tekchic

Tomorrow night after work, it’s off we go to Sunrise Ski Resort for a full day of snowboarding action on Saturday! I’m so excited to get in the snow — it’s about a three and a half hour drive from Phoenix, due east of us in the White Mountains.

Here’s a link to their ski cam: Sunrise Ski Cam

We’ve also been hiking North Mountain at least twice a week to get in shape for our BIG snowboarding trip coming up mid-February at Breckenridge. Three fun-filled days of nothing but snow, snow, snow!

I’m also moving on to a new opportunity at a place called Equine.com. It’s a fantastic position as a Senior Web Producer, and I’m looking forward to working with the team, they are a sharp gang. Plus, I get to work indirectly with horses again? ALL over it. :)

Okay, this is so mean it’s cool. For those of us that generally fly coach, there’s now a solution for the half-bald dandruff head that you’re forced to reckon with when they recline their seat into your lap. It’s called the Knee Defender, and it keeps our aforementioned danderhead from being able to recline his chair. Brilliant!

Mean? Definitely. Cool? Definitely. Ring me up one of these. Apparently it’s so subtle that even if the patron in front of you reports the “defective chair” to the flight attendant, it’s such a tiny item that it is virtually unnoticeable! At the bottom of their site, they have a paragraph about how it isn’t in violation of any FAA rules/regulations, and is completely legal. I don’t have a height issue, but tall guys like my Dad might be able to put this to good use so they don’t get their knees crushed on those cramped seats.

After surfing some more, I think MSN had a travel article about putting the in-flight magazine in that hinge as a knee defender. I am more of a gadget fan though. :)

My wonderful husband was shocked that I’ve never actually *eaten* green eggs and ham. So, the other night for dinner? You guessed it! Green eggs and ham. :) It was delicious! I was a little leery of my first bite of bright green eggs, but it was just as tasty as the yellow kind. In fact, “I do like them Sam I am, I do enjoy green eggs and ham!” I took a pic, I’ll post it later on tonight when I get home.

I’ve also decided to teach myself Japanese. Why? Because I love the Japanese culture (and of course food), and learning to write in katakana and hiragana looks hard. It’s almost like the little secret code language I created with my own symbols when I was a kid. Phoenix Library has every single Rosetta Stone language series all available free and online, so I’ve been going through those and then supplementing with practicing the kana (Japanese phonetic characters) over and over in a notebook. So far so good vocabulary-wise. I’ve learned enough to talk about airplanes, horses, and flying elephants. No wait… flying airplanes and running elephants. No wait… never mind. ;)

Of course I’ll continue to keep this an English blog. *laugh track*

Wow. Feels weird writing 2007 on my work notes today. Hope everyone had a great, safe weekend. I chose to stay indoors in my pajamas from about Sunday afternoon until this morning. It was splendid.

Upcoming fun stuff! This Saturday, the Arizona Herpetological Society (that means reptiles) is having a live venomous snakes chat (the snakes don’t chat. I hope.) and demo at the Phoenix North Mountain Preserve. Looking forward to it! They’ve also got some really cool Saturday morning walks where you go on a hike and then go back to the Visitor’s Center for coffee and a live band. I just love Arizona. SO much to do.

Weekend after next, we’re heading up to Sunrise Ski Resort in the White Tank Mountains — here in Arizona, about a 2.5 hour drive east of us. Getting in some snowboard time before we hit the President’s Day Weekend trip with Tulsa Ski Club — Breckenridge, oh yeah! Here’s a link to the Sunrise Ski Webcam: CLICKIT!

Other goals this month? Clean the house enough to fit that 50″ flat screen TV in the living room, and FINALLY get a new memory foam bed.

Resolutions? Get my legs ready for three FULL days of skiing by mid February. Time to bust out the Indoboard and hello quad workouts. :) Other than that, I’m totally happy with life. Only way it could get better is if I could get the first draft of my novel finally finished. Goals. Goals.

Well, the Christmas shopping was done a little earlier than usual this year — I finished this past Monday. I even shipped the box of presents to my family on Monday. We’re planning on keeping it low-key this Christmas, mostly hanging out here in Phoenix, although we’re going to escape to Tucson on Saturday to visit the Sonoran Desert National Museum.

Since go-live, I’ve actually finally had a bit of slow-down at work. No more 12 hour days on Saturdays and Sundays with no days off. So I’m grinding Alterac Valley to get the marks for my Frostwolf Epic mount. Pretty bad when I have the money for it but not the medals. Hopefully by the weekend or so I’ll be chugging along at 100% speed increase. Hoping to squeeze in a Scholo run for Chuck’s epic dreadsteed as well some time this week too. :)

Hope everyone’s doing well and not stressing out too much. Remember, it’s not about the gifts.

Last night we ate at Rio Brazilian Steakhouse. They specialize in Brazil’s most popular style of eating, known as churrascaria de rodizio. The meat is all roasted on long skewers, and each style of meat is brought directly to your table. Their method of roasting the meat on the skewers creates a buttery-crusty outside skin, with a melt-in-your-mouth tender center.

They brought out top sirloin, tri-tip steak, flank steak, pork tenderloin, leg of lamb, bacon-wrapped filet mignon, sausages, and roasted chicken. All of it was so flavorful and tender. Instead of getting the usual 8oz cut of steak, you get to try different slices of all these wonderful roasted meats — simply stated, it is MEAT HEAVEN.

Note: I have heard that the Gaucho Steakhouse in Tulsa overcooks everything, so for you Tulsans, you might want to try the whole Brazilian steakhouse thing in another city.

Other than that, work’s the usual stressbucket it always is. I have to remember to just chill and go with the flow, remembering that it’ll be there the next morning as well. And our toons on the pvp server are almost to 60, so it’d be nice to get back in tonight and grind ‘em up.

Man of La Mancha was spectacular, and the Orpheum theater was the most ornate, beautiful theater I’ve ever been in. The Spanish architecture and decor glowed, all topped with a ceiling that acts as a night sky, the colors of the ceiling ranging from dusk to night with orange to purple to deep blue hues.

Hope everyone’s not too cold out there in snowyland. Arizona’s a bright and sunny 74 today for the high. i <3 AZ. ;-)

I’m so excited! We’re going to see “Man of La Mancha” tonight at the Orpheum Theater in Phoenix. It’s the first performance of the season, and the Orpheum Theater is steeped in history, so I can’t wait to see it.

T-minus seven hours and counting as to whether I’ll get the Office Space Lumbergh’s, “Umm, yeah… I’m gonna need you to come in this weekend.” Let’s hope for the best. By 4pm I may start doing the stealth routine through here so I can avoid the inevitable.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to a nice LONG run through Sunken Temple tomorrow afternoon some time, we’re well on our way to 60 with our latest toons, holding at 56 so far.

Hope you people stuck in snow are staying safe (or at least getting to stay home from work). High today in Phoenix should hit mid 60′s, although it was a chilly 46 degrees going in to work this morning. :)

We spent the last four days in Tulsa, and attended a surprise birthday party for Chuck’s mom on Saturday. It was nice to stay with a few friends, but all in all it was a busy weekend of family stuff. Tulsa was typical. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday == no sun whatsoever. Gray, gray, gray. Cold. Rainy. A constant reminder of why I love Arizona so much.

I was MORE than happy to touch down in Phoenix last night around dusk and watch the mountains turn melted-crayon orange with the sunset. Even the coyotes greeted me with their high-pitched yipping as they hunted rabbits on the golf course shortly before midnight.

All in all I did get to finish a few Steinbeck short stories (The Pearl and The Red Pony) and made a half-hearted stab again at Lisey’s Story, the new Stephen King novel. (Don’t bother, it stinks so far).

We worked on teaching ourselves to play the WoW trading card game. Relatively similar to Magic: The Gathering, but it does have enough quirks to confuse me a little. And I still don’t have any loot cards yet *grumble*.

Sorry I haven’t blogged in awhile. It’s been a sweltering, seemingly endless summer here in Arizona, but it’s beginning to wind to a close, replaced by crisp, cool mornings and cloudless, warm afternoons. The sunsets here are remarkable — the sky explodes with a gradient palette of pale pink to burnt sienna. And I’m reading my Sony Reader constantly. :)

After waiting about ten months for the latest piece of gadgetry, finally Sony has released the Sony Reader PRS-500. It uses something known as e-ink technology, which is able to reproduce that ink on paper look. No glare, no backlighting to strain the eyes, just gorgeous text. Even more wonderful is that it only uses the battery when you turn the page. Once that new page is rendered, you could leave it sitting there and no charge is being drained from the battery.

It’s not for everyone, it does come with a hefty price tag (Sony retails the new Reader for $350), but for avid book fans, it’s SUCH a wonderful alternative to reading on a PocketPC, Palm, or SmartPhone. It holds 64mb of RAM and also takes SD cards and Sony mem sticks. I have an extra 512mb Magic Gate Pro Duo from my PSP, but I still haven’t needed to use it, because I have about a year’s worth of reading material just from the core 64mb in the Reader.

By the way, Ed and Diane got married October 13th. Sorry we weren’t able to fly to Tulsa for it, neither of us has been able to get any vacation time for trips yet :( But congratulations and best wishes for a wonderful, happy marriage. You two are so great together!