Make the bastard chase you, he will follow.

Me about 4 years ago. In Wisconsin.

It's not every day you cross a state line. Tonight's blog post is a special one, and I hope you're ready for a ride.

Before we get into anything, let's go back about a week to see what I was up to.

If you remember a couple weeks ago, I went to San Francisco for Peggy's Birthday, and at the birthday, Peggy's former Husband Bernard (or is it Keith? I don't know. Do YOU care? Probably not.) and he brought along the parents of this mentally disabled guy he takes care of sometimes and that guy's parents. Then those people heard my dad is a handy-man and decided to hire him to fix up their house so they could sell it or some shit. So, they called him to go up there and look at their house. So he did. And he dragged me along.

We made a stop at A&W.

So he looked in there. And they asked me to try and help them with their computer. Why do you buy a computer if you don't use it? I don't get that. If you don't have any use for it, why even buy it? It's an expensive investment if all you want to do is e-mail. You can e-mail for free at any library in the US. They have these little machines that do just e-mail. You don't need a fucking iMac. And I'm not talking about one of those new cheap imacs either, I'm talking about an old ass CRT monitor imac. Worthless. Anyway...

Then my aunt angie came over, with some bright idea for scripts and stuff, and talked me into buying this program for her, which I think I already mentioned.

But then, we we went out to get me new clothes! I mean, I just made a comment to my mom "my pants aren't going to last too long" and she's like, "well shit! let's go shopping!" so we did. And I got a couple pairs of pants and like three shirts. Which was nice.

The only place I seem to be able to buy clothes is at the Big and Tall store in Emeryville. Do you know what else is in Emeryville?

(I was in the back seat of a moving car, give me a break)

Pixar Animation studios. Yep. I love Pixar.

After this, we went to Juan's Place in Berkeley, and it was nice.

Angie and Mom outside of Juan's.


Juan's entrance.

And that was nice. Then we went home. End of that chapter.

The next day school started. My classes are okay. I had to go to Japan town on foot to buy my Kanji books, but it was fun. Too bad I didn't have my camera. That was a long day though.

Hey before I forget, recently my mom has tried to stop my dad's cursing by telling him, "I don't mind your cursing but your mother will." Since my mom's vacation is next week, they're going to drive down to Palm Desert to visit my dad's parents. Since my mom's vacation started after work on friday, they decided to do something else too.

Hey that sounds like a good segue.

We went to Lake Tahoe! Whoo!
In case you don't know, Lake Tahoe is on the eastern center of California (western corner of Nevada).

See it there?

It's one of the deepest lakes in the united states, and it's really, really blue.

This was the first snow I saw on our trip.

I don't know about some of my readers here, but snow for me is pretty rare. I'm more used to stuff more like this:

Yeah...

So it's a treat!

This is what I woke up to. Just amazing.


My mom. I know ya'll aren't too interested in my family, so I tried to maybe make the picture a little more interesting.


Burger Spa. Boy, I'd want to eat there.

Just down the street from the Burger Spa was a place. A building that once held the place where my parents were married 20 years ago. It's now a lingerie (thanks to KW for the spelling) store. last time we drove by it, it was a boot store. How many married couples can say that?

Lake Tahoe is beautiful though.


Mom, Irene and dad.

We went to this place called Emerald Lake, which is attached to lake tahoe, and well. I put 50 cents in a damn telescope thing. There was so much snow, I wasn't really at eye level with the damn thing, I tried to make the most of it though.

There we go. There's a castle!


There's Irene infront of Emerald Lake. It's nice, isn't it?


There's the whole of emerald lake.


Yay! Random people! Don't you just love them?

We then drove over to the other side of the lake, and walked out to the bank.

I hear it's rare for snow to make it all the way to the bank like that.


Dad having some fun.

We then went on to Truckee. It was so bright up there. I had to buy some sunglasses.

Pimp Daddy Ed.

That picture was good enough without any of that exhadurated contrast, but, I didn't want to sell any ski goods, and I didn't really want to show off my stubble and stuff. Dad said I looked like John Candy with those glasses on.

Then we went over to Squaw Valley and took the tram up to the top. From the tram:

Man, something crazy interesting about a hot tub in a bunch of snow. I wish I could have taken one.


There's the lake as viewed from Squaw. It was quite amazing, even if clouds were making the sunlight look shitty.


While we were up there, Dad won an olympic medal for drunkedness.


Skiers at night. I think this turned out pretty cool.

If there's one thing I love about snow, it's how they look at night under halogen light (and the moon light, but there was no moon that evening). I always loved the night levels in 1080 snowboarding, or SSX. Course I always was terrible at those games. Terrible at any of them snow sports. Bad at snowball fights. But meh, it's still fun to go up there.

The ski run from the tram going down.


Dad and I on the tram with the ski run behind us.

And that's it for tonight. Tomorow I should give you my experiences crossing the state line into nevada and the casinos dad and I found there. And on that note I leave you with a little fear and loathing.

(Different part of Nevada...)

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Oh PS.
Dad is watching this movie that is using the song Arabesque way too much in it's score. Crappy plot too. If you're interested, it's called Portrait of Jenny.