The pictures that Gabe took yesterday turned out pretty awesome if you ask me. The pictures that I took of him were not so good. But unlike Gabe, I do not work for a digital camera company!

These are also on my Flickr page:

Said right after the picture was taken: "Thanks for not running into me."

How not to ski. I think it is safe to say that I ate it right after this picture was taken.

The best action shot of Gabe.

Yesterday morning, I thought I was going to have to come home and tell everyone who I had been bragging to that I didn't get to ski midweek afterall. (This last sentence is exactly why I don't always bother using proper grammar. I am sure that I could spend more time reworking it, but I don't feel like it and "everyone to whom I had bragged" just sounds dumb.)

Anyway...Tuesday night, Gabe and I drove up to his cabin, and then Wedensday morning we attempted to drive to Kirkwood. There was a few inches of fresh snow in the morning, and so after backing out of the driveway, my little Mazda was having trouble getting up the hill to the highway. We tried driving down to the bottom of the hill to get a start on some flat road, but even that didn't work. We reluctantly put on the chains at the bottom of the hill and made our way up to the highway. We should have been good to go...

We check the chains, tighten them, and then try to pull into the road. We spin the wheels and end up losing the chains on one tire. So we put them back on. And then we get onto the highway. But something wasn't right. We check. Chains broken. Damn. We pull over and park the car on the side of the highway. And we hike back down to the cabin and go back to bed.

About noon we tried again. We hiked back up to the car and saw that most of the snow on the road had melted. We start out again sans chains. By the time that we made it to Kirkwood, it was close to 2:00, so I was debating whether I should spend the money for demo skis and a lift ticket for only two hours of skiing. So I compromised. I got the cheaper rental skis and bought the spring season pass.It was easier to justify spending the money for the pass instead of just a lift ticket. And now I have a season pass!

I can't believe that I even considered not skiing after getting all of the way up there! I had so much fun in those two hours. I was skiing on different skis, which were longer (170 instead of 160), so it took me a while to feel comfortable on them (they were a lot faster!) and get the boots somewhat adjusted. But soon the dopamine was flowing and I had my little skiing high.

It was really cool skiing with Gabe. At the top of Cornice Express, there was an little powdery, untouched cornice for us to play on. He practiced from the highest point, and I slowly worked my way up higher and higher from the edge. We took turns taking pictures of each other, which I will post as soon as I get them from Gabe (can't believe I forgot my camera!). I also followed him into the trees a little bit, which is another first for me.

I am really happy with how my skiing is progressing. I am feeling a lot more comfortable in powder, which is huge since this was really only the third time that I have really experienced any sort of powder. Plus I am having to adjust to new equipment each time. But I usually fall when I lose my confidence and try to slow down. I think the biggest things that will help me get better will be using consistent equipment and having more confidence. So I need to buy my own skis and just get out there more!

It was also helpful to have someone watch what I was doing and give me pointers. Even though Gabe is a snowboarder, he was able to point out things like "I think you tried to turn to sharply" or "You seem to be leaning forward too much." It was really nice of him to stay with me and not take off and do more crazy runs. I would really love to ski with a skier though. Back in high school, I pretty much learned how to ski by trying to keep up with the boys and do what they were doing. But skiers are hard to come by these days.

The one really bad thing: my knees are killing me today. This is the worst that they have ever felt. I am worried that I might still hurt this weekend or that I might be really injuring them. I think it might be because I jumped right into really tough skiing right away without any warming up, and skied really hard for two solid hours. I'll just take it easy for the next two days and hope they get better. And if not, there are drugs to get me through the last few weeks of the season.

I can't believe I wrote this much about two hours of skiing, but there is something about it that makes me want to write it all down. Hopefully, skiing will become so routine that I won't feel the need to write about every detail!

Just got back from a quick overnight trip to Tahoe that included broken chains and getting stuck in the snow. Very tired.

Just got to ski for two hours in great powder, making my first trips into the (beginner) trees and over a (beginner) cornice. Very happy.

Just checked work email. Very overwhelmed.

I think I am going to bed.

"The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile."

I have been trying to be more patient, as impatience is one of my many annoying personality traits that bother me as much as they do other people. I am trying to go with the flow and be like Pooh and all of that, but it is hard.

I have been crazy busy lately, and it looks like I will be for at least another month. Yes, I am doing other things, but my mind isn't fully engaged. Whenever there is something unresolved in my life, or there are new possibilities, it is really hard for my brain to stop thinking about those things and focus on what is going on in the present. Especially like now when I feel like I am just waiting and there is nothing that I can do to move things along.

People can tell too. They notice that my mind will be a million miles away when I am talking to them. Or at work I'll forget to do something. It is terrible!

I am excited and it is fun to think of all of the possibilities for the future, but I cannot spend all of my time doing that. But then there is this quotation:

"For he who has no tranquility there is no concentration."

While I don't have an amazing chart of the blogosphere like some, I am experiencing it. Today I just found my picture in a friend's blog (it is in German, so I have no idea what he says). I managed to stay out of other mostly drinking-related pictures, but other friends were not so lucky. At least it isn't as bad as when I stumbled across this picture in another blog. Ah, memories.

Ok, technically, the wreck on Friday night involved a tanker truck, but it still falls into the general car fire category.

Then tonight, I left Sacramento about 8:00 thinking that I wouldn't run into any traffic, but then I hit 680. Just when I was thinking that I was making good time and would be home in about a half hour, traffic came to a screeching halt.

I called a friend who looked up the traffic report online and sure enough, there was a car fire! This time I was delayed only about 15 minutes, but still.

Two car fires in one weekend are two car fires too many. (And yes, I know I am lucky that I personally wasn't involved and that this was the biggest thing I have to complain about.)

So here I am in lovely Lincoln, CA, on a Saturday night, and I since I really don't feel like watching TV with the rest of the family, and the babies are currently going to bed, I don't have anything better to do, so I thought I would blog.

It has been good seeing the family and playing with the nephews. I have been drinking wine non-stop for the past few hours, and since dinner is running late, I have started in on the chocolate. I am hoping that by sitting down at the computer for a while, I will distract myself from the bowl of chocolate until dinner is ready.

As I mentioned, I had to drive up to Lincoln last night after work with a few hours notice. I left at 7:20, thinking that I would have avoided the rush hour traffic. It would have been fine, except for the little one-hour delay on 580. I finally made it to my grandma's house around 11:00, and after sleeping until 10 this morning, I am feeling pretty rested for once.

But then we spent Saturday afternoon running around to Costco and the mall. Joy of joys. While I like spending time with the family, I would rather spend time with them other ways than battling traffic and the shopping crowds. Now I have spent the evening eating and drinking. And although I am now kind of buzzed, I am starving and am looking forward to eating something more than chips and bread.

Tomorrow we will to check out my brother's house that he has been trying to get built forever. Watching him go through this is convincing me to never ever try to build my own house. I hope they will be able to move in soon and I hope that they will like the bowls that I made for them.

I hope that the house warming and tequila tasting is going well tonight. I wish that I wasn't so far away from both and that I could stop by after the family-dinner-that-will-never-be-done.

Stay tuned for the latest in Hoernlein family news!

Today I applied for one job and followed up on another job that I was offered. Now I have to decide where I want to live and which direction I want to take my career. No big deal, right!

And to top it all off, my dad called saying that he was in Lincoln and when was I coming up? So with less than two hours notice, I need to drive to Lincoln for the weekend. This of course is affecting my plans Satuday and Sunday night, so I have no idea what to do. I should have remembered that he was going to be in California this weekend, but he could have reminded me!

Next week will be crazy, too. More interviews and I have to ship some online help and a tutorial that have yet to be written. Plus my dad will be wanting me to take some time off, I am sure.

And all I really want to do this weekend is ski in Tahoe.

Lately I have found myself not paying as much attention the news these days because Bush and his war have worn me down. I hate to admit it, but they have beaten me down, and it is hard to feel the same level of outrage about his administration after so many years.

But a dear family friend, Greg Tenold, inspires me. He is taking action and puting his positive message out there in the world. On his Web site, you can listen to the songs that he has written and recorded. I admire how he has used his creativity to do something good and real despite all of the negativity that we are faced with.

Thank you for lifting my spirits, Greg! And everyone else, please check it out!

Things in my life often happen in pairs with the circumstances being unusually similar. Today it happened again. I had two very similar conversations, with very similar outcomes, in completely different parts of my life. All aspects of the conversations, how I started them, how I felt, the reactions I saw, etc. were parallel. I told two people that I wasn't that into things, not that I was unhappy, and that I needed to move on. Both reacted with equal honesty and good faith. I don't feel like I ended or changed anything today. I was just open about how things already are.

It was a relief after having to delay both conversations for weeks. They weren't easy conversations, but they weren't painful either. I am glad that I still have connections with these people. Funny how honesty and communication work like that.

I don't feel like I have really said what I wanted to say, but I am not feeling very articulate right now and I need to go to bed.

I just got word that hiring manager for that job that I really want is seriously considering me! I have made it over the first hurdle: convincing him to consider me for a job that is posted for 2-3 band levels higher than what I am. The next hurdle is to now to convince my current manager to give me an availability date so that I can interview with the team (I am not worried at all about that interview). I hope my manager doesn't claim that there is a business reason to keep me in this position. We are coming to an end of a release, so it should be pretty hard for him to come up with a good reason.

I am so excited!!

My life is suddenly full of little Evelyns!

Exactly one month ago, I got to meet little a Evelyn here in San Jose, and today I just got the news that there is another little Evelyn in Alabama! My cousin Jennifer gave birth to Evelyn Iris this morning at 2:00 AM.

I am very excited to have two new little girls in my extended family to balance out the sea of boys that have been showing up over the past few years.

Happy birthday, Evelyn!

What an great weekend of skiing! I just got back and am exhausted, but still on my skiing high. Again, Tahoe has the most amazing skiing I have ever experienced. The snow was just as good as two weeks ago, and the weather was perfect. Here is a really really long blog about it!

Friday

After finally being convinced that leaving during rush hour was crazy, Tom and I were on the road to South Lake Tahoe a little before 8:00, after picking up rental gear at Mel Cotton's and eating dinner. The drive up was a breeze. No horror stories to recount. There was no traffic, the roads were clear, and we never got lost. The drive up 50 was actually very pretty by moonlight. We checked into the super-happening, place-to-be Motel 6 in South Lake Tahoe, played in the show a bit, tried on some new gear, and went to bed.

Saturday

The day started with both Tom and me waking up around 6 AM, too excited to sleep. Finally at 7:00, I got up, not able to wait any longer. We drove to Kirkwood and were skiing at 9:30. Not too bad. The snow was great and the weather was beautiful. The one problem was that my phone didn't work! There were a couple different groups of people who we were hoping to meet up with, and we couldn't get hold of any of them, except Sameer and Vijay, who ended up at Heavenly and so weren't even there.

So Tom and I did a few runs together before I took off on my own and explored the back side. Ok, for those of you who know Kirkwood: yes, the backside is cool, has lots of powder, etc, but is it really worth the 90% the time that you spend on the stupid lift? I got tired of spending all of my time on the chairlift, and heading back for the front, just in time for lunch and a nice little snow flurry to go with it.

My other issue with Kirkwood: no espresso! We were in such a rush to get to Kirkwood that morning that we didn't even stop for coffee, assuming that they would have some there. Wrong. Now I know that Kirkwood isn't about the amenities, but is it too much to ask for a little espresso stand? A girl's gotta feed her addiction.

The combination of my communication issues, eating lunch in the snow, and the lack of caffeine got me in a sort of grumpy mood. But, the sun came out and Tom and I did some really fun runs together after killing ourselves on some really mogully runs. By the end of the day, I felt like I had found my skiing chi and was having a blast. Even my painful rental boots weren't slowing me down. I also think that my emergency diet Pepsi at lunch helped. On the drive back to South Lake Tahoe, Tom was barely awake, and I was loudly singing along to Pinkerton in my post-skiing giddiness.

Before I go on though, I must confess: I am one of those people. I caused much cursing up and down chair 11 at one point on Saturday. But I blame Tom. It is all his fault. You see, when we were getting off of the lift, he fell right in front of me. By the time that I paused to miss him and tumbled off myself, I had hit the special red bar and shut the whole lift down. So yes, I did cause the lift to stop, which if you know me, is something that annoys the hell out of me, but it really wasn't my fault. It was unavoidable. Hmm...maybe I should keep that in mind the next time I am whining when I am on a stopped chairlift.

That night we finally met up with everyone and went to dinner. It was a really fun group and we had quite the time trying to explain how everyone knew everyone else since some of us barely knew the people we were introducing to others. We laughed and joked and gorged ourselves on delicious food. After dinner, we were all too tired to do anything else and we went to bed, planning to meet at Kirkwood the next day.

I wasn't as tired as Tom, but I was still pretty damn tired. But, just when you want to get a good night's sleep, you can't. I should have fallen right asleep, but I didn't. I tossed and turned and tossed and turned for what seemed like hours (Motel 6 doesn't have clocks in the rooms, or closets, or Kleenex, but I digress), and kept waking up during the night. While my body was tired, I couldn't turn off my poor little brain.

Sunday

After a night like that, you can understand that I wasn't jumping out of bed when the alarm went off at 7 AM. Tom wasn't either because he was pretty sore from his first day snowboarding after a couple of years. We both lay around in our beds, waiting for the other person to make the first move. We didn't get up until 8:00 when Vijay called to see if we were ready to go. We weren't. I admit that I was wondering if I was really up for second day of skiing. After all, I had never skied two days in a row before. I told Tom to open the curtain so I could see the weather. I saw a beautiful blue sky and that was enough motivation to get me out of bed.

Even with our delay, we were still ready to ski at 10:30 and Tom and I met up with Sameer and Vijay (phone was working at this point, after unblocking roaming, genius). We started out together but soon Vijay and I were off skiing on our own. It was tons of fun because he and I were at the same level and liked the same runs. The day before, I spent a lot of time in ungroomed powder and pretty hard stuff, but on Sunday, Vijay and I spent most of our time on groomed or packed snow. And that meant going really fast. There were lots of groomed black diamonds that we could chase each other down on the verge of out of control.

At lunch, we were meeting everyone else at the bunny hill lodge (I don't know the real name of it), but we got over to that part of the hill early and had time to do a few boring runs. So this was the perfect time to try out the video function of my camera. We were so impressed with ourselves. Vijay would snowplow a few feet ahead of me with the camera pointing backwards, while I performed for the camera. Performing meant skiing very slowly down the bunny hill, but it was fun. We were quite amused, although the other didn't seem quite as impressed with our cinematic achievements when we showed them over lunch.

We met up with Gabe and his friends again for lunch, and afterwards, Tom, Vijay, Gabe, and I headed up Cornice Express. After one fun but uneventful run, I had my big wipeout for the weekend. We were going down a run that had some groomed and some not, and when I was going particularly fast, I hit some ungroomed, my skis crossed, and I went down. And down and over and around and down. When it was all done, I was upside down with only one ski. My back hurt and it took me a minute to catch my breath. Gabe came and helped me get my other ski, which was down the hill a bit, and I was back on my way again not much worse for the ware. But, no one saw it! If I am going to eat it that big, I at least want my friends to see it so that they can tell me what happened! Why have a big spectacular crash if there are no spectators?

I ended Sunday like I did before: doing my favorite run off of chair 11 over and over and over. I even got one last run in after 4:00 because the lift attendant realized as he was letting me on that he had kept it open too late. By this time my shins hurt so badly from the stupid boots that I could barely ski, but if the lift was still open, I was going to do another run no matter what. Even though I could barely walk back to the car because my shins hurt so much, my muscles weren't sore and felt great at the end of my second day.

Tom, Vijay, Sameer, and I caravanned it back home. We wanted to stop somewhere around Stockton for dinner, but after not finding anything that met my no-fast-food and Vijay's vegetarian requirements, we ended up a Chinese restaurant in Tracy. It was 8:00 when we arrived, so they told us that we could only get it to go. The only place to sit and eat was the curb near the dumpster, so that's where we ate our cheap Chinese food. We all agreed that it was pretty bad but yet still much better than any fast food place.

I got home, Tom took off, I said hi to my cats, and that's it. A great weekend.

More pictures

I have been tossing around the idea of taking the GRE because I have been tossing around the idea of going back to school. So I looked at the study materials for the test and realized that my algebra tutoring would really help me on the math section of the test. For example, I can simplify an irrational expression a helluva lot faster now that I could six months ago. And I have been forced to relearn how to solve polynomials.

But that is just the algebra part of the math section. There is also geometry and data analysis. I was ok with the geometry up to the point where I was supposed to know what the angles were in a regular octagon. And for data analysis, I remember mean and median, but can't remember what mode is. Ugh!

I mentioned how tutoring is helping me if I end up taking the GRE to the tutoring coordinator, and that I would be willing to tutor geometry too because it helps me just as much as the student. Turns out that there is a student waiting for a geometry tutor! We have to work out some scheduling, but hopefully I'll be getting some geometry studying in along with my weekly algrebra review starting next week.

Now I know that I could just sit myself down and quickly relearn the geometry and algegra rules and do some practice problems, but that assumes that I have the self-disipline to actually do that. If there is someone waiting for me and needing my help, I will take the time and effort that I won't bother to give myself. Plus, teaching really is the best way to understand the material more thoroughly.

I ended up talking to the tutoring coordinator and another tutor for a little bit about going back to school and what I really wanted to do with my life. I found out that a teacher at that high school with eight years of experience and master's degree is paid in the 60K range. Why do I have to make such a huge financial sacrifice to do something more rewarding than working in the corporate world? I just want to be able to make my mortgage payment and take some weekend trips.

We talked about how no job is perfect and that there are going to be trade-offs. And for teachers, the job satisfaction and lifestyle outweighs the big downsides of salary and standardized tests. For me, I don't think that the things that I like about my job (the money, work conditions, benefits, satisfaction from doing something that I am really good at) are outweighing the bad things (lack of promotion, politics, disorganized chaos, depressing downward-spiral attitude of everyone).

The really hard about the whole mid-twenties crisis is that I really don't know what field I would be passionate about. I am worried that I am going to make all of these changes in my life, spending all of this time, money, and effort, and end up hating my job all over again. But I guess the sooner I move on and try something else, the more time I'll have to move on if I don't like it.

I think I have a pretty good plan in place though: I have given myself this year to figure out what I want to do because most programs have an application deadline around December. This is will give me enough time to explore different careers and talk to lots of people, and do the prep work like taking the GRE.

Ah yes, the GRE. There is now a writing section. I looked over the prep materials for that and I am feeling pretty good about it. Since I write as a job, even though it is a very different type of writing, I think that I have keep my writings skills much more fresh since high school and college compared to my math skills. And the verbal section just takes some practice to get comfortable answering those type of questions. So I think that, with this tutoring, I should be in good shape!

A little lesson that I learned today:

If you are going to stay on the phone after a conference call with your team to talk to a tester about some defects, and you end up in a little bitchfest about the project, make sure that the team lead has actually hung up and isn't listening silently on the line for over a half hour.