Wow, I was looking for some other videos on the Weather Channel and somehow I missed hearing about this. 

Here is a street cam video


And another one I found on YouTube where you can see it from a distance

So my Christmas started out good, I headed out to work for my first shift and I ended up making a decent amount of dinero, just look at my awesome spanish, for a lunch shift.  So I decided since I was probably going to be home late I'd make the drive home during my midday break.  This would have been easier if I left at 2:30 like scheduled but it just didn't work out that way.  I literally came in the house said 'Hi' to Pete and left.  He did manage to surprise me with the shirt I liked at Keystone.  Translated it means...Who is the most epic?  I am the most epic!

Here's the front

And the back

and a Nepalese bracelet from our friend Kumar, Who by the way would be my one and only choice to go rafting with.  The man has like 30 years experience!  It's a good thing since I think that's where Pete and I will be working this summer.  I usually get roped into trips.  This year I'm looking forward to being on the water more. 
 So I head back to work and as I'm about to make the turn off our little hill, where you can't stop if you're driving my car, a car packed full of people stop on the WRONG SIDE of the ROAD and give my dirty looks cause I almost hit them.  Yeah, you where stopped in the middle of the road pointed the wrong direction on the wrong side.  Really!!!???!!!

Then as I'm driving toward where the road is paved there is a guy in the middle of the street putting his hand out for me to stop.  You want to know why?  Well it was because his kid was sledding their driveway.  Really!!!???!!!  I almost stopped the car and got out to tell him what I thought.  I was on my way to work.  Maybe if you think your kid is that stupid, the driveway wasn't even steep enough to ride down, you should sled in the backyard!  They had plenty of other spots on the property that would have been much better suited.  They were probably to lazy to walk through powder. 

Anyway, the rest of the day was fine until I was leaving work.  I was waiting at the light by the restaurant, which has been taking like 15 mins to change this week, when a guy in a old bronco or something flew by going at least 60.  It's 35 there and is for another 2 miles.  He had his flashers on so I guess he was trying to warn everyone of his stupidity.  I was expecting to see the cops chasing but no luck. 

We did manage to give away one of the gifts we bought this year.  Andy was joking months ago that we all needed snuggies to lounge around the house in.  Well, that's what he got for Christmas.  And they are even multi-purpose, who knew you could wear them fishing!

And look people are even taking the snuggie and making it into redneck evening wear!

So today Pete and I tried to get some stuff done and headed out to the Post Office.  We went to Frisco where there was a line that lasted about 5 minutes and they lady was so nice.  He even talked to someone in the parking lot who's daughter does music therapy.

 We drove back to Breck and found we had some pick up notes in our box and we made the decision to wait in the LONG line for an hour to get our stuff.  We were talking to the people in front of us and the lady had lived in NYC in the 80's came here for a break and never went back.  When we finally got to the front there was a teller with a shaved head and a tiny santa hat.  I didn't have the nerve to take a pic.  Too bad it was really funny.

So when Pete and I stopped at wal-mart to grab a few last minute Christmas things we grabbed some smokes.  The guy behind the register told Pete not to let me have any because I was too young.  I always laugh when people say that kind of stuff to me.  I let him know that 1.  I'm older than Pete and 2. I would be more that happy to show him my ID proving I'm 32.  He made me show it to him, of course and still looked like he didn't believe it!  16 is such an odd number too!  Most people will think 20-25 which is why I really only get carded in liquor stores. 

Here's the promo video from Allied Sports.  The snow during the competition was CRAZY!! And let me tell you, it's still falling.


Louie Vito won the comp and a nice chunk of change! Here's the podium shot.

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So I got home from work today and had noticed that there was a zip lock bag in the middle of the kitchen floor. When I picked it up it was chewed and I noticed cookie crumbs in it. Kona was hiding under the table and wouldn't come near me and that's when it dawned on me, the cookies I had set aside for Angie and Doug were enjoyed by Kona when everyone was outside shoveling. I was worried that he would get sick, but Tara said he would have to eat 4 full size candy bars to get really sick. So thank goodness I saved the extra cookie dough today when I baked. I'll be making my replacement cookies tomorrow so I can get everything in the mail before work tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have power back by then. Damn our electric stove!!!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

So Pete just called me to say that: 1. All the lights are out from where we get on Rte 9 all the way to the town of Breck.

2. Even the radio station isn't broadcasting

3. He saw the ass that caused this problem. Looks like some jerk hit a transformer near swan mountain road. That was my guess from the start. That's gonna be a costly one buddy.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

And heat for that matter! Thank God for the gas fireplace. It just happened about 15 minutes ago as Pete was leaving for work. We grabbed the candles and his head lamp and turned off some of the breakers so when it comes back on his audio equipment doesn't get fried. That's the last thing we need. Hopefully the power will be back on soon. When Pete did leave we saw our neighbor Willie heading to their generator to turn it on. We really need to get one if we plan on staying in these conditions.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Here's a video from Alli Sports, where you can actually get a feel for the slope style course. 

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So we had a little party for Alex before she headed back home.  Tara was nice enough to make us a special dessert.  A family recipe called 'Cobbler Cake'. 

"Taken From TeddyHilton.com"

1. Prevent Allergies - Pets can help prevent eczema and some allergies in children. Children who live with dogs have lower rates of childhood eczema and children raised with cats or dogs from their first year of life are less likely to develop pet allergies.
2. They lower healthcare costs - People who own pets traditionally make fewer trips to the doctor than those who don't. As a result, pets help keep the cost of health care down for individuals as well as our nation.
3. They lower cholesterol - Pet owners tend to have lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels than people who don't have pets.
4. They relax you - Petting pets has been shown to reduce blood pressure and heart rates in adults. Even being in the same room with pets, including fish in tanks, can lower blood pressure and reduce stress in adults and children.
5. They keep you fit - Regardless of age, people who have pets, especially dogs, get more exercise than non-pet owners. While this isn't surprising for dog owners, owners of other kinds of pets are also more likely to be physically active than people who don't have pets.
6. They're good for your heart - Last but not least, dog and cat owners are significantly more likely to survive heart attacks than non-pet owners, regardless of the severity of the heart attacks.

After the bong incident with Miley Cyrus I guess everyone is interested in trying Salvia.  It is legal and can be bought over the counter but to do it on air is strange.  I guess he really wanted to prove his point.  It's almost painful to watch.

And where Pete was heading to work they were reporting -12. 

We aren't doing anything special for Christmas this year but Sheila pulled out some of her stuff and decorated one of the trees we have in the living room.  At least we have a place to put presents! 

We finally made it home and I decided to film the drive up our road so you see what we face everyday.  My little car does OK on it, as long as it's been plowed. 

So on our way home from Keystone the road from Frisco to Breck, Rt 9 was shut down for a gas leak, so we decided to take another way home and do a little bit of X-mas shopping on the way.  It had started to snow pretty hard by time we left Bed Bath & Beyond we saw a hit and run accident at the light.


We had taken Swan Mountain Road earlier in the day to get over to Dillon but the trip home was not as easy.  We made it to the top but that's where everything started falling apart.  Here are some videos from our trip home.

First encountering the idiots in the snow


Pete helping push one of the idiots


The Snowplow Finally arrives


The Decent


Cops on the Road - Bottom of Swan Mountain Road


Traffic!!!!  It might look like these cars are moving but they are at a dead stop.


Dude in a Ditch

So Pete told me that in my 3 seasons now I've never been 3 days in a row.  I have now accomplished that goal.  I'll try to condense my three days to one post for easier reading.

Day 1 - Monday, Breckenridge
So we got to see a couple of the snow designs from the Snowflake Festival. 


Day 2 - Tuesday, Breckenridge
Got off to a little bit of a slow start.  But we made it out the door.  Our timing actually worked perfect because we passed the snow cats at the top of a trail.   Next time by we got to take the wide open freshly groomed trail. 


Day 3 - Wednesday, Keystone
We headed over to Keystone so I could hit up the HR office and talk to the lady that Pete knows but when we got there she was gone.  We headed over to the 'recruiter' who gave me the same run around that you get if they don't know who you are.  I did get to prove to Pete how crappy their site is because when I went to log in the sign in link just re-loads the home page.  Nice work right!  Whoever paid for that site is a fool.  But whatever!  We headed over to the employee center, cause Pete had some questions, so I had a chance to take a pic of the first layer that I want.  We need to find out if Pete gets any discounts on the products they sell there.  Would have been good to ask then but it's not that important. 

Then it was finally time to head up the hill.  Here is the lift we skied, first time for me.  I liked parking in this area.  You don't have to walk thru the village and there is no line.

We made it over to where the snow fort is.  I'm not sure if it was this close to being finished this time last year.

We called it a day and started heading home.  Pete pointed this road out to me, what the people who work at Keystone call the 'Million Dollar Road'.  Wanna know why?  Cause it's heated!  Can you believe that in Colorado?!?  Anyway, I tried to show as best I can the snow around it but not on it.

Should have posted this closer to Halloween but we were talking about it recently and it's such a funny video.  Enjoy!

EMBED-Amazing 8 Year Old Owns Adult In Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

So this post is a little dated but, to become more relevant MySpace has revamped to be more like Facebook.  I personally hate Facebook, it took me forever to figure out how to get to my wall to look at posts from my Birthday.  And I'm not someone who has a problem learning/using programs.

This is the kind of deadly stuff Pete gets to ride at work but he doesn't have this nice of a sled.

So the craziest thing happened last night at work, it was a little bit slow in the bar and I saw some drinks that needed to be taken to the dining room so I walked them over.  What I found was the most exciting thing to happen, in a good way, since I moved here. 

Three girls were sitting at the table and the one closest to me I recognized right away as Kelly Clark, the Olympic Snowboarder.

One of the girls that was served a drink looked incredibly familiar but I couldn't place her.  I thought at first it was Lindsay Vonn but after looking at some pictures today I really think it was another very famous snowboarder, Gretchen Bleiler.

Both have won Olympic medals in Halfpipe so that was a pretty cool experience.  Who would have thought that they would come into our restaurant?

So I had planned a girls night out in Dillon, where summit county's only bowling alley is located, only to be thwarted by Mother Nature!  It's snowing and a foot should be falling overnight! 

UPDATE:  Holy Crap was it hard to drive home.  There had to have been 6" of choppy snow on the ground.  I-70 is closed again!  Two times so far this year already.  I bumped into a guy who drove up from Denver and he said the Tunnel was a mess.  Thankfully Pete got to work without an issue. 

So I saw what I guess is a Lynx the other night on my drive home from work.  Obviously this isn't the same one but they really look alike.  He jumped over a snowbank from someones yard and started running on the road.  I sped up to see what it was and I scared him off.  Crazy...I don't want to run into a cat that big EVER!

So I was driving to work on Tuesday and happened to see Tara walking to the bus so I picked her up.  As we headed toward Frisco we noticed a bunch of traffic building up and finally we saw a snow plow in the road blocking the highway and sending people over a pass.  I had Pete's car that day but there was no way I was taking the road they were sending us on. 

The road wasn't closed for snow....looked like there was a nasty accident on the other side.  I'm not surprised since people fly around the turn there and it's usually snow pack over ice.  We didn't make it in and thankfully everyone understands that if you can't get there you can't get there. 

This is the funniest thing I've ever seen.  I want our next dog to do this!

With my luck him being in the car wouldn't be a help.

So I was on the weather channel today looking to see what our forecast would be for the next few days and I came across some video that was stunning. 

Here is one of cars in Seattle sliding down a hill....


Here is one of Buffalo, where people were stuck on the highway, Crazy!

Finally had a chance to make my Turkey. It even worked out that everyone was home to eat together.

So since Thanksgiving is supposed to be one of the busiest days of the year for us we do a huge buffet and everyone works.  This year I had the assignment of Hostess.  I wasn't too happy about it in the beginning but I figured I'd be able to have my own dinner since I'd get out at 4. Since things were slower than normal in the morning I was asked to stay and hang out for another hour just in case it got super busy.  Well, I had some food from our huge buffet then headed home to relax and get Pete ready for his shift.  I decided I'd wait to make my own dinner later this week when everyone was back in the house.

Finally got a chance to use my dessert dishes.  Here is a dessert I whipped up....

Here are some appetizers I made when Alex was over for Sunday wine night.  Grilled french bread with olive oil topped with Homemade Olive Tapenade, Organic Salami and Shaved Parmesan Cheese

Saw this one at the store yesterday, too funny!

Pete and Mark went skiing and when they came home they were super hungry.  I had made a huge batch of sauce, meatballs and sausage so what could be better than some Parm Hero's.

The picture was really hard to take so it doesn't look good but boy did they hit the spot with some fries we had in the freezer.  I didn't take a pic with the cheese cause you couldn't see anything but white cheese and bread.

This was taken some time earlier this week, this is what our road looks like before the plow makes it down here around 11am.

So yesterday I had the most frightening experience of my driving life.  I was taking my time, even though the roads were much better, getting to Alex's house to grab her for work.  She's on a road that is pretty steep with a switchback.  It gets tons of traffic and looked really clear.  On our way down, while going 15 mph and going slowly around a turn in the road, the whole back-end of my car swung around almost sending us into the other lane.  I corrected a bit too much and we almost went off the road into a ditch, after one more correction I had managed to get control again and we made it without incident to the restaurant. I pray that I NEVER have that happen to me again. 

 So again, because it's safety first out here I don't have a picture of this, but today when I went to pick up Alex to drive us to work there was a guy a few cars ahead of me that was on a motorcycle, with a sidecar no less.  I'm not sure why people here think that the slippery snow and dangerous roads are the perfect place to try driving things that shouldn't be on a road. 

It's always good to have something sweet in the house

So today Alex and I decided to hit up Breck.  We waited until 10:30 and headed to the Gondy.  Since our last adventure we found there was a beginner area to the left of the main lift on the Peak we get dropped off on.

First we headed to the real beginner bunny slope but it was so much less of a hike than what we already did to get there that it seemed like a waste.  We continued our hike to where some instructors were giving lessons.  The problem with this area was that Alex flew down it in 2 seconds and the other people trying to learn had no clue so we decided to try the conveyor belt lift, well that's what I call it.  So you get on a belt and the chair swings around and catches up with you.  It takes a little getting used to but we managed all but once when we went up on separate chairs.  Getting off this lift was another thing all together, for some reason I kept plowing into Alex and taking us both down.  We switched sides and it seemed to work better.  One time a lady 2 chairs ahead of us fell off the lift sideways WAY before we were supposed to get off.  I have never seen anything like it before.

So we took a few runs and I'll saw that Alex is getting so much better.  She was saying that she watched some program about families skiing and how to try and get your kids to jump.  The key is to have a word and when you're going slow and it's said to do a little hop.  Well we tried this and both bit it really hard, I slammed my back pretty good.  A little later on that run we had a little bit of a run in.  While trying to turn Alex ran into someone.  Everyone was fine with no injuries, no one was going fast so it worked out. 

Here is a funny related joke from a riding newsletter Pete gets:
How does a snowboarder introduce themselves?
Oh...Sorry Dude

Anyway, she took off again and got clothes-lined by the out of bounds cord and ended up in the woods.  I did manage to grab a shot of her after she crawled out.

Not sure when we made this but here is a shot of it from what I guess are now my 'archives'.  I've decided to take some of my better pictures and start a portfolio for future clients.  Anything to get closer to that ultimate goal.  Anyway, this will not be a picture featured but it was a good meal. 

Pete's Blackberry is giving him problems with scrolling down.  I did a little bit of research today to find out the quick fix and along the way found out how to clean them also.  Hopefully that will help with this problem in the future. 

HOW TO GET TRACKBALL MOVING AGAIN


HOW TO CLEAN YOUR TRACKBALL

We DVR'ed Conan's first show of his new series. It seems like it's gonna be a good one. He even played some songs with Jack black.I had no idea that he was so good on the guitar.

I love Kids in the Hall.  So much so that when our cable company removed Comedy Central from its listings a few of us became disgruntled and contacted the Cable station to let them know how we felt.  Surprisingly, they really didn't care to listen to a bunch of teenagers.

Anyway, Kids in the Hall reunited for a mini-series that was just as good and shocking as any of their earlier stuff.  Here is a trailer, watch the series if you see it on TV. 

And almost everyone else for that matter. I was getting ready to go to work when Sheila got home and told me not to even think about getting on the roads. I'll admit I was nervous when I had gone out earlier to brush off my car and there was almost a foot of snow on the road and no plows in sight. I called the restaurant and they said it was dead so I didn't have to come in. Pete ended up calling right after that and telling me I couldn't go anywhere. Him and Andy had been stuck on the Gondy and even with his 4-wheel drive he was having problems staying on the road. Sheila said that she's never had to drive in anything like this before. It was so bad, she was only 1 exit away when the storm hit, that she missed our exit off the highway and got off just before they closed everything down. I-70 was closed from here to Evergreen, 15 miles east from where we used to live and 45 miles, at least, from here. Crazy!

I forgot about this picture so now I can write about the amazing, mouth-watering Chicken Parm I made a few weeks ago.  I took the time and did the work (aka pounding the chicken into thin cutlets) and it was well worth it.  I need to make this again soon it's perfect for this time of year.

Snowing still...Pete headed to Breck today with Andy to hit the slopes.  I'm amazed how much snow has fallen so I grabbed a quick shot this morning and it's still going out there.