Looks like I made it through Xmas in pretty much one piece. To celebrate I hunkered down in my fortress of solitude, slept 14 hours, cleaned compulsively and watched the majority of The Riches (on Hulu, for free, quite a good show actually). All in all, a pretty good day.
As far a biking goes, things are looking up. I haven't had to use the trainer for a while now as I have been braving the elements with evening outdoor rides. I've got a new headlight - Dinotte 400L - its as bright as hell and the batteries don't quit (batteries: it came with 2!). The only limiting factor to my outdoor riding is now road conditions (see: ice) and whether I'm feeling up to spending 20 minutes getting layered up before heading out the door. The cold has not really been that bad this week though, both yesterday and today the mercury almost reached 60. Not too shabby for late December.
Last weekend I took another swing at snowboarding. I think I'm actually getting better. I took 8 runs down the bunny hill, and on the last 2 I didn't even crash. Feeling cocky, I took out the nifty little map that shows all the runs. I picked out a green (easy) run that would get me down to the base area. On the bunny hill (Discovery Park) I had controlled my speed by making wide swooping turns down the field. I quickly found out that the route I had picked out to get back to base was less than a quarter the width of the hill I had been practicing on and a continual dogleg to the right. This was not good. I am better at turning left (lean back, facing downhill, if you fall, you fall back on your bum, no biggie) not turning right. The narrowness of the run gave me problems and I only found one way to effectively slow my speed: crashing (falling forward, not good). First one, I hit my head so hard when I got up the snow had turned a neon green, and so had everything else. Probably not good. After the visuals got back to normal my nerves were still shot. So every twenty yards or so I bailed and pulled a digger. Not the best way to finish, but now I know I need to get those turns a lot tighter before I do that again. On the plus side I've pretty much got over my fear of ski lifts, so I've got that going for me.