well, my one and only spring break weekend is done. finished. kaput. back to teaching. i'm still off from orchestra, which leaves a lot of energy. after the wedding food tasting on friday, we left with canadian paul for bend. we arrived to j's brother's house right at dinner time, and we were lucky that their friends were there fixing up hamburgers to grill. so nice to not have to cook! (wait- i haven't really been cooking for a while...) it was fun seeing e & n, and my future brother & sister in law. their house is relatively new construction & looks really great. they all went out for a drink for st. patrick's day, while i drank my sleepy tea & sudoku-ed and went to bed. we woke up early the next morning & hit the slopes. the snow was great, as was the weather. it was pretty sunny, and not too cold. j & paul enjoyed skiing the summit lift, which is usually closed due to conditions. since i'm an eternal beginner, i stuck to basically one area. on one lift ride, i met some seventh day adventist kids from walla walla washington. they were surprised that i knew of both universities and people who had attended whitman or who went to the seventh day adventist walla walla college. anyway, after i told them i was a violinist, they told me they played stringed instruments too. one was a violinist, one was a bass player. one of them said "if michael were here, we'd almost have a string quartet!" funny. weird to hear nerdy musician things coming from little kids. anyway, i got more runs in than usual, without any major falls. we hit the deschutes brewery after we got home & called it a night. sunday we returned to mt bachelor for a half day of skiing. the slopes hadn't received any new snow, and the snow was a little crunchy & frozen in the beginning, making it a little difficult for me to move, but once the sun came out, everything softened up. we left around 2, and made our way back to portland. the return trip and especially santiam pass was a lot clearer and faster this time, and we were able to see lots of peaks- broken top, washington, jefferson... we had a few free hours before we were off again to try curling, which canadian paul organized. it was all their climbing friends, and i was definitely the most movement challenged one there. it wasn't such a fun evening as i wasn't very good at the launching of the stone, and they were actually playing a real game. i was also really really tired, not to mention sore from skiing, and was glad when we finally got home. long day, long weekend.