A New Year and a New Beginning

Well,
My first entry of 2008...hopefully it will be inspirational. I've been getting a lot of flack from my audience for not keeping up to date for this I ask for your forgiveness. The last week has been pretty busy for me with getting things sorted out with my move to CO and wrapping up responsibilities here. Things are never as easy as they appear on the surface.

On Friday, I headed down to LBC for my last college regatta. Trying to get an early start, i left the house at 0830 only to find that the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge would be closed to several overturned semis. Great way to start a miserable drive to LA. The winds and rain were absolutely ridiculous the entire trip. What should have taken me 6 hours took me almost 12 hours. Went through downpours, sick winds, dust storms, and on the way back, snow on the Grapevine. Total craziness...

At the regatta I caught up with some old friends from the east coast schools. They are all headed out to Salt Lake City this week for some epic skiing and college sailing discussions. They were disappointed in me not going. I'm still a little worried about my bones healing to go downhill skiing. When I go skiing with this group, I always seem to push the envelope ie skiing through chutes, trees and hiking up the steeps to the sick drops. Maybe I will go next year but this year its all about getting back on the bike and riding hard and fast.

On Saturday night I went to a really great Thai restaurant with my friend Alyssa. It was quite delicious. The ordering dialogue went as follows(reminds me of Soup Nazi):
Alyssa: "tom khan soup"
Waiter: "coconut soup"
Alyssa: "no, tom khan soup"
Waiter: "coconut soup"
Alyssa: "uhh okay"
Alyssa: "Penang curry with chicken"
Waiter: "red curry"
Alyssa" Penang curry with chicken"
Waiter: "red curry"
Alyssa: "okay"
Alyssa: " pad thai"
Waiter: "pad thai with shrimp"
Alyssa: "okay"
Alyssa: "mango sticky rice"
Waiter: "okay" (it had to be reordered later on)

I am there just sitting and kind of laughing because everything she ordered, the waiter said something different. I don't think there was a language barrier, maybe there was. It felt more like Alyssa wanted one dish and the waiter felt otherwise or felt we were going to have this and not that. Quite funny b/c we had no wiggle room with this guy. Food was great though.

Enjoy the rest of your week and I will be more on top of blogging so I don't get harrassing emails from a select few in my viewing audience =)

BTW, if you are in the Bay Area, be sure to come by the house on Jan 26 for a culinary expose and send off party. Email me for details.

Chow,
Matthew