Me and some crazy people

(Mom)

Hellllloooooo?

Hey there. Where is everyone at? I hope things are well in everyones respective city. Things are a little hectic starting today this week. But hopefully it won't be too overwhelming. I went to Hood River, OR on Saturday and met up with Kenny and my friend Tyler. We rode Mt. Hood on Sunday all day and then drove home on Monday. It was a pretty good little adventure. Anyhow, I'm going to go kick off my day. I just wanted to give everyone a shout and also post this picture of a shirt Rachel my like (yes, that is Punky).

Pack of Matches

Timmy--sorry I didn't call you back the night you called. Ann and I were engrossed in "A Long Kiss Goodnight" which was a long, trainwreck of a movie. But hilarious. Every character called Geena Davis a bitch. And when her eight-year-old daughter fractured her wrist after an ice skating fall, Geena told her to get up because "Life's full of pain. Get used to it." Reminds me of our childhood. Samuel Jackson was also a main character who should have been dead at one point, but drove a car with what I can only assume was a piece of his lung hanging out of his mouth.

So that's what we did. The End.

Actually, we ate a lot of food with Janice and I tried to convince Ann to throw around her pregnancy wherever we went. Need a seat on the subway? "Pregnant lady over here!" Need to cross the street at a dangerous opportunity? Hold up my hand and yell "Pregnant lady over here!" At the end of a rollercoaster line? "Pregnant lady in the back!" Unfortunately, I was much more excited about this than Ann.

Also, we took to naming her baby. Since she's looking at a 4th of July delivery date, we thought the name should be patriotic. For example:

Abe
Justice
Francis Scott Key
Roman Candle
Sparkler
Snaps
Pack of Matches (or POM for short)

Here's the three of us after brunch on Saturday:
















And the lucky guys who got to join us:

















On Saturday, we ate at a restaurant called HQ. Delicious dinner, and delicious pre-meal bread that smelled like wet dog. Afterwards we saw the play, "Room Service" based on a Marx Brothers' film. It was filled with hijinx and pratfalls. Very entertaining.

On Sunday, we took the train out to visit Janice and her husband, Sean, in Brooklyn. We ate cannolis at Fortuna Brothers--known for the best cannolis in New York--and then found ths graffiti picture on a walk afterwards:


















So that sums it up. Tim, maybe I'll go on that juice diet. (P.S. Ann mentioned something about red pebbles?)

Zoom zoom

Teaching classes, working, fixing bikes, sailing the sound, and meeting up with people this last week has been pretty busy. I just hope to god that things slow down sometime soon. I need a day to just sit around and watch a movie or something. I'll probably go climbing tonight until my arms feel like they're going to fall off and then do something relaxing. I think having tomorrow off will be pretty nice as long as I can get this project done for work today. It's a pretty interesting project dealing with the emissions around the great lakes. Who would have thunk that I'd move out west to do work on emissions back in the midwest, eh? Anyhow, I hope things are well with everyone else.

Rachel - Do we get a photo tour of your weekend with Ann and Janice?

Andrew - If you're home sick how come you aren't posting on here?

TS

P.S. Here's a good game. Click me.

Famous Friends

This is Becky. Becky Witkop: Best Buy advertisement. We were both paid $25 to have our picture taken on Broadway for an ad campaign at the New York Best Buy stores. I think they paid me because they knew Becky wouldn't do it if I didn't. Isn't she lovely? Peter told Becky she looked glorious and then told me, "Sturtz-- Maybe if you'd start taking care of yourself when you go out, we'd be celebrating you, too." Well then.

In two days, Ms. Ann Marshall will be in NYC to hang out with me and Janice. Peg might come on Saturday too! Hey-yo! Not sure what our plans are yet, but I know about a great party on Friday and I'll have to see if preggers will be up for it. Otherwise, I'm going to be Ann's roommate at her hotel, so I'm sure we'll paint our nails, talk about boys, and order late-night adult entertainment.

Kidding. The fumes from the nail polish would be terrible for the baby.

Tonight, I went with Peter, Walters, and a couple of other folks from Esquire to a Mentor/Mentee reading called "Women Write Now". Basically, it's made up of professional women writers and "underserved girls". At first I read it as, "Undeserved girls" and I thought, well, screw that--I'm not going to listen to their creative writing if they don't deserve my attention. But then I saw the 'r'. I'm thinking about signing up for it. It would be a lot of fun and I miss working with younger girls (besides the ones I work for at the magazine).

Bill Bradley is in town--he came in late tonight, but we're going to get a drink tomorrow after I get out of work. Part of me wants to rent Grizzly Man again.

Andrew--what's up? Shouldn't you be updating this thing like crazy because you're procrastinating studying for exams? C'mon!

Timmy, I wish I could be snowboarding down mountains. Instead, as one of the mentees so aptly put it in her poem, each day "the subway doors open and there's a strange smell. It smells like poop."

Ah, New York.

Pull it together people.

Well I hope the fam had one dandy of a weekend. I made it out to Crystal Mountain yesterday and played on a snowboard until I could hardly stand. I went with Ryan Anderson (Woodard's old roommate) and a friend of his. I learned a big lesson while I was out there; snowboards aren't as cool as they seem. I tore it up as best I could but when you need to get to the back country stuff there is no good way to move around on a snowboard. I think a tele ski session may be coming up soon and if all goes well I might have to buy some tele gear. Eventually I convinced the nancy's I was with to go back to the back country stuff and we all just loved it. Deep powder, no people, and a lot variation in terrain. We didn't take any photos while we were there but I grabbed some from the Crystal website and elsewhere.

Here's my favorite part, the North Back Country.
And here's one of the big bowls on the South Back Country.
The south back country was nice but it was just wide open and real steep. The north side offered more tight tree rides along with a bit of steep open areas. Plus the north was a longer run. Here's a shot of the trail map so that you can see where all the different areas are. (Click on the pic to blow it up.) The south side is to the far left and the north is to the far right.
Anyhow, that's what I was up to. I hope you guys enjoyed the weekend as well. Here's one last photo of Bryna and I.
Get posting you slackers!

TS