...as I know it, and I feel fine. See if you can figure that out from the pictures below :)
Steamboat has continued to be awesome. The weather has been great and we got to catch the sunset on top of the mountain. We also went snowmobiling yesterday. It was a blast! A few pics below, and I'll post the whole set when we get home.
Here is a big panorama I took. Its a reaaaally wide and big picture so be ready.
We started out our vacation by flying into Denver and heading up to Fort Collins. Our friend Chuck lives there, and we picked him up on our way to steamboat. While we were in Fort Collins we took advantage of the New Belgium brewery tour. New Belgium makes Cathy's favorite beer, skinny dip, as well as one of my faves, Fat Tire. With it being winter, they had a few awesome seasonals on tap, and it was the perfect start to our vacation. After a round of beers, it was time to head up to Steamboat.
Since we left Fort Collins late, we knew we would get a little of the snowstorm that was coming in, but we didn't quite expect it to be as bad as it was. We were driving 20mph and using our GPS to tell us where to road was headed as we couldn't see a damn thing out of the windshield. It was a helluva drive, but we made it no problem.
The skiing yesterday was sort of tough, as the 12 inches of snow didn't get groomed in time. The blues turned more difficult as ruts developed. It also snowed all day, and the fog made visibility a little short. It was still an incredibly fun time and we got our ski legs under us, as we haven't been out since Breckenridge last year.
Today was a totally different day, as the sun shone through, and the 13 degrees felt more like 50. The slopes were just awesome and we took quite a few runs down. Cathy turned in a bit early as her back was hurting, but the rest of us finished off the day on the slopes. We took quite a few runs on Tomahawk and the surrounding blues, did some jumps, and finished off the day with "3 oclock run" which was about the longest black diamond ever. Here is a pic from 3 oclock with the iPhone. I'll take the real camera tomorrow and have some awesome pics.
So I can't believe its been pretty much a whole month since I posted anything. Even though it was supposed to be a super easy one, the last few weeks have been pretty busy and crazy.
ARRC
So November started out with the American Road Race of Champions. I have a car that is absolutely capable of winning this IT National Championship, but it wasn't to be. While I had a great qualifying run, I got punted on the 3rd turn of the 1st lap, which ended my race in a rough way. I ended up getting pinballed around by a few cars, and ended up out of the race, every panel on the car bent, and some busted suspension pieces. I was and am pretty miffed about the incident, so I took some time off from the car and decided to worry about other things for a while. I'll get back to the race car early next year. About $2k worth of damage or so, so not the end of the world. I had really shitty video, again, which prompted me to ask for a new bullet cam for Xmas. Next year, I'll have plenty of video action.
Kitchen
So we finally finished painting the damn kitchen :) The color ended up great, and Cathy's mom visited and helped with painting the trim. All we gotta do now is clean it up and take some pictures. Coming Soon!
New Hobby - HTPC
For thanksgiving, we went to visit Cathy's brother and family, and I saw their showtime streaming box for streaming PC content to their HDTV. Oh I was hooked. After considering a few options, I realized I had my old pre-upgrade PC still sitting in our office. I purchased a case at Microcenter, and a few hours later, had a new HTPC (Home Theater PC). 720p Blue Ray movies, TV shows from Europe, playing h.264 converted backups of my DVDs. I love it. Also for my birthday, I bought myself a new receiver, so now everything in the entertainment center is using HDMI. This thing is awesome. After watching Casino Royale in 720p with DTS sound, I think it started to grow on Cathy as well :)
Work has also been nuts. We've been working on some end of the year projects and its been 150mph since the beginning of October. All exciting work, but I've been working so much, I've been forgetting to post some of the cool stuff I've been doing. Once the new year hits, I'll have to write some of the cool JS things I've done on here.
Last but not least, we're heading to Colorado for the next week. Going to do some skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling in Steamboat Springs. Its been snowing pretty good the last few weeks out west (we have 28" of base) so the skiing should be good. We'll have plenty of pics of the trip and shenanigans when we get back. Its also going to be VERY weird not working for 2 weeks (going to Raleigh right after), but somehow I think I can manage :)
