Monday, February 18, 2008

Frisbee, Basketball and Snow Shoes

President’s day weekend turned out to be a very active one. I will be feeling this one for a couple days I’m sure. On Saturday morning I was back on the DT fields with the Ultimate Frisbee team. They were in Vegas at a tournament that I was not able to attend last weekend so I hadn’t played any good Frisbee for a couple of weeks. Well the field was quite interesting. Earlier in the week the weather was beautiful. I was out in short sleeve shirts. It was great. The sun was out, the snow was melting and life was good. All up until about Wednesday or Thursday. Then Mother Nature decided to have her way with things and plop another foot of snow on us. The result was that the halfway melted snow from before turned to ice, and then there was a nice layer of snow on top of that. It made the Frisbee game very interesting. A layer of uneven ice covered by a layer of snow. Yet somehow we managed to make it through 3 hours of practice without any rolled ankles. This morning we also played Frisbee on the same field in honor of Presidents Day. The snow had firmed up quite a bit. In some places you could step on the snow and not even sink. So today there was a little more traction.

Another highlight was the basketball game. We had a rematch with UNLV, the only team in the conference who has beaten us. So this was a rematch with a vengeance. On the road BYU is a somewhat streaky team. You never know how they are going to come out and play. But at home they are a hard team to beat. And the last 44 teams to play in the Marriot Center can attest to that. So we had a fun time there, the crowd was pumped, the basketball team was pumped and UNLV wasn’t feeling it. Of course the UNLV fans that have a vendetta out for BYU still take solace in saying that when BYU played at UNLV they beat them 70-41 which is a 29 point difference, whereas BYU only won by 26 points. It was still a very sweet game.

So after running around in the snow playing Frisbee on Monday morning I put on some snow gear and headed up into the mountains with a couple friends to attack the Stewart Falls trail. We had snow shoes and everything. Let me just say, snow shoes are really really really really cool. It was a ton of fun! The trail was pretty blazed for most of the way, but when we got close to the falls the trail disappeared and we had to blaze our way there. Don’t worry Mom and Dad; we weren’t wandering aimlessly in the Utah Mountains. By the time the trail ended we could see the falls at the bottom of the mountain we were on. So we headed straight for it and tromped our way through the snow. Basically it was a blast. If anyone wants to go do something in the snow I highly recommend that. Skiing sounds like a lot of fun, but it’s expensive. The snow shoes cost me 8 bucks to rent for the day.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

French music and word from the wise

I just bought a few albums. I’ve been going through a French phase recently and so I have been getting some soundtracks to French movies and a few other things. I got the soundtrack to a film called Amelie. I highly recommend this soundtrack to anyone. It’s just quality good music. Most of it is either piano or accordion. It is very simple music, but extremely beautiful. Once I find the sheet music to this soundtrack it will be my primary lady-wooing tool. I also found the soundtrack to a movie called Banlieu 13. It's a cool movie where they use a lot of what is called Parkour in France. You can see a clip from the movie showing parkour here. Incidentally they also do parkour in the lastest James Bond movie Casino Royale. The soundtrack to Banlieu 13 is mostly rap. But it’s all in French and therefore makes me laugh, because the idea of French and rap together is funny in my head for some reason. Maybe it’s just me.
Word from the wise: Find out if someone is dating somebody before asking them out. Luckily I took this advice and waited till I had a chance to find out if she was dating someone or not. Turns out she was, and I found out because she got engaged the other weekend. That was a close call with an awkward moment.