Stairway Denied @ Platinum

Tonight Stairway Denied (Zeplin cover band) played a reunion concert at Platinum. I usually hate going to Platinum but Emily had never been there before so we thought we would check it out and look for my buddy Erik Galvan (he bartends with me at Ruby's and also at Platinum). We never found Erik but we bumped into Matt Schwartzcopf instead and headed over to the Peacock to finish out the night. We got a cab home. It was a fun night!

New Years at SkiBowl

This year Hartz got a cabin up in Rhodendron, OR just a few miles west of Ski Bowl where we all went for New Years. He got the cabin for several days but Emily and I could only make it for New Years Eve because of our work schedules. Emily and I drove up early in the day and after skiing great snow all afternoon we were exhausted by the time all of our friends started showing up to ski during the evening hours under the lights. Emily pushed herself hard and learned to ski a steep little chute near "Toshi's Drop". Hartz, Amy, Chris, Tiff, and many others (about 15 in the house although Hartz only booked for 2 people.. ha). Apparently the fireworks at Meadows and Timberline were cancelled due to the weather so all the crowds drove down to Ski Bowl and the place was packed! On our last run down the mountain I veered off towards the roped-off terrain park to check out the jumps. Apparently Emily followed me and never saw the rope cutting across the slope and close-lined herself hard giving herself a vicious case of rope-burn across the neck but thankfully no whiplash or other injury. She was hurting for the remainder of the night. We were both super tired and barely made it to midnight before leaving SkiBowl and heading down to the house. Emily and I got there first and started a fire and got our sleeping bags out for the night. At about 1am everyone else started to roll in and play drinking games. Emily had a hard time sleeping because of her neck and I had a hard time because I kept thinking Holm and Hartz were messin' with me to get back at me for the COAS ski trip 2 years ago when I tagged their faces after they passed out! I woke up

clean thankfully!

The conditions were pretty icy and cold and Emily's neck was very painful so we decided to head home the next day and take a few days for her to heal up. It was a fun New Years and I was happy to have a warm place to sleep this time instead of two years ago in my cold truck with Aaron after he hooked up with that girl in the hot tub! Ha! The image above is us choosing the lowest letters for scrabble and all of us choosing "o"... what are the chances of that!