I am so out of shape! We spent our afternoon yesterday and most of the day today at the slopes at Beaver Creek, about 10 miles from Vail. According to the dude that drove our shuttle to the mountain, Beaver Creek is much better than Vail, with Vail being more of a tourist spot. I haven’t been to Vail yet, but I did like Beaver Creek.

It’s been more than 2 years since I’ve been snowboarding. When I was pregnant with Ben, it’s all I dreamed of. But I was pretty rusty after two years, but after a bit, it got a lot easier. I’m still a bit shaky on the harder runs, but it doesn’t matter, I like the really easy runs. I don’t like going fast, I like taking it nice and easy!

I have yet to go down a run without falling, but it was a lot worse yesterday. I felt like I spent my first hour on my ass. Falling hard on my ass. Fortunately I didn’t fall on my face. Then yesterday night I was sore and didn’t want to move off the bed.

Today was much better, we were on the other side of the mountain and there were less people. I still had some interesting falls, I even did a whole somersault once. Once I started getting into the groove, though, things got a lot easier. I was letting my thoughts get the better of me, but once I just went with the flow of the mountain, things went OK.

Even with all the falling, I’m still having a great time. I love snowboarding, and I love the quietness of the mountain.

Tomorrow we’re heading out to Vail. I can’t wait to check out the mountain!

Here’s a couple pics from the trip so far!

On a propeller plane over the mountains

Arrowhead resort

Ready for the mountains!

Tags: Travel by Yano
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I was going to do a play by play of the academy awards like I usually do, but several factors prevented me from doing so this year:

1) We just got to our hotel room before the show started
2) I’m incredibly sore and all I want to do is lie in bed
3) This year’s Oscars were incredibly boring

I was hoping that Ellen would be a great host, but she was only so-so. Anyway, here’s my show best and worst:

Best - All the love that everyone was giving Al Gore, and how humbly he soaked it up

Worst - Those dancer/tumbler/circus acts that made objects behind the screen

Best - Melissa Ethridge being the first woman in my memory to thank her wife for an award

Worst - Having presenters present an award that their movie is nominated for - Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt for the Costumes and Jack Nicholson for Best movie. Poor Anne and Emily had to fake happiness for Marie Antoinette’s win

Best - How much the winners from Pan’s Labyrinth love and respect their director, Guillermo del Toro. It seemed like every time they spoke his name he cried. I only wish he won Best Foreign Language!

Worst - Showing all the nominees faces right as they lose the award. I know they always do it, but it still hurts!

Best - Jack Black and Wil Ferrell’s duet about how comedians are the saddest people at the Oscars

Worst - The movie montages that they made - BOOOOOORING!

Best - Having Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola on the same stage. They had great chemistry. Even better? Having them present the Best Director award to their peer, Martin Scorcese

Best (because I want to end on a best) - Forest Whitaker’s speech was a highlight for me. He first talked about watching movies from the backseat of his family car, and moved on to talk about why he acts, to feel that emotion come out of him. You could see that it affected everyone in the room as his fellow actors all reflected to themselves why they were there.

All in all, it was an OK awards show. There were a couple surprises (poor Eddie!) but it was just average to me.

It could be that I’m just in a lot of pain and I’m not easily amused right now.

Tags: Reviews by Yano
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Luckily this morning we were able to get a flight out of Chicago (first class, too, thanks to Dave’s moms seniority at the airline). But due to some scheduling conflicts, we’re not going to be able to get to Vail until tomorrow, so we’re hanging out at the airport until we can check into the hotel we got for tonight.

I’m pretty excited to go snowboarding again - it’s been almost 2 years since I’ve gone snowboarding, and I’ve been itching to go ever since I got pregnant. Last winter when I was pregnant with Ben I had a ton of dreams about snowboarding, and I was tempted to just bring my board out to the backyard just to stand on it.

Hopefully I won’t be too rusty when I actually get out on the mountain. I’m not that adventurous of a boarder so I’ll most likely stick to greens and blues (easy/medium slopes).

I’ll have internet access while I’m there, so I’ll be sure to share some pictures!

Tags: Travel by Yano
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Since I had a car when I was in Milwaukee, I felt it my duty to offer to drive my other coworkers around (it’s nice to have other people to hang out with when you’re out of town!). Our client site was several miles away, but not a difficult drive, unless you’re counting the crazy drivers and pedestrians in downtown Milwaukee.

I love driving, it’s a great way for me to relax and chill out. But I’m horrible when it comes to driving people around. I’m super cautious, but at times nervous and once in a while I make a bad decision (though nothing resulting in an accident *knockonwood*). So many jokes were made about my bad driving, all in fun, of course, but near the end of the week I could tell that my coworker was getting a tad bit nervous as well.

There’s just something about having someone else in the car, someone who’s life is in my hands, who is watching, judging, observing, whatever…it’s like when you’re logging into email or a network and someone is watching over your shoulder. Because of that extra set of eyes, you make a mistake on the password, a password you’ve typed a million times before with no problem.

Adding onto that was not being familiar with my surroundings, as well as all the construction that was happening in Milwaukee. That, and I like to talk. Sometimes it’s not easy to talk and drive at the same time, though I really have no problem doing it when it’s on the phone.

Weird thing is, I have no problem driving when Ben’s in the car, or when it’s Dave or my sisters. Maybe with them I’m comfortable enough or they’re used to my driving style. They never have any issues with my driving! Well, except for getting lost all the time, which I always end up doing. But we always end up finding our way home, that’s what matters, right?

So I AM a good driver, really!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Many thanks to Bjork, who’s debut album kept me company during my roadtrip to Milwaukee this week. I was going to come back yesterday night and drive back up today (yesterday being Thursday) but I was too tired from work and had a ton of work to do at night, which I really didn’t get done since I went to the mall to get clothes to wear, couldn’t find the Maggiano’s we wanted to eat at, spent a couple hours pigging out at the Cheesecake factory and got lost on the way back to the hotel. But at least I got some sleep and didn’t have to worry about falling asleep on the road.

So here’s a blast from the past, the über cute Björk and her trippy dark fairytale, “Human Behavior”.

Tags: Video Gaga by Yano
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Lately I’ve been so busy with life and work that I haven’t even realized that it’s been forever since I’ve logged onto AIM, YIM or MSN. We’re supposed to log onto MSN for work, but I always forget.

So yesterday, since I was bored (not really bored since I had tons to do) in my hotel room in Milwaukee, I decided to log on to see who was on.

I caught a couple old friends (and old friends caught me), as well as my new coworker who’s working on this project. It was fun to navigate through different chat windows, having different conversations all over my computer screen, catching up with the lives of people I haven’t heard from in forever. I really miss those long chat sessions, talking about stupid things, talking about how life can be so crazy or gossiping about others.

I realized yesterday that I rarely use “LOL” to describe when I’m laughing. Someone used it when I was chatting with them, and I made fun of them. Yeah, LOL means you’re laughing out loud, I get it, but I think my “haha” is a much better representative of how much I appreciate your humor. Really, I only use a couple short terms, like OMG, BRB and WTF. Usually, though, i like typing everything out.

So I’ll probably be online again tonight…I was going to drive back to Chicago tonight and come back to Milwaukee tomorrow, but I didn’t get much sleep and I had a REALLY long day, so I’m just going to stay here in Milwaukee and pray that I finish up early tomorrow so I can drive home and hug Benjamin!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Lately I’ve been having a lot of disturbing dreams. I wouldn’t call them nightmares, but they’re pretty close to being that. It could be that I’m stressed out, too busy, or having realy had a lot of time to think about life - so my subconscious is going haywire trying to sort it out while I’m asleep.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve had some dreams that have left me feeling weird and creepy for the rest of the day, like:

- I’m sleeping in my room, I hear a noise…someone’s in my room. I’m afraid to open my eyes, I hear them shuffling around. I pick up the courage to open my eyes and it’s Dave. He says he came home from work early. However, something still doesn’t feel right. He lays down to go to bed. I close my eyes. I open them again. He’s gone. It’s just a dream.

- I dreamt that my cousin killed several of my other cousins, but was trying to hide it. It was a brutal murder and I confronted my cousin who denied it at first, but when I presented evidence my cousin reveals that it was an action that couldn’t be prevented.

- I had a dream that for some reason, Macaulay Culkin wants to kill me. I spend most of my dream on the run and trying to hide from him, but he always manages to find me.

That’s only a sampling of the ones that I remember. A lot of the time I wake up knowing I had a bad dream, but not remembering. However, I spend the rest of the day feeling uneasy.

Hopefully, going on vacation next week will give me some time to decompress and start having fun dreams again.

Who can guess where the title of the post comes from?

Tags: Daily by Yano
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1) 99% of Vegetables
2) Green Beans
3) Liver
4) Sardines
5) Bitter Melon
6) Raisins
7) Pickles Brussel Sprouts
9) Sauerkraut
10) Kim Chee (pickled cabbage)

I know some of the ones listed here are a vegetables, but I really hate them.

Tags: Weeklies by Yano
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I’ve been wanting to take Ben out in the snow ever since we had our first snowfall in December, but it’s always been too cold to take him out. Finally we had some good weather today, so when we stopped at the in-law’s place we had some snow fun with Ben. Dave’s dad couldn’t find the old sled, so we came up with a couple sled-like things. First, we sent Ben down on Dave’s old weight bench. Then, we used a US Post Office mail bin to send him down the hill. He had a lot more fun on the weight bench - I think by the time we did the mail bin he was tired and cold. We had a lot of good laughs pushing him around in the snow. I think we had a lot more fun than he did!

Here’s the pictures from the day…click on the photos for a larger view.

Ben’s First Time Standing on Snow

What is this weird wet stuff?

This stuff is COLD!

At the top of the hill, on the weight bench

Wheeee!

This is fun!

Is this thing made for sledding?

Ok, this isn’t fun anymore!

Tags: Ben by Yano
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Guess whose butt this is. No fair saying who it is if you already know.

When you figure it out, you’ll want to gauge your eyes out, then giggle with girlish glee.

Tags: Pictures by Yano
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