Yeeeeoooowwwww

Arghhhhh haven't updated for ages again

Most significant news is that my family came out to visit last week, they stayed in a skiworld chalet (very authentic) down in Brio - just the other side of the village centre to me. Unfortunately they had all their meals provided for them at the chalet as I was hoping to be treated to a week of fine dining :) however on my Dad's birthday on the 22nd we went to a restaurant called Araxi, which is supposed to be the best restaurant in Whistler, and it was sooooooo gooooooooooooooooooooooood.... It's just a shame the bill was almost equivalent to two weeks' worth of paycheque, so I don't think I'll be going back in a hurry!! Not that I had to pay of course.. On the next day I took my Mum & sis down to Vancouver for a whirlwind tour, we hired a car which I got to drive, yayurh. It was f**king weird to be driving on the right hand side of the road!!! Plus the road from Whistler to Vancouver doesn't have cats eyes at the edge of the road, so it was pretty difficult to see where we were going when there was oncoming traffic in the dark on the way home, not the most fun in the world. Also the car was an American piece of trash - a Pontiac sunfire - avoid. Still, it was great fun to drive again after so long!! I miss my civic :(
On the last day I took my Dad & sis out for a whole mountain exploration, we covered so much ground!! I think everyone was absolutely shattered at the end of the day, well maybe except for this marine guy in the same chalet who came too :)

I felt a bit bad for my folks because the snow situation wasn't great (tired of hearing that yet?) but at least it was nice and sunny all week and the snow condition actually improved throughout the week, paradoxically. It actually snowed a little bit this week as you may have gathered from my previous post but that only amounted to about 10cm and now it's set to get warmer again for the immediate future.. We're thinking that maybe the snow won't even last til the end of the season (due April 17th) unless it dumps again soon. As you can imagine I'm a bit bitter that it's turned out like this the one year that I chose to come, but what the hey we can but make the best of it. On Tuesday & Wednesday this week we had a couple of pretty good powder days, Tuesday we hit Blackcomb glacier with a posse of about 10 people from work, we went to check out the ice caves too which were pretty impressive!! Wednesday we went in one of the bowls on Whistler that I hadn't been in before so that was cool to check out a new place, although it was a bit disconcerting the number of 'cliff' signs that there were dotted about the place :)

Related to boarding - I bought 2 new snowboards!!! >:) And no, I'm not rolling in it, in fact I am very poor! One of them is an Option Makinen 163.5, which is super stiff, kinda like my old board except more directional and with a deeper sidecut for better transition. I have only ridden it twice on ice though so hasn't been much fun so far! The other board is a Sapient PNB1 157, which is a twintip freestyle board and a bit softer. In fact I can't believe how fast you can go on it and still feel safe considering the flex of the board. The Sapient is awesome, it's so fast and fun plus it has bright pink sidewalls (which match my new bright pink goggles :D) and says kickass karaoke on it, what more could one want? First time I took it out though it tried to kill me by doing what I've since checked out to be a 25ft jump over the corner of 2 pistes, I damn near landed it as well, although the resulting stack inspired concerned onlookers to come and ask if I was ok afterwards, lol. Luckily it didn't hurt at all, in fact I hurt myself far more on Tuesday by landing on my MP3 player on hardpack whilst messing about going really slowly. Fun and games.

On the social scene I still haven't been going out that much because I keep feeling ill, but I went out a couple times when my family were here cuz my sis wanted to! We did bills on Wednesday, dropping about $130 on the bar between us I reckon and then Moe Joe's on Saturday, where Becky wussed out at 11.15 after I'd invited a bunch of people out :) Beck you missed Tim confessing his love for you on Friday night, in fact he was begging for a phone number - you shouldn't lead people on like that ;)
Also there was another sushi party on Monday just gone at Yukiko's house, we had pretty much the same crowd as last time but the food was even better and we (or should that be 'I') drunk too much sake :p don't think that did too much to help my cold.

I had some bad news yesterday because my Dad is quite ill with mumps and also I was in contact with him whilst he would have been contagious, so hopefully I won't catch it too!! I was advised to go to the doctor's though to see if I could get any booster or similar, and while I was there I was telling him about my general state of health recently and have been told to take a week course of antibiotics and take a couple days off work! So today I'm resting up again, having not been out boarding yesterday due to feeling crap too. I actually feel quite a bit better today but maybe I'll wait til Sunday to go back to work to make sure all's well. Also we're supposed to be having a leaving party tonight for my housemate Kim, who is going home on Sunday, but I haven't seen her for ages so not too sure what the score is with that!!

Next week I'm going down to Vancouver with Yuki for a couple days to have a wander round the shops and stuff, we're staying in quite a nice hotel so am defo looking forward :) also the week after that I'm hoping to go down to Mammoth in California to board on some real snow for a couple days - California is killing it this year, goddammit, so if that materialises then that'll be something else to look forward to as well!! Still, am keeping hope alive that the conditions here are going to be very good at some point before the end of the season.. It's strange that we actually *need* things to look forward to, because I didn't envisage ever having to stay motivated when living in a ski resort where you get to go skiing every day.. The morale at work is hitting rock bottom though. I think pretty much everyone has had enough of the place, which makes for some quite entertaining conversation, especially my friend Eamon who is totally hippy like fight the power/against the system :) an outburst last Sunday about how the lead hands are just tools of the Intrawest machine invoked the people concerned to take him aside and ask if he was having some kind of emotional breakdown lol.

Anyway! The onset of rambling tells me that it's time to end. Hope all who are reading are well :)

Abrasão, X