Gandalf and Galadriel for Halloween

Gandalf and GaladrielDarlene and I ventured out as Gandalf and Galadriel for Halloween this year. We spent the afternoon with Jon and Siobhan, who is recovering well from some complicated and unpleasant oral cancer removal surgery and associated tissue transplants.  As a hopefully amusing distraction, we took them on a little adventure playing Tales of the Arabian Nights. Let’s see, I think Siobhan’s character was crippled and driven insane, Darlene was imprisoned and repeatedly unable to arrange an escape, I was scorned for a while before under going a sex change and Jon stumbled into marrying a passing stranger and somehow into respectability and eventual success.

Later that evening, we joined Kathie, Dave, Kevin, Vanessa, Lisa and Rachel for more gaming while awaiting the very few trick-or-treaters who dared knock on the door.  We got in games of Welcome To… and Decrypto as well as a few rounds of Jackbox Games’ Fibbage XL via the AppleTV.

Alas, no other pictures for Halloween this year!

Return to Mammoth Mountain

I haven’t been skiing at Mammoth since the early nineties, after college, but it’s where I learned to ski in high school from nearby Bishop.  And I had forgotten what a great big and diverse ski mountain it is – though I’m sure I also wasn’t skiing as much of any mountain’s terrain back then either.  Anyway, driving to Mammoth from Santa Cruz/San Jose in the winter isn’t very convenient (given all the Sierra passes are closed) and  you have to essentially drive by many other great ski resorts to do it.  However, with an extended stay at our new place in Tahoe last week, it was easy to hop down to Mammoth for a couple of days (just a three hour drive) and make use of our Mountain Collective passes.

We got some nice, typical spring skiing conditions: overnight frozen snow, following the sun as the slopes softened up from east to west to north.  Plus Mammoth is so high (peaking at 11,000 ft), it was easy to avoid any sticky slush that would develop lower down.

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