danielle also materialized there somehow; she had created an entity which she had named devil bunny, and which served as a symbol which she would pull out of her pocket whenever relevant to the conversation. i have to admit that this was a particularly clever twist.
on the way there, i had encountered matt bruce, who had a crush on adrienne's fourth roommate, the first two being the factual laura bacon and emily lin. i suppose kate bennett is not a powerful enough symbol to my subconscious to endure, but perhaps i just needed a substitute. anyway, this girl was named verne, and matt was wringing his hands about how since she was black he had no real chance, since he was "an ordinary white guy" and if she was on the market she would probably go for "an ordinary black guy." i'm sure you're all pleased by my non-racist subconscious, which assured him that if she was rooming with two white girls and an asian girl she clearly didn't put too much stock in racial unity.
aside from the trials and tribulations of personality, my brain also whipped up a really nice plane ride from phoenix, in the valley of the sun, to denver, nestled high among the rockies. it's neat how the terrain changes quickly from flat to mountains and just goes up in a very jagged way. i should learn more about erosion, but there's always something better on tv. erosion doesn't make very good eye candy, i suppose, although the effects of erosion sometimes do.
back to real life, where i'm still aching from the snowboarding. snowboarding is a) the most painful thing ever, and b) the hardest thing i've ever tried to learn. the learning curve is impossibly steep; i went into it confident, and came out of the first day beaten and bruised. the amount of balance required is way, way more than in anything else i've ever done, even the balance beam. the basic concept is that you need to alwayws be digging the board into the mountain, but if you think about the physics it's very, very sensitive, and since you're not used to the situation (i had both skied and skateboarded before, and neither helped at all) it takes you and your muscles a long time to figure it out.
that and the frustrating aspect of dead spots, since you don't have poles to move you, combine for what can charitably be described as an ordeal. by the end of the three-day weekend, i was at the point where i was just good enough to be surprised when i fell and have it be that much more emotionally and physically painful because i wasn't expecting it. it's fun, but really, do be prepared for hell. i was told this and didn't believe it, and if you're like me i doubt you will either, but it's really, really hard.