Lianne's perspective... Saturday!

In the morning, it was snowing like crazy. I heard a report later that we'd gotten about 10 more inches of snow. Marie and I officially kicked Derek out to go skiing, since otherwise he'd be waiting who knows how long and kicking him out made him feel less guilty about it. Hah. Diana played her game, Marie and I vegged, and everyone else slept. I went out to get my skis a couple of hours later. And coincidentally, met up with Derek right as I was heading out under the snap-snap-snap of Marie's camera. Our lodge had an access trail right to the slopes, which was great. There was so much new-fallen snow that hadn't been groomed at all, so skiing was very different than I'd experienced before. Derek stuck to the green trails with me after tumbling down the blue ones. It made the going slower, though, which I liked even though it was pretty bumpy. I'm a control freak and want to feel completely in control of myself before I go fast. This year I switched to shorter skis, which also helped control the speed. But it was gorgeous outside... exceedingly foggy, even with goggles, so the ski lifts seemed to disappear into the clouds, but with all the fresh snow on the ground and trees... really pretty. And I didn't have any ski boot trouble! I was actually feeling pretty confident about skiing in general, particularly feeling that the previous month's practice and the shorter skis were a great help.

We finally got cold enough to head back to the lodge, and people were awake! Kami showed off her video game (crazy weird hypnotizing thing that it is... even I was entranced, and I hate video games!) and books for her classes that looked really fun. Derek headed back out for the last bit of skiing before the Snowshoe side of the mountain closed (night skiing was open, but we'd decided to save that for Sunday) and got back later than intended because he missed the last lift to the lodge and had to take the shuttle. We were at the far end of the mountain, which meant finagling your way up, down, and over to get the proper lift.

We got out the margaritas about the time we started playing Diana's karaoke game, because Marie decided she needed fortifying. Plus we fully intended to tweak our noisy neighbors. :> I can only imagine what they thought, but we didn't really care. My voice was off for the first couple of songs I did, which was kind of disappointing since I'd picked ones I know I do well. Ah, well. It did better later on. Ran called me Henrietta Homemaker because I was being so diligent in getting everyone drinks and getting dishes cleaned up. *wry grin* I suppose I am with that group. It's ingrained now after so many anime nights where I refused to let Derek have to clean up after everybody every time and I would be the ONLY one to help. But that's why I'm Captain! ;-) It was also my turn to cook that night, so I started putting together the microwave casserole my mom taught me the other week. I think it came out pretty well, but by the time we ate I was well and truly tipsy. We ate around the bar-island part of the kitchen instead of at the dining room table, and right as we finished I kind of sank down to the floor and stayed there. Kami came over and was hugging me, and the next thing I knew EVERYONE had sat and/or flopped on the kitchen floor. It was crazy, and strongly reminded me of high school when my friends and I would all migrate to the kitchen floor to talk and my mom would come in and tell us to go in the living room and look at us like we were nuts. There was no alcohol involved then, but this night there certainly was.

We finally got back up and into the living room (though it took a while!) and put in Kami's cosplay video show from Japan. It was hilarious, with some crazy costumes and stunts. But it got a bit long, and I abruptly decided that I wanted to get in the hot tub. So I just got up, got changed, and walked right out to the tub without saying a word to anybody. Of course, it took a while for me to struggle the lid off while being tipsy, so by the time it slid off Derek had changed and come out, too. Oh, it was great. I love hot tubs in cold weather. It makes the perfect balance so I don't overheat (as I have a tendency to do with showers). There was lots of silliness, though, throwing snow around and watching it melt when it touched the water... but it was nice to relax and we got to talk for a while and then Kami and Jeff came out to join us. At that point Marie had to get pictures, so she popped out the upstairs window with her camera. We threw snow at her. It didn't work.

I don't know how long we were out there, but it was a long time. Kami and Jeff finally bailed and we stayed in for even longer. I think it was about 1:30am when we dashed back inside, freezing even in that short time. Ran and Marie had gone to bed, but Diana was playing games and Kami and Jeff were still up. I got showered and changed and flopped on the couch while more video games were played. I don’t remember much, since I pretty much zonked out and finally stirred to move upstairs about an hour later.