a very busy easter weekend

Ian and I kicked-off our weekend together with a trip to Brighton for a long-overdue day (er, couple of hours--including drive time) of snowboarding. Ian did awesome on the chairlift, which I thought might be a little scary for him. He was totally relaxed and comfortable on the rides up and is getting pretty good at riding down the hill as well. a few more trips and he'll be an honest-to-goodness little shredder.


Saturday morning Ian had a date with mom to do an Easter egg hunt, so it was a quick breakfast at Hagermann's, then off with mom for the morning. Immediately after that Easter egg hunt was the annual Easter event at Jim and Joan's. Great to see all the Nichol cousins and catch up a little. HUGE thanks to Jim and Joan for this great Easter tradition. The new kitchen looks AMAZING.


From the easter egg hunt, Ian went with Riley and Parker to their house to play the Wii and I went climbing. Let me just say I haven't been climbing for about 15 years -- I use to go with some high school buddies, and while I really enjoyed it, they were the ones who were "climbers" while I was merely a "tag-alonger." So fast forward 15 years and more pounds than I care to expound upon... Dallen and Liz, who're new friends and not-so-new-neighbors that I've just recently actually met and started hanging out with a bit, invited me to go climbing and for some crazy reason I took them up on it. I bought some shoes and a harness (we'll just call it my Easter basket since the Easter bunny doesn't leave anything for dad at our house), so now all that remains is to shed those unexpounded pounds so I can carry myself up the mountain a little easier. Thanks Dallen & Liz for getting me out in my mountains. And congrats to Dallen on the first ascent of the new route.

so much for playing hookey

My prayers for snow were answered on March 15th -- my dad's birthday. My plans, for those of you who may not remember the intricate details of my life, were to play hookey the day after a good storm to go snowboarding. I guess I learned to be slightly more specific in my prayers because as it was snowing, I just on the mend from a good bout of strep throat and had just missed 2 days of work. It's hard to play hookey when I'm already 2 days behind, even for my underdeveloped sense of responsibility.

I do very much appreciate the prayers for snow in my behalf and in spite of the grouch on the couch's comments Thanks to all.

this year's first round of golf

I was able to talk my dad into getting out on the links yesterday. Those of you who know driley sr. know and understand the very persuasive effort that was involved in this, and the whole process quite honestly left me exhausted.

We were starting late (I don't get off work until 6) and actually started even later because I got a flat tire on my way there. I guess we put the new daylight savings schedule to the test, and you know, I think the daylight passed with flying colors. We finished at 8PM with just enough light to see the green from the tee box. I guess I can't use poor light as an excuse for the sad, sad round of golf I had. But then, BOTH rows of scores are labelled, "DRILEY" so maybe I didn't to that bad.

bike vs. carport

There are 2 kinds of cyclists in the world. Those who have driven their rooftop bike into the garage/carport and those who will. At least that's what I'm telling myself now that I belong in the first category cyclist. The good news is that my bike somehow remained in tact.

When my brother-in-law ran his bike into his garage, it shattered his frame. Had to get a whole new bike. I was driving nice and slow, but had — obviously — completely forgotten my bike was on my roof. Even when I heard the noise of my rack's crossbars sliding back on the rails I wasn't quite sure what was happening. Then realization set in. I was at once VERY sick to my stomach. I'd seen the damage to Rob's bike and was afraid of what I'd find if and when I stepped out of the car.

A parenthetical note here: My newness to blogging is evident in the fact that taking pictures was about the last thing on my mind. The first thing my sister said was, "Did you get any pictures so you can blog about it?" I already feel stupid, mmmkay? Now I forgot to take pictures so I can properly blog about it too? Sheeesh.

What I found was that my front crossbar had pushed back on the rails of my rack. I had left the hardware on the bike tray quite loose because I was too lazy to move the snowboard carrier over to make proper room for the bike tray. I couldn't tighten the nut on the back crossbar. So what happened was that the carport pushed my bike and its tray back. The tray broke, but the bike stayed in tact — well, except for the seat which is pretty mangled. I'll gladly take the damage to the seat and tray considering what could have happened.

The worst part? I can't make fun of Rob anymore for having driven his bike into his house.

The Weekend Project Unprocrastinated

Well, I was planning to procrastinate the weekend project for another weekend, but my ex-wife just informed me that our kid is sick, which means my planned procrastination activity (snowboarding) will itself have to be procrastinated, which kind of renders the originally scheduled procrastination pointless. The weather is so nice it's a good time to do the stupid yard anyway. Maybe my neighbors will all hate me a little less if I actually do spend some time out there...

Waiting for Snow

Utah has had a great winter for snow. I just saw on the news tonight the percentages for Dec - Feb and by all accounts, it has been epic: Dec = 255% of normal; Jan = 117%; Feb = 177%. All winter long I've heard people complain about how much snow we've gotten and how cold it is. And yet I'm waiting for that late-season major dump that'll leave about 2 feet of fresh on the slopes. I just haven't had a chance to play hookey from work yet this year and my new snowboard is very disappointed.

Pray for snow.