Already falling behind

At the start of this year I was thinking I'd be all on top of blogging, once a week. Well, five weeks into the year and I'm already behind. I think that's a good thing, though. Not that many (any?) people are reading my blog regularly and waiting with baited breath on my next post. And besides, I'm behind on blogging because I've been occupied doing other more exciting things. So yes, a good thing! Last weekend was really very rewarding. It started out on Friday evening with Allison and I having some friends over for frito pies, movies and beer. We watched the encore portion of P2yche, a climbing movie, before watching the movie 50/50. The movie was quite good with a genuine feel to it. And having a big group of friends over for great company was really enjoyable. Makes me want to do it more often. We had hoped to climb Saturday but an unexpected snow storm Friday night dropped 4 to 6 inches of snow thus canceling the climbing. There's never any shortage of fun things to do around here so Bill, Steve and I went and did some backcountry skiing/boarding in the Jemez finding really, really good powder despite having pretty low expectations while driving up there. After all, it hadn't snowed much in the past month. We were pleasantly surprised. So with the snow being so good, I went back up into the Jemez on Sunday with Sam and Josh for a much longer ski tour with more approaching and returning than actual turns but very rewarding because of the work involved. It's been a very busy work at week and I didn't get to run at all until tonight, Thursday, after work. The days are getting longer and this was my first evening post-work run since November. Hooray for longer days and thanks to Tom for getting me out this evening. I'm not bothered by the workload these days, though, it's really been fun work and to really motivate me more, I actually received a decent raise this week despite tight budgets all around. Definitely no complaints! Also, I'm super psyched for a development that has gone down this past week: I'm going to Denali again this June to climb and ski/ride it with friends Aaron, Josh, Sam, Andy and Sarah. We nailed down the details and purchased airfare to Anchorage for a two-week trip in late May/early June. I'm super excited for this trip. A great objective and a wonderful team of great friends. Can't go wrong! It's been nine years since I first climbed Denali and I'm excited to visit the mountain again with more experience and age now.

A photo of me hauling a sled on Denali in May 2003.