This Christmas Emily and I decided we could not afford to head home for the holiday. We were planning a surprise trip to Disney for her brother Chris and the rest of the family in late January so it just didn’t make sense to spend another $1500 to fly us both home for Christmas when we would see them all so soon anyway. We had also just seen my mom for a full weekend at Jeff & Allie’s wedding in November.
On Christmas Eve we went over to Loomis & Amy Jo’s for a Christmas Eve dinner of salmon, ham and spectacular dishes that everyone brought. It was just Danielle, Scott, Emily and I, Loomis and Amy Jo and their friends Neil and her husband Dan. We stuffed ourselves with food and then continued to be fed booze from Amy Jo for the rest of the night as we played catch phrase in the living room and then other drinking games. It was a nice evening among friends.
On Christmas Day Emily and I simply had a very quiet day at home. I felt really bad that I didn’t have anything to give her on Christmas Day because the Dynafit bindings I had planned to get her were unavailable anywhere. She got me a very expensive hi-zoom Nikon Lens for our DSLR which I had been dreaming of for months and would come in handy on our upcoming trips to Disney and then Hawaii later in the spring. We were able to skype with her parents and the rest of the family and took two shots of the remaining Wild Turkey American Honey with the rest of her family on the screen. I then facetime chatted with my mom and Ellie who didn’t really seem to be in the mood to chat. Apparently she had actually gotten tired of the number of gifts she got for Christmas!
It was a relaxing day of just the two of us, but work over the holidays with everyone home with family was terrible for me and I hope that Emily and I will never have miss a Christmas with family again.
Once again this year Colin and Amanda were gracious enough to host a Christmas Party for everyone. There was the usual Watershed Crew at the party as well as Tim & Lindsay and we brought Holm along. Colin had bought a massive turkey and everyone contributed a dish or two of snacks. As typical, Colin supplied a full table full of assorted booze for everyone as well. There were games in the garage and I set to mixing drinks for a bunch of people. I’m not sure where but Danielle and Carrie also got a hold of some fake mustaches. Perhaps they were out of the gift stocking that Colin allowed everyone to pick from. In the garage there was the usual ring toss tournament and I made poor Scooter a nasty shot to drink after he lost (I felt bad about it later but he drank it like a pro).
This year I managed to make the entire night without passing out thankfully. Amanda was in and out of the party throughout the night (probably to check we weren’t destroying the house :). We all appreciated her willingness to have everyone over just weeks before her surgery. By the end of the night everyone was pretty lit but we were able to get a ride home from Alexa who had taken it easy thankfully. I’m not sure who won the drunk card for the night but with Emily feeling a little sick we took off pretty quickly and felt bad we didn’t help clean up at all. All in a all, it was a really fun party as usual and we all can’t wait till next year when Amanda may be feeling better to hang out with us a bit more.
Emily and I just got back from a fantastic weekend on the Northern Oregon coast where we celebrated (early) Jason's 33rd birthday (this coming Thursday) at a luxurious beach house in Seaside belonging to the family of one of the girls Jen TA's for at OSU. Jessica, Mike, Jen, Jason, Scott, Danielle, Emily and I all had a blast the whole weekend. Two hours after getting to the house on Friday we had polished off nearly two bottles of bourbon and by the time the weekend was over we definitely didn't care to see alcohol again for a while. To feel like we accomplished something other than just killing our livers we also went on a spectacular hike up Saddle Mountain, the highest in the northern coastal range, on Saturday and on Sunday on the way home Jen, Jason, Emily and I went on a crazy beautiful hike along the coast at Ecola State Park at sunset, just north of beautiful Cannon Beach. To read more about all the shinanigans and see some amazing photos of coastal Oregon click the link to READ MORE.
My good buddy Aaron Hartz, who has been down on his luck for the past couple years, finally was handed down a dream job by the snow gods this month... a seasonal job with a heli-skiing company based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Yes, I now have a best buddy who is working for a heli-ski business - hooray! I think the first year he'll be the rookie and mostly refueling the choppers but I'm sure he'll be going up with them plenty and hopefully later this season or next season he'll be able to use all the guide skills he has acquired over the past couple years to earn a good living as a professional ski guide. Back in the day when I was single this would have been my dream job as well but now with a steady job and great lady I can only sit back and send my buddy off to his new job with a big party and ski movie night at our place.
I emailed a ton of people and made Hartz promise not to leave town tonight. The initial plan was to bbq and pre-game at our place before heading out to Suds or downtown but with Ski movies playing and a warm apartment full of cases of beer and a fire in the stove the party just kept raging on here late into the night. Mo Davies showed up who was here visiting from Australia, Kelly, Betsy, Jon, Anna, Mark, Sarah, Nate, Mel, Chris, Mo, Maxine, Paul, Dennis, Matt, Kevin, Emily, I and a few others all showed up to say goodbye to a legend. I think Hartz had a great time and I know that I will really miss shredding the Cascades with him this season. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time and money to go visit him and perhaps see him over the holidays.
So glad you are taking this leap in life buddy, I'm glad to have taken a few leaps with you in the past - Cheers, Jon
Tonight we had a nice potluck dinner at Danielle and Scotts for Timmy's birthday (28 I believe). Danielle made veggie Chile and Kevin made meat chile while Emily and I baked some rolls and brought over the leftover death by chocolate from Thanksgiving. Tim brought over a pork loin he had made and there was plenty of booze, wine and other snacks. We ended up chilling out downstairs with the dogs watching football and then, believe it or not, Rudolf the Red-nose Reindeer Claymation movie, which I hadn't seen for over 20 years! It was a pretty chill night for everyone, too bad Lindsay couldn't be there for it... :(
This Thanksgiving for the first time in 5 years Emily and I didn't have any out-of-town plans for the holiday. Instead we were invited, along with Scott and Danielle, over to our good friends the Cooper's for what turned out to be an incredible holiday feast. I had a pretty crappy day at work on Wednesday trying to finish up some work so I wouldn't have to go into the office over the long holiday weekend. By the time I got home it was almost 8pm so Emily and I spent the rest of night baking some things (my first easy harvard beats, death by chocolate, sweet potatoes, etc) and relaxing before the big next day.
On Thursday we got up early so that we could get over to Colins to start drinking and watching football. Yes, football on the West Coast starts at 10am on holidays. We brought over a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey but I decided to hit the bottle of Bailey's we brought first. Before I knew it I had nearly polished off the bottle just a few hours later. Colin and Amanda were wonderful hosts and Colin did a spectacular job with the friggin' huge 20lb turkey he had bought knowing that left-overs are always amazing. The girls spent a good part of the early afternoon on Amanda's computer looking at shoes and boots and other upcoming Black Friday deals.
Danielle felt suddenly sick in the afternoon while Scott found himself dozing in and out of sleep in the warm house throughout the afternoon. I enjoyed the massage chair as usual and by the time 5 or 6 rolled around for dinner we were all pretty lit from an afternoon of great beverages. Danielle had come down from upstairs after resting and seemed to feel better as well. When we had put out all the food onto the table for dinner it quickly became apparent that we had all really overdone ourselves. There was enough food for an army! We all stuffed ourselves and by the time we were done the Turkey looked ravished and no more than 10% of each dish had been eaten (yes, we had that much food!).
We all went into the living room, clearly suffering from instant turkey food coma, and settled in for the movie "Super 8" on blu-ray that I had brought over to test Colin's new PS3 and surround sound system in the living room. Both the movie and Colin's stereo definitely lived up to the hype. I thought a plane was landing on me during one loud scene in the movie of a train crash. Scott and Emily dozed in and out of sleep but the rest of us caught the whole film and really enjoyed it. During the movie we also finally found some room to snack on deserts as well. By the time the movie was over it was midnight, 14 hours after we started drinking and time to go home. We helped clean up as much as possible but Emily suddenly felt really sick (wine on top of milky foods and stuff I think) so we hastily left and felt bad about it. Although we had stayed in town it was really a great holiday with some of our closest friends here.
The rest of the long weekend was spent pretty much relaxing. We needed Friday to recoup at home during rainy weather anyway after Thursday's feast and Saturday a bunch of people stopped by our place to watch the Beavers get their asses handed to them by the Ducks at the Civil War game in Eugene. On Sunday Emily and I joined Chris for a very late season ride at Black Rock in Falls City where we met up with Chris' childhood friend Jake who had moved back to the area. Despite there being a lot of trees down over the road on the way up and my "money-pit" bike falling apart on the way up it was great riding and felt good to get out for at least one activity over the weekend. Work tomorrow is going to suck but at least I feel pretty rested and rejuvenated now!
Tonight we had a fun party for Chris' birthday at the bowling alley on 9th street. I called everyone I could think of that was friends with Chris and a good number people showed up including Sarah and Nicole from the Rogue River trip with some special drinks just for Chris! We all met up at our place before heading to the bowling alley and had a few birthday shots before we left.
Bowling was a lot of fun and we got multiple pitchers of beer there. I was worried Hartz wasn't going to show up but he and Jon Stevenson showed up around 9 after their CMRU meeting. Emily had bought an ice cream cake at the store so we all enjoyed that as we wrapped up two full games on 3 different bowling lanes between all of us. From the bowling alley we headed back home and then down the street to Suds and Suds to cap the night off with another couple pitchers of beer there. I'm pretty sure Chris ended up having a great time which made the truly rough morning I had the following day completely worth it :)
And yes, this is the most embarrassing photo of Chris I could find as I didn't take any tonight.
Today Emily and decided to go on a hike up Mary's Peak to get outdoors and took Dromi along with us to get her some fresh air. It wasn't a particularly nice day but at least it wasn't raining for a change. Emily had a soccer game at 4pm so we got up early and were at the trailhead by 11pm to start the 10 mile hike.
As usual the woods of Mary's Peak were beautiful with the fog lingering in the canopy and the green, lush moss covering everything. Switchbacking up the ridge it is always cool to see the tall douglas fir trees leaning agains the slope of the mountain and with a 16mm wide angle lens they make a pretty cool photo.
Near the top of the mountain we heard what either sounded like gunshots or construction. For a while I thought perhaps it was construction at the parking area near the top but as we got closer I quickly realized that some idiots were shooting off guns off the summit road which we were about to parallel through the woods. I decided to put Dromi on leash (she had been doing wonderful off-leash staying with us btw) and when we got really close I yelled loudly that we were coming through and to "please don't shoot us". At the parking area we saw a young guy picking up trash that worked for the forest service I think. We asked if it was legal to shoot up here and he replied "definitely not". We told him where they approximately where and he turned to walk down the trail to tell them to leave. From there we quickly walked to the top (which Emily had never been to) but with no views, a frigid wind, and time running out we quickly ate a couple sandwiches, gave Dromi some more water and some snacks and headed back down. Back at the parking lot the worker told us he had told them to leave and they were all gone which made us feel better. We kept Dromi on leash until past where we had heard them just in case but never heard another shot.
On the way down Dromi had a fraction of the energy she had going up (this was possibly the longest hike she'd been on yet) and pretty much stuck to the trail in front of us the whole way down, occasionally getting confused by switchbacks though... :). Although we had no views, it was refreshing to be outdoors for a while and my knee seems to be fully recovered. Emily made her soccer game with time to spare and Dromi spent the rest of the day and night napping on a couch.
On New Years Eve Emily, Chris, Kya and I drove up to Ski Bowl for some fresh snow after the driest December in Oregon’s history. We were able to ski all day with Kya left in her puffy coat in the car. We got a late start so we skied till 5pm when they turned the lights on at the “largest night ski area in America”. It was great to have a full day at a resort nearly a year after I blew my ACL last early January. My knee was definitely weaker than it was before the injury but I was still able to ski for a good amount of time. I’m not sure if it will ever be as strong as it was but right now I at least I can still ski and take smaller drops. 
When we got back to Corvallis we had time to shower, change and get a quick bite to eat before picking up Chris again and heading to Mike and Jessica’s for a New Years Party. We brought a couple beers we had left over from our typical Wednesday night movie night at our place but thankfully we were greeted to jello shots, mixed drinks and more booze than we could handle. I played a quick game of beer pong with Mike who killed me and then retired to inside to continue to mingle with everyone and watch Emily challenge Chris to a game of darts. 
