SLUSH, CONGEE AND 360

7 a.m. Time to get up. Time to throw my snowboard gear on once again. This time, I will be propelling down good ol' Blue. This place is meaningful to me because I spent countless hours here reflecting, awing, falling, rising and learning. Despite what I've seen out West, doing the trip up Highway 400, then along Highway 26 (through Stayner, turning right when I see the Tim Horton's!) is one I was looking forward to. And, even though the conditions were a little challenging (snowy rain all day, making the playground very wet and slushy), I had a great time. I'm also grateful that I was 'Kavinder' for the day (who allowed me to use his 5x7 pass). We called it quits at around 3, since we were just dripping wet. One of us got hot chocolate spilled on us at the Starbucks (poor kid; I think he was so embarassed that he refused to accept another one), but this led to an interesting conversation I had with the father who noticed my Toronto Marathon shirt. I had an amazing candy apple in the village and then the day was over. Well, the part at Blue anyways.

Ah, good ol' Congee Wong. If there was any reason to keep up my minimal Chinese language skills (well, I'm sure there are many more importants reasons than this), it is so that I can order delicious Chinese food! And so, there I was, facing off against "luong ha yee mein" (lobster E-noodles), "wat dan ngow hoh" (Rice noodles with beef and egg sauce), "sing jow chow law bac go" (Singapore style pan fried turnip), ummm, "#7 in the rice section please" (Winter melon fried rice - hey, I told you my Chinese is limited!). Anyways, I'm surprised that 4 people can spend more than $50 here, and I was even more suprised that we finished off most of it. Except for the turnip. So, we proceeded to ask for a box to take this out. That's when I learned more Chinese. We asked the waiter for a "hup ji" (little box, literally). However, in Mandarin, this is very close to asking for a monkey ("hoh ji"). So, of course, a lot of monkey sounds and hopping around the table ensues!

So, XBOX 360 is useful for MORE than just video games. It can be used as a media extender so that you can incorporate your 50" plasma tv (if one has one) into the whole Windows Media Center setup. So, we were able to view pictures and videos from the Vermont trip with full surround sound! It was a great time reliving memories from less than a week ago. Sound bytes from the evening: "LET-ME-IN!", "DING-DONG", "Beep-Beep-Beep - here comes the grooming machine!", "AND ME!". My participation in the poker game was short lived, killed by a 9 in 2 hands that basically did me in! It was a good time!