Results matching “Snow”

Snow, take two!

It wasn't on the plan to go skiing two weekends in a row - but the trip a week ago had actually been planned for a week prior. And this one was pre-paid, so I couldn't get out of it. Which considering how sick I was on Friday was not such a good thing. So I went along, thinking I'd have to take it easy as I doubted I'd be able to breathe.

Got up at the same time, had a bit of breakfast, and Steve gave me a lift to the bus stop. Coach was a little delayed, and got progressively more delayed as we waited for people. We got to Bullock's Flat just before nine o'clock, however we arrived just after all the other coaches. So it was absolute chaos in the rental shop. They rushed us through getting boots, then we stood for forty minutes queuing for skis. It was an absolute nightmare, I'll definitely not be doing that again. I'll do what I've done previously - drive myself, have brekky in Cooma, hire gear in Cooma or Jindabyne and rock up all casual like for an early Ski Tube.

So managed to get on the 10am Ski Tube and went straight up to Blue Cow where I went and got breakfast. I figured if I had breakfast at 10:30am I wouldn't need to stop for lunch. (Steve caught the 9:20 Ski Tube)

Had a couple of runs on Pleasant Valley by myself, then down Roller Coaster and up the Ridge Quad, where I met up with Steve and Al. Did a couple of runs each on Side Saddle and Zali's. Then they went off to get some lunch, and I went back to Pleasant Valley to get my confidence back (which I lost a bit on those scary blue runs ;) ).

Pleasant Valley lift

Top of Pleasant Valley

Met up with Steve and Al again and we did Pleasant Valley and Roller Coaster and Side Saddle and I think Zali's again. Then we did Excelerator (!) Managed to do well enough until right near the bottom where I stacked it in front of the lift queues - doh!! That was my fourth and final stack of the day, so didn't do too badly.

Al and Steve on Summit Quad

Blue Cow

Steve at the top of Excelerator

So then meandered our way back through Blue Cow, Pleasant Valley, Copperhead Road, up the Pretty Valley lift and back down to Front Valley. By this time it was nearly 4pm and they wanted us on the 4:12 Ski Tube back down, so I called it a day.

Front Valley

So the day actually was pretty good after a grumpy start. I got boots that were the same make as last week, and in fact a size smaller (25.5 instead of 26.5) and yet these ones weren't as uncomfortable as the ones last week which really hurt my legs where they squeezed tight around my lower legs. Didn't spend as long on the snow, but then didn't get as exhausted either. The conditions were a lot better, although that meant the snow wasn't as good - getting slushy in places and icy in others. This and last weekend were the first times I'd ever been to the snow on a weekend - I've always only gone midweek before. But the queue lengths weren't really any worse. The Ridge Quad late morning had a ten minute wait, but everything else was quite quick.

Coach ride back was pretty uneventful, and even managed to doze a little - after my coughing fit. For some reason I didn't cough too much during the day, and didn't feel short of breath either - go figure! It did catch up with me somewhat yesterday day though. Starting to feel better now finally.

Snow - with pictures!

4:25am my alarm went off yesterday morning. After only managing four hours sleep - urghh!

Got ready and went and picked up Steve, then went to Nat and Andrew's to swap cars. Got away at 5:15 from their place. Arrived at 6:35 at Cooma where we went and hired our gear. It was really cheap - $38 for my skis/boots/poles, minus a 10% discount that Steve could get us. Although the boots were a bit loose around my feet and really really tight around my legs (my legs still hurt from the pressure!). Dropped into The Scottish Restaurant to pick up some takeaway brekkie but had to wait about fifteen minutes in the queue :/ Got away from there at 7:30.

Coming into Jindabyne.

Arrived in Jindabyne at 8:10 where we got our lift passes. Then headed up the mountain. We were going to Perisher and it was cheaper to pay the park entrance ($27 for the car) than four lots of $27 for the ski tube. But the cost of that was an incredibly slow drive up the mountain. We couldn't get Nat and Andrew into the morning lessons, but that was probably a good thing, as we wouldn't have made it in time. As it was, we made the 9:34 Ski Tube up to Blue Cow.

So we get out of the train and the whole place is just white. Snow white. Air white. Couldn't really see a thing. On a lighter note at least the snow was really good! Just couldn't see it!

We went to the really flat bit just above Blue Cow and tried to teach Andrew the snow plough :) Did a bit of going up and down around there, then had a couple of goes on the early starter slope. So for Steve and me it was a pretty easy morning. Had a slightly early lunch then Nat and Andrew went off for lessons.

We had a couple of goes on Pleasant Valley - which I normally hoon down, but there was so little contrast I was going really hesitantly.

Pleasant Valley lift

Then we had a go at Roller Coaster, which for some reason I've never been on before. This run was under the cloud line and has an amazingly pretty view. I was pretty hesitant the first go, but later on we came back to it and I went a bit faster. The top bit really is like a roller coaster - very cool.

Did the Ridge Quad to do Zali's a couple of times and the Summit Quad to do Side Saddle.

Steve on the Ridge Quad

View on the Ridge Quad

Heading for the clouds on the Ridge Quad

At 3pm we met up with Nat and Andrew who had finished their lessons and had a few small runs with them on Early Starter. They'd improved enormously with their lesson. Then we left them to have a couple of runs by themselves with the plan for them to catch the Ski Tube down to Perisher and we'd ski across.

So we did Pleasant Valley, Copperhead Road (I'd forgotten now long that run is!) and up Pretty Valley lift. Took me ages to find my way across to the top of Front Valley cause I'd basically forgotten where I was from last time. Eventually found it though. Had a couple of runs on Front Valley before finally heading back to the car just after 5pm.

Made our way back to Cooma to return our ski gear and pick up some Maccas for dinner. And home about quarter to nine.

Had a lot of fun. Fell over a few times, the most frustrating on Zali's cause it was quite steep and the snow was really slippery, so took ages to get myself up again. Steve was very patient with me though, waiting at the bottom of each run for me :) Pretty crap conditions, but really good snow quality. Aching quite a bit from the traversing.

And I'm doing it all again this Saturday. I must be insane! ;)

Snow

Would blog. Too tired.

First

Well since it's the first of the year and all, thought I'd do this "First" meme I saw on Dawn's blog just today (even though it was posted a month ago) ...

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
My first "prom" I didn't take a date too - that was our Year 10 formal. For our year 12 formal I took my boyfriend of the time (Mark)

2. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Well I'd had sips of my grandfather's beer when I was younger. Didn't have my first full beer until I was 25, and it was a Corona.

3. What was your FIRST job?

Shop assistant at a newsagent

4. What was your FIRST car?

A bronze Ford Laser. It was my special, but someone kidnapped and murdered it :(

5. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
Striker

6. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
Stubie

7. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Miss Rees.. I didn't like her much at the time.

8. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

New Zealand when I was a toddler

9. Who was your FIRST best friend, and are you still friends with him / her?
Donna Bonnefin. No, she dumped me for Kerry Williams and I've only seen her once since (and that was in 1988). I think she's a nurse somewhere..

10. Who was your FIRST kiss?

Charles Cordingly. He was from Western Australia and I never saw him again.

11. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

Stubie

12. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Got up and went to check my mail.

13. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
The Choirboys. Our school entered a competition to have them play at our school and we won.

14. What was your FIRST tattoo or piercing?

My only piercing was my ears at the end of year 9.

15. What was the FIRST foreign country you went to?

New Zealand, but I don't remember any of it.

16. What was the FIRST movie you saw in the theater?

Don't remember, would have been something I saw as a kid. I do remember seeing Snow White at the drive-in once when I was pretty young.

17. When was your FIRST detention?

I think the only detention I ever got was part of a class detention.

18. What was the FIRST state you lived in?

New South Wales

19. Who was the FIRST person to really break your heart?

Mark I suppose. We broke up shortly after starting to go out, but got back together. Was with him another year before I finally got rid of him.

20. With whom was your FIRST date?

Probably Mark I suppose.

21. What was your FIRST pet?

We had a blue budgie when I was very little. I got another blue budgie for my seventh birthday. His name was Bluey.

22. Who was your FIRST roommate?
Stu (I've never lived with anyone else apart from my family)

23. Who was your FIRST love?

Man, Mark is certainly getting more than his fair share of entries here :(

24. What was your FIRST screen name?

Kazza

25. When did you have your FIRST baby?

Never had one!

2008 Year in Review

2008 was certainly a momentous year in the life of Kazza.

The first big news story of the year was that I got married to Stu in April. I spent several months planning the thing, and planned pretty much everything myself. In the end, the day went pretty successfully and everyone seemed to have a nice time. I got the wedding I wanted for the most part, although I did get very stressed out by the reception venue, and they ruined the enjoyment of the reception for me.

Following the wedding we took off on our honeymoon, spending a night in Japan, then a month touring Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Took six and a half thousand photos between us and generally had a blast. Lots of places we'd like to go back to!

The other really big news story of the year is that we bought a house here in Canberra. And seemingly at just the right time - right in the midst of the world financial crisis which was very scary, but the subsequent drop in interest rates will save us something like $12000 per year!!! We still have a couple of messy rooms, but are very much enjoying the house and we've had several groups of people stay with us.

Work has been a bit variable. The first couple of months of the year I was still feeling very overwhelmed by the place, yet didn't have too much to do so was very lost. After the honeymoon I was put on call, which meant learning a lot of things by being thrown in the deep end. I was also dumped on severely with work, and found it very stressful from time to time. Can't see any sign of letup any time soon :( After a particularly crap day one night in July, I starting drinking with the guys earlier than usual and finished relatively late, which really launched the weekly drinking sessions (which up until that time had been a lot shorter and quieter).

Other travelling included the trip over new years last year to visit Chay and David, a weekend at the coast with Scott and Kerry, a weekend in Sydney in March and another in July to attend my Nana's 80th birthday party, visit James and George, and see Stu's grandmother and aunties. Two days and ten hours of driving was pretty tiring. Chay and David came down just after Christmas to stay, which meant we spent two new years in a row with them which would have been cooler had I not collapsed in a grumpy/depressed heap.

In fish news, we cut the number of tanks from fourteen down to seven. Fourteen was far too much work and fish were getting severly neglected. Seven is a bit more manageable but we may still cull further. Moving all the tanks to our new house was definitely not fun, but we got most fish moved with only a few casualties. One of my original angel fishies is still alive, making her six years old now. She has appreciated the big water change of the move and laid several batches of eggs after the move.

Eating out, we tried a few various restaurants. We discovered Satis in Watson in the middle of winter. Satis is vegetarian and we have been there three or four times, although not since we moved. Then there is the Kingsland vegan restaurant in Dickson which is fantastic. Have only been there twice, but will definitely be going again. And Fortune Box in Gungahlin is still a favourite shopping day lunch spot. Bella Vista in Belconnen and the Dumpling Inn in Jamison are favourites as well. Fanciest restaurant we visited all year was Watersedge on Lake Burley Griffin. This was two weeks before the wedding after I'd had my hair and makeup trial, so we got dressed up and went out for dinner. Was very nice, but of course very expensive!

We tried to see Stu's brother every week for a "sci-fi" night. We watched all of Firefly, Serenity and some Battlestar Galactica. But towards the end of the year this all got too hard. Hopefully we'll do something next year.

Movies seen this year:

Juno - pretty good, if a little unrealistic
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - fun but too ridiculous and too much on the "yeah right" scale
Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina - very well done, but hard to keep up with the subtitles and watch all the action
The Dark Knight - good movie, but dark and very long
Quantum of Solace - ok, was too tied to the last movie
Australia - very enjoyable, but very long (really it's two stories back to back), so don't know how would stand up to repeated viewings

And finally, a few other snippets:

This blog had its 5th blogiversary and was celebrated with a new design
Visited the Planetarium before it closed and met Andrew
Little Squishy was born
Went to the balloon fiesta
Bought an Eee PC
Set off fireworks on cracker night
Went to a six-day SANS course
Got excited by snow falling in Canberra!
Went to an astronomy night at Mt Stromlo
Went to two trivia nights - one with Nat and Andrew, and one at work
Had the house wired with cat 6 by my brother and Shane and Chris
Took the booze train to Tarago
Played Zone 3 for the first time and actually won a game
Big family Christmas with all of Stu's family and Kerry's family

So that's about it for another year. Hoping to be a little more organised next year and more relaxed about life...

Snow in Salzburg!

It snowed all over Salzburg in the past few days... snow all over the lowlands now as well..

Back!!

We finally got the internet connected today. Which is wonderful. A little slow though.. probably noise on the extension that brings it closer to the computers. Yet to be fiddled with.

One of the first things that my myriad of browser windows reloaded with was this.. snow on Untersberg!!

Cool stuff in my browser tabs

I have this really bad habit of opening tonnes and tonnes of tabs in various browser windows with links from Life Hacker and Boing Boing and blogs and such places. As well as links that I open and use but then never close. Of course then my computer starts chugging under the load.. oops...

So thought I'd clear a few out..

There's the eight year old Google search as seen on Blogography a while back. Eight years ago I was still on the front page of Google for Kazza :) Apparently this won't be around for very long.

I completely and utterly want one of these for Christmas. And a licence to fly it. And a maintenance crew to take care of it. Ok I'd settle for going in one. Hell even seeing one in the air would be nice...

I still have Beep Beep open in YouTube, and the lyrics, although these aren't quite correct.. I suppose I could look for more correct ones but that would require effort.

A useful tutorial I found on crontab when I was looking for the syntax for setting one up. I've setup to download a snapshot of the Untersberg web cam three times a day to qualitatively see how often the mountain is in cloud. And see the changing moods of the countryside. I first saw some fresh snow there in late September, but that quickly melted. There was a good covering a few days ago but that's melted too. One of these years I'll get up that mountain - it's one of my missions in life!

Edit: Added The Atlas of the Real World, with pics here and here.

Sunday a day late

Urghh. Sunday was tiring.

So we were out the door at 7:20 to be in town by 8 to pick up Rully for breakfast. We toddled off to My Cafe in Manuka which was one of only a couple of places open so early. Stu had French toast, and I had the mushrooms and capsicum on toast..

My Cafe

After breakfast we headed for the hills .. Red Hill in fact. Nice view, but looking into the sun..

View from Red Hill

Stu wanted to be friends with kangaroos..

Kangaroos on Red Hill

I don't think they wanted to be friends..

Kangaroos on Red Hill

There was even snow on the Brindabellas over Woden..

Snow on the Brindabellas

So by now it was mid morning, so we dropped Rully off and headed out to Yass for lunch. Which was very pleasant, and had a delicious lunch and Little Squishy was being very cute..

Little Squishy

And took a walk in the sun and photographed the flowers..

Wattle tree in bloom

Early cherry blossoms

Daffodil

So that was all very nice, but we didn't get home til after 5pm .. and so after having been out *all* day we were pretty exhausted. Felt like crawling into bed when we got home. But after *stopping* for a bit felt a bit better.

Snowy Sunday

This morning we meandered down to the lake to see Stu's favourite family of swans. We took along some old bread, which they rather enjoyed. Entirely too cute...!

Swans

One of them got a bit agro at a crow..
Swans

Swans

The grown ups were happy to eat out of Stu's hand
Swans

Swans

Next we went for a bit of a wander around the lake.

Fed some seagulls..
Sea gulls

And kept walking around to find the cormorant we passed on the way in.

Cormorant

Stu wanted to be its friend..
Cormorant

Stretch...
Cormorant

Up close..
Cormorant

Cormorant

Coming back, Black Mountain tower had emerged from the clouds and the weeping willows are budding..
Willow buds

For lunch we went to Satis *again* (third time in three weeks?) .. but this time met up with Sean and Mel. Stu had scrambled tofu and Mel had banana bread...

Satis again - scrambled tofu