BIATHLON!

Rebecca (pictured above) and I did a biathlon Saturday in Seeley Lake, MT and ho my it was so very fun. It was 3 k ski, 5 target shoot prone, 3k ski, 5 target shoot standing and 3k ski. However, you had to ski penalty laps for each missed target. I skied a total of 6 penalty laps, one the first time and 5 the second.
I am in the background here shooting. In the first picture you can see me in the corner leaving the shooting area. It was a complete blast. I will definitely be doing it next year, but I will be working on my skate skiing (or will use classic XC skis) and will do some target shooting. I highly recommend trying this sport if you're at all interested.

DANNI & TED GO SKIING

Ted and I went to the mountain today, and it has been a long long time since Ted had skiied. I was sort of jealous at how quickly he went from apprehensively skiing the "magic carpet ride" to readily tackling some steeper stuff on another chair that took me a really long time to want to try. He says he had fun.
The sun eventually came out (not pictured) and we enjoyed a beer outside on the patio afterwards. That's one of my favorite parts of resort skiing. Another favorite part is improving -- on Friday evening my friend Shawn wore skis (rather than his normal board) and gave me a lesson on making parallel turns. It's really fun to progress at something new.

Yesterday I skinned up the mountain with my friend Quinn. It was incredibly foggy, so I went down an easier run from the top while she practiced her tele turns on a different run. Somehow I managed to go to the wrong spot at the bottom and had to take a chair back up to where we had parked. Getting off the chair I hit myself in the face with my ski poles, which was pretty ridiculous. That was a lot of fun though. I really can't wait to get out touring. Plus, when I was skinning up with Quinn I realized I'm losing some cardiovascular fitness with all this chair-lift skiing, beer drinking and lack of running. . . .

I'm Loving Skiing (and our holiday loot)

This is my ski-buddy Corey, who is actually a snowboarder (though she has skiied her whole life, she's learning to board -- though this is her second winter so she's actually quite good).

I'm really enjoying skiing, which surprises me since I'm such a wuss. I have my ups and downs, and the downs sometimes result in snow going up my nose and me in unusual positions on the hill, but on the whole I really feel like I'm making progress. I've been doing ok on blue runs, and am hoping to soon trade my "pizza" turns for some "french fry" turns. (South Park reference anyone?)

Also, it's pretty ridiculous for me to post food pictures since I'm the furthest thing from a cook, but I figure if anyone else out there is as lazy as me, these are good tips. My sister-in-law Lucia sent us this great collection of curry spices from Penzeys as a Christmas gift. I made a super fast and easy dish by sauteeing mushrooms, garlic and onion in olive oil, adding some tandoori spice, then adding half a cup of light coconut milk, then adding frozen tail-off shrimp (I love Costco) and a handful of spinach. (That sentence is long, can you believe I pretty much write for a living? Scary :p) Even without adding any salt it was really good. And pretty low-cal/low WW point. I would guesstimate 300ish calories.

I am also enjoying playing with my new camera, which was a Christmas present from me to me. Thanks me! Thme!

January is the virtuous eating month

Though that is a beer growler behind the new kitchen gadget as well as our wine aerator, which has boosted our cheap wine drinking into a whole new dimension.

At least for me it is. My parents got us (by way of geneous gift certificate) the above kitchen gadget for Christmas. It's a mandoline (sp?) and juliennes, slices, crinkle cuts and all that fun stuff. I've been wanting one forever but Ted is firmly against extra kitchen gadgets. This one seems like such a basic and wonderful item, I finally won and got one.

I used it over lunch for the first time and made this zucchini pasta. I julienned the zucchini so it looks like linguini, sauteed it with red onion, garlic, mushrooms and shrimp, and tossed with spaghetti sauce. The whole thing was 5ish Weight Watcher points, and would be less if you used less olive oil. It's also nearly "Paleo" and would be strictly "Paleo" if you weren't lazy like I am using Ragu.

STILL ALIVE

Not that there's any reason we wouldn't be. We did spend 8 days visiting Ted's folks as well as mine -- it was great to see family. It's too bad we can't see them more. We're blessed with great parents that are fun to be around. :-) We returned New Year's day, and I promptly went skiing and experienced night skiing for the first time. These pictures were taken Saturday night. I'm not sure why Jesus is on the ski hill, but I quite like this picture below (my buddy Corey is on the left).

I have some fun running plans coming up, but I'm terribly out of shape right now. It will be interesting to see whether I have enough residual endurance and running muscle-memory to survive my planned fun. . . in the GRAND CANYON! at the end of the month with friends. I'm really well fed and undertrained right now, but I'm banking on that muscle memory thing.

Ted's parents got him one of those groovy Flip video cameras for Christmas, and I took some great niece videos, but I need to figure out how to upload before I can bore all of you with Stella movies. I will try to control myself. It is not, afterall, my toy anyhow :p

That's the latest and greatest. If the sun ever comes out I will be able to get some excellent photos. It has been so foggy lately you can scarcely see your hand in front of your face up high in the mountains. Enough rambling.