Lake Tahoe

So last weekend Rachel and I along with a group of her friends from work went to Lake Tahoe to go skiing. I had a blast, and have some pictures to share.

We got a rental van that we filled to the brim with Rachel and I fitting in the back.

At lake Tahoe we rented a large house that was quite amazing. The house had had like 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.



Along with a pool table, which we only sadly used once. And a Hot tub on the back porch. Nothing like a hot tub to soothe away the long days of skiing.

The skiing itself was fun, and the view was quite amazing. The first day we went to Squaw Valley, then the next two days we skiid at Heavenly.





Some of my favorite runs were the ones where you were skiing down the mountain, and you look up and you see the snow peaked mountains all around the valley, with the beautiful Lake Tahoe in the middle. It was quite breath taking, and these pictures cannot do it justice.

As for myself skiing, I started off on the Greens, think beginner slopes. But by the second and third day I was doing well on the Blues, which are the intermediate slopes. Rachel however was doing the blacks and the double blacks the whole weekend and having a blast doing it lol. Basically our group had about every possible level of skiers from the pros, the really good skiers, okay skiers to beginners even worse than me lol. So most of those days we split up into groups of 2-4 and tackled the mountain that way.

Here then is a picture of the group of us. We mainly ate in at dinners and brought sandwitches onto the mountain for lunch. Overall it was a great trip, and I encourage anyone who hasn't tried skiing to hit up the slopes!

I'm on Youtube.

So yeah I was informed today that I am now on Youtube. Check it out below.



Anyways I'll try to put up a post on my trip to Lake Tahoe last weekend as soon as I get ahold of some pictures. It's enough that I might actually join facebook. Ah well.

Game of Thrones

I've been meaning to do a post on this for a while now. To be honest this is something that I'm very excited about. My favorite book series being made into a TV series by HBO, its a dream come true. And with the likes of Sean Bean playing the main Character Ned Stark, this will be epic. I'm so bad that I"m contemplating how I will get HBO just to watch this series.

Anyways below is a couple of clips from the show. Do get excited!

Here is a short trailer:


Here is a longer documentary style:

Patent Office in Detroit

Patent Office in Detroit?

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and PTO Director David Kappos will be holding
a press conference later today. I expect that they will announce plans to
open the first USPTO satellite office in Detroit, Michigan.

UPDATE:

It is confirmed here is the press release.

Karate Tournament

This past Sunday Nov. 21 I attended and worked the Karate Tournament. As can be seen below, at the end of the day I took home 4 first place trophies and two 4th place trophies.
While all those first looks suitably impressive... it is really easy to get "1st" in board breaking, as a whole group of us ended up tieing. For example breaking 4 boards on Standing and Stepping palm strike. I did though manage to break 6 boards with my side kick, and there was only one other person that I tied with there. So that one at least was pretty exciting! The 4th first place trophy I am quite proud of and was for my spear weapons form which I made sure to get a video of.


The fourth place trophies were for regular forms (which I really honestly felt I should have placed higher with.. but oh well) and sparring. Overall I was very happy with my performance and on the whole I was in a very competitive divisions and feel lucky I was able to place at all.

There was a professional photographer at the event Cascades Photography. They should be posting pictures pretty soon, so if anyone is interested you can look at all the photos for the day, and then you can order pictures as well if you so desire. Once they go live, I might add some of them to this blog if possible otherwise.

*UPDATE*

All the pictures of the tournament have now been posted. I hope you all enjoy them for those of you took the time to look through them.

Skydiving

As promised, I was looking for new and exciting ways to make Mom and Grandma worry. I think Skydiving counts!
And here is a quick video of us landing.

Dancing and Signing

This past weekend Rachel and I went to a dinner dance sponsored through my work. There was a amazing dinner buffet as well as an open bar, followed by a couple hours of dancing. It was quite nice, and I managed to snap a picture.
This picture has the benefit of us not being sweaty in it like the one from old rag lol.

Then on Saturday we managed to head over to a local Border's Bookstore to catch Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal at a book signing. In this case they were signing "Towers of Midnight" the 13 and penultimate book in the Wheel of Time Series. A series of books I have read since I was in Junior High. The original author Robert Jordan died about three years ago and his widow and editor Harriet McDougal chose Brandon Sanderson for his replacement for the last book (or as it turned out three books) of the series. At the signing both Brandon and Harriet signed my book. Harriet along with discovering and editing all of the Wheel of Time books is also known as the editor on another somewhat known book called "Ender's Game". Anyways it was great meeting them, and I got a signed book out of it!

As an extra bonus can you find waldo?