sweat is when your body wants to cry

everything starts to seem a little better after you finally get past an ugly deadline. and none too soon, at that. thank the gods. we turned in the SENSYS paper on thursday night, and it wasn't really up to snuff, but at least it was complete (if short), and we did submit it, for better or for worse. i'm just glad it's over.

the weather was beautiful on friday, so i left early and went out running for pretty much the first time this year. yannick spotted me from his bicycle in ouchy, and rode next to me for a while, which was cool. we've both been so busy that we haven't talked much lately. in fact, the company probably provided a nice distraction, because by the time i got back home my little gps gizmo said i had gone nearly 13 kilometers. probably a new record for me.

later that evening, he called and asked me if i wanted to go snowboarding the next day. of course i wanted to, and did, but wow, did running that far ever suddenly seem like it had been a really really lousy idea... ha. so i met him and godefroy saturday morning, and we went up to morgins. i was sore, and it took me a bit to get into the swing of things again, but while they were more skilled than i, it was only by a managable amount, so i didn't have too much trouble keeping up (definitely a plus). the weather was incredible, and the snow was okay, but later in the afternoon it started to melt and became heavy and mushy and turned into a big mess. but i had a blast.

got home at about 6:00, and called conlin and dena, since we had tentatively planned to get together in the evening. i took the dvd player i got for them over, we moved some furniture around and got everything set up (they recently got a television, and so had to re-arrange so it would be comfortable to use it), and made a somewhat sketchy looking lemon-meringue pie (i was trying to get rid of some leftover ingredients, principally egg whites, but there were enough "substitutions" that happened over the course of the recipe that while it was still tasty, it wasn't particularly impressive to look at by the time it was finished). i also lent them the first season of veronica mars, because i knew it was something they would really enjoy (and i was right). we saw the pilot together, and then i came back home and crashed.

incidentally, that show has really sucked me in. i don't know why, because it's cheesy and soap-opera-ish, but somehow i just love it. probably has something to do with the ridiculous one-liners they're always whipping out of nowhere.

oh, right, but before i actually crashed, i got a call from ildar, who (you guessed it) really wanted to go snowboarding on sunday... hahahahahaha. wow. i couldn't turn him down, but boy was i going to be hurtin' after that.

we did go, though the weather didn't look like it was going to be very good. we went up to glacier3000, and actually we were above most of the clouds so it wasn't bad, the only problem was the most of the area was closed on a severe avalanche warning. but the one long run that was open was actually a pretty nice one, and well-adapted to our skill level (i was very glad of the fact that ildar is closer to my degree of competence than the people i usually go with that i have trouble keeping up with, otherwise my legs would have fallen off by the end of the day).

the contrast was pretty low in the morning, so i occasionally had trouble seeing where the bumps were and tossed myself a couple times, but it was still fun. after a nice lunch in the restaurant in the lift station, we continued, and the sun came out full force for a while, which was excellent.

during the last run, however, a cloud blew in, and i don't know if it's fair to actually call it white-out conditions, but it was by far the closest i'd ever experienced, and it was fucking creepy. i mean, fog in a city, sure visibility is short, but at least you can see the ground under your feet. this was like floating in a sea of white nothingness, except that you knew there were ledges out there to fall off of, but you didn't know exactly where. i was scared, but luckily we had been on the same slope all day, so we had a pretty good idea of where the turns were supposed to be, and so we could find the periodic orange sticks that marked the sides (incidentally, they were spaced way to far apart to actually be useful for anything other than a confirmation that you actually had correctly memorized the trail). we got to the bottom alright, but after that, i wasn't really interested in going again, and it was pretty close to the time we had planned on leaving anyway, so we called it a day.

and boy, did my body hurt like nobody's business... i just hope there's some gain that goes with all this pain. ha.