough.

A couple of weeks or so ago, Louis and I met up with one of his buddies and his girlfriend over at Bay Meadows race track. I have been wanting to go to the track for quite some time now to bet on the ponies. I had a blast. I used to watch it on television when I was a little girl. I am not sure why but something about it was very interesting to me. I guess it is because all little girls want horses when they are little - they just love horses. Needless to say, now that I have been once I will be looking forward to live racing coming back to my local track. They come back in Feb so I have something to look forward to this coming year!

The big present this year for the household was to update our front room TV to HD. We replaced the TV (from a 42' plasma to a 46' HD LCD), the receiver (had to have the hdmi ports), the DVD player (picked up a Toshiba HD DVD player), and the direct tv DVR box (an HD box). We have yet to upgrade the dish but that should be done by the middle of Jan. In addition to that we scored a Playstation 3 (the most elusive of Christmas items) and picked up a REL T series Sub Base Module (so good it can't be called a subwoofer). It is one sweet setup. We can watch blu-ray or HD DVD and the picture quality on both is amazing. It makes you stare in wonder.

That brings me up to last night and tonight. Both nights we had the special holiday menus at the two restaurants we went to. Today we were supposed to go to SF and have brunch at the Palace hotel but plans fell through and we ended up at the Bay 223 restaurant in the Hotel Sofitel. It was a really good meal. Last night we tried the Left Bank for the first time for their special holiday dinner menu. It was okay. Nowhere near as good as tonight's meal though. So we had a French food Christmas this year.

That brings us up to date with my adventures. Next on deck is a trip to the snow next Saturday. I am not sure if I will end up snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating, skiing, or tubing yet but I will be in Yosemite at Badger Pass ski resort. I am dragging one of my friends to the snow day. Hopefully a couple more folks I know will go as well but we will see!

For now, Merry Christmas and good night!

The Update, Part 1

So it has been a while since I posted something new. I have been working like a dog and haven't had much time to do anything else... That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything though. I have been incredibly busy. As such, I haven't been emailing anyone or surfing much lately so all have been neglected, not just my blog.

What has been going on in the last two months? Well, I'll tell you!

Thanksgiving in So Cal

This year was a year for having Thanksgiving with the in-laws. They live in Orange County near Huntington Beach so Louis and I made the drive down to southern California. I amazingly had 5 consecutive days off which was really nice. We drove down on Tuesday evening and hit moderate traffic. It could have been (and has been in the past) much worse. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach. Very nice resort with great views of the beach/ocean. Our room was facing the ocean but had some palm trees in the way of any real view. Wednesday we went to Disneyland with Louis' parents. I am in general a Disney lover - always have been. The four of us started with the California Adventure park. This is a pretty cool park with different regions that coincide with the different regions in CA. They have a place that looks like parts of SF, a carnival/boardwalk area that looks like Santa Cruz, a Hollywood backlot area, a winery, and an area that has a mountain with a waterfall (right up my alley!). We caught a couple of shows did a little window shopping and were off to a part of the area in between the two amusement parks called Downtown Disney. You don't have to pay to get in this area. It has a lot of shops and restaurants. We all headed for the ESPN Zone restaurant for a cocktail and an appetizer. Good food, good drinks, and several huge TV's. It was a pretty cool place that looked a lot like a Las Vegas sports book. From there it was all about Disneyland proper. I really wanted to see the Christmas Parade so we found a spot and waited for the parade to start. Christmas and Disney? To me lots of fun, to Louis hell. We didn't stay long in Disneyland, pretty much all we did was see the parade and ride Pirates of the Caribbean. Thursday, Louis' dad cooked us a delicious Thanksgiving meal. We didn't end up opening and working on the traditional Thanksgiving day puzzle, but Louis' brother did make it over for dinner and it was nice to see him. Friday was spent driving around Irvine. We caught a movie at the Irvine Spectrum and had a bite to eat. Dinner that night was at a cute little Italian restaurant that Louis' parents are fond of. The trip ended on Saturday with the drive home. That left Sunday to unpack, do laundry, and catch up on some rest.

As I mentioned before, I had been working so much that I hadn't had a full weekend to myself so it was nice to have five days off in a row.

More story to come, please check out The Update, Part 2.