Pete's Log: return
Entry #1189, (Travel)(posted when I was 23 years old.)
I meant to write stuff about stuff yesterday. That, as well as a few other things on my todo list were neglected. Instead, I spent two hours chatting with Sara (Perk's buddy I met in MO) on AIM. Then I left campus. I am the very model of a modern Pete at productivity's peak. Foo'.
So I'm back in South Bend. I'm not certain how much of the events between my last log entry and now I am able or care to reconstruct. Details of past events are little more than fun trivia, so ... what's wrong with me? This stupid paragraph is over!
OK, so I spent most of New Year's Eve hanging out with Annie and some of her high school friends. It was an amusing evening, though certain silly bits of me find I should not admit to hanging out with underage people for New Years. Screw the silly bits.
Um. I went skiing on January 3rd. That was Diana's birthday. I went skiing with Diana, Annie, Annie's friend Robin, and Matt, Mark, Jane and Clay Peacock. It was fun. I decided to pay extra to get a pair of demos, and it was hella worth it. The skis I got were amazing. I had an instant understanding with them. I'm not certain, but I'd guess they were Super G skis. 193. Someday I want to try a pair of 200s. I quickly found the sweet spot and was carving beautiful turns all day. They were fast, and well tuned, so I was leaning far into my turns. It made me so happy. Clay asked me after a few runs if I used to be a ski racer. :) :) :) :) No, I just used to train with some. Ack, long term goal: increase my annual percentage of skiing days. I only skied one black run, and it sucked. Icy and rocky. Speeding down the blues was much more fun. Fantastico! I wish my legs were still as strong as they were in high school. I didn't ski hard enough this time to tire my legs, but I had a few issues. I kinda think the inside front edge on my left ski was tuned too sharp, it kept catching. But it's more likely I just wasn't strong enough to control it properly. Skiing skiing skiing skiing skiing. Skiing makes me happy.
Afterwards we celebrated Diana's birthday. Yay!
While home I got to see the Rozmans and the Peacocks, which was nice. I also saw various academy folks: Dave Mac, Brian Krill, Dave Rothman, and Dan Rubinoff. I was kind of disappointed that Eric Ross wasn't around when I stopped by the academy. I'm on a John Irving reading kick and would've liked to talk to him about it.
I left CB on January 4th at 9:30 MST. Drove south on CO 135 to Gunnison, then took US 50 East to Newton, KS. I hit Lamar, CO at 15:15 MST, and got to Newton sometime after 9 EST. Had some brief issues finding Branden's house, but I got there. Branden and I then drove into Wichita and hit the River City brewing company. Their beer was pretty good. Nothing exciting, but still good.
Slept in the next day. Branden decided to head back to ND early, so we fit his stuff into my car and hit the road at some time. Maybe noonish CST. We drove to Kansas City, KS. I wanted to visit Martha Gibney there. Well, after a detour through Kansas City, MO, we finally found Martha's place. So we saw her house and met some of her housemates. She's in KC doing ACE. She then gave us a bit of a tour around KC. Then dinner with her and one of her housemates. Branden and I then helped replace light bulbs at their house. We finally got back on the road sometime after 19:00 CST, I think. One uneventful drive later we arrived in South Bend at about 6:30 EST. Arun was still awake, so we stayed up until after 7 doing who knows what.
I've brought a bunch of fun stuff back to ND. In addition to gifts, I have books, trains, and a guitar. The Diamonds left a bunch of books with my parents when they moved, and my parents weren't too interested in most of them, so I got to look through them and take whatever I wanted. I think I ended up grabbing 40 or so books. Mostly sci fi and fantasy. Most of it seems kinda silly, but it'll be fun. Some good stuff, though. An Asimov, a Vonnegut, two Irving, a few books which claimed to have won Hugo or Nebula awards, the first few books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series ... I think I'm set as far as fiction reading goes for a while ... I also finally got my model railroade set (HO scale) out of storage. It's been in storage since we moved from Germany, but I finally decided I'd had enough of that. I found a European to American power converter at radio shack, so it's up and running. Finally, Mom let me take her acoustic guitar since she's not used it in some time. I've felt for some time now a need to play an instrument again, so now I'll learn the guitar.
This semester, we've decided, we're gonna geek out. D&D, model railroads, and so on. Nothing's gonna stop us. Watch out. In fact, I'm not even gonna proofread, cuz it's time to go to bw3s!!!!