Happy birthday to me!

Hello hello one and all. I am ancient, a quarter of a century old this day. Well, a few days ago, but who's counting?

Been an interesting couple of weeks, with a fair amount of awesome and a bit of stress. All in all, I've been stressed, but in a good mood. In concert, this is a strange state of affairs. I'm stressed because I have research for my thesis to do, research for the Ultra-Peripheral Collisions group, thesis to write, homework to do, test next week, jobs to apply to, wallpaper to remove, and painting to do once said wallpaper is removed.

Ignoring all of that, the past week has been fantastic. I went skiing again the weekend before last with Polly, Laurel, Morag, and Morag's boyfriend Sam who was in town. We went to a place just on the other side of the Jura mountains, about a 40 minute drive (if that) from where I live. The snow was surprisingly good considering it was approximately 340 degrees and sunny that day. I think I wore too many layers.

Skiing was fun because I actually tried SKIING for the first time in about 8 years. I've been on ski blades -short skis about three feet long that are amazingly fun - for a long time. Turns out skis are about the same, only you have to let the ski do the turning rather than your own muscle power. I decided to rent because it was a novel idea and not too expensive. Also I was teaching Morag and Sam how to ski and it was much easier to give an example than explain with words what to do.

We started out on the beginner slope which, like all beginner slopes, was impossible to learn on because of all the off-balance people with high optimism falling down exactly where another beginner is trying to turn to, thus causing panic resulting in hilarious puffs of snow. That and the people coming down from higher up at approximately 186,000 miles per hour really didn't help matters. However after the requisite number of falls, bruises, and annoyed knees, both Morag and Sam started to get the hang of it. After a few runs with them I decided to go up with Polly and Laurel. Polly is more or less on my level, at least on the blue and red runs, and Laurel, though still a beginner, improved mightily and handled the blue runs well (in spite of large numbers of munchkins in a row following ski instructors).

We had a good run and got down to the bottom to discover that Morag and Sam had evaporated into thin air, and we didn't see them again for the rest of the day until we caught them at the ski return. I felt bad because they could have handled a more advanced run I think. Oh well, nothing for it. They were somewhat annoyed, but we did check several times to see if we could find them, and we did go to the ski lodge to wait... I'M NOT DEFENSIVE! NO YOU SHUT UP! :P

Skiing was fun, but the real highlight was on the 20th, my birthday, where said people threw me an awesome birthday party. Polly provided transportation and an apple pie (the closest thing we could get to a chocolate cake on short notice in the nearest grocery store), Morag made party hats (from scratch, the girl's a wizard at crafts and, well, everything else), Sam cooked sausages (though he had to leave to catch a plane early), and Laurel made some of the most amazing hamburgers I have ever tasted. I'm rather nuts about these burgers now. Take meat, chopped onion, cayenne pepper, salt, garlic, and a bit of Worcestershire sauce, mush it all together, and cook. Top with toppings of your choice. I found Heinz ketchup in the market. I was excited because Europe, they try bless them, but they just don't do ketchup right. Too much sugar. However, the DO do mustard better than we do, so I got the best of both worlds and mayo which is good anywhere in the world but Whole Foods (don't try organic vegan mayo substitute ever).

We ate a truly prodigious amount of food, cut the "cake", then watched Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit! This was highly entertaining. For those of you not familiar with Wallace and Gromit, go find one of the films and watch it. I suggest The Wrong Trousers, but all are good (though I haven't seen A Close Shave).

I'm quite lucky to have made such good friends in only a few months. I've had infinitely more fun here than I would have otherwise without them. Life is good (if stressful a bit).

Ciao! Pictures of skiing and birthday party are below!

The Magnificent Birthday Cake!

Birthday hats! Morag and Laurel made these. Mine is the second from the left.

As you can see, we are an incredibly sexy bunch.

And here is the group. Left to right: Polly, Morag, Me, Laurel. I don't think Polly and Morag knew we were making faces. To be fair, I didn't really either, but I'm surrounded by women, so I had to have that sort of a look on my face. Also I look fat in this picture, but only because I had just eaten a massive amount of food and am leaning back a bit.

Skiing, at the beginning of a blue run in a nice little tree area (the run, sadly, didn't continue in trees)

Polly and I a little further on the run I think. Maybe just a little higher. I think off to the left is where the above picture was taken.

Laurel and I. She was easy to notice on the slopes if we got separated, so she was Polly and my rally point.

And here he is, the main event, the one you've all been waiting for: a ski lift. Also I'm there! you might notice me as the loud person in front.