Check out some of the best portions of Obama’s Super Tuesday speech.

If you want to see the entirety of his speech, click here.

Obama came to Santa Fe on Friday; it was awesome. The organizers were able to fit 3600 people into the Santa Fe Community College Fitness Center; 3600 people…jeez…that’s 5% of Santa Fe’s population! That’s not even counting the ~2000 people who didn’t get in.

Yes we can.

Scroll down to the bottom if you’d like to donate to the Obama campaign.

Wow.

The movie is absolutely beautiful on every level imaginable: cinematography, musical score, story, character development, acting…everything. I especially love Ray’s focus on the actors’ and actresses’ eyes; the emotions they convey are immense. And the moods stirred by exacting cinematography is unbelievable. If you haven’t seen it, check it out! Keshav, Mom, Dad…you all are going to *love* it!

Knowing Neema’s suggestions are usually right up my alley, I also picked up the second in the trilogy, Aparajito. If it is anything like the first, I’m going to enjoy my Monday evening on the sofa.

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, tune into KEXP 90.3 FM! If, like me, you aren’t lucky enough to live in Seattle, then check out their website. The DJs there rock and play *great* music. What I love is that they don’t play any specific genre; they just play the best music, new or old, from all genres. One thing I love is that they have an archived, realtime playlist on the site that you can always go back to and get the name of a song you heard. Even better, they archive two weeks of music so if there was a particular song or show you wanted to hear again you can easily get it. If you’re into live performances, then you should check out their in-studio performances. And if you want to get a new song everyday, check out their podcasts. You’re sure to find something new with these guys. Quality stuff.

If you’re looking for new tunes in a particular genre, try out Pandora. Just enter an artist or song and they’ll start playing music they think you’ll like. Their selections are based on the Music Genome Project and are really, really good. What I love about this site (and what I wish KEXP would introduce), is their bookmarks. Whenever you like a song or artist, you can just bookmark it and you can use that to find the songs on Amazon or iTunes. Check out my bookmarks here.

Hope you find something you like!

For almost as far back as I can remember, my family has loved surprising each other. My first memory of a family surprise was back when we lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. My older brother was off in college and he said he wasn’t going to come home for one of the holidays. Then one evening, we got a knock on the door and my brother was standing there with a big smile on his face; he’d managed to book a flight, land in a city more than an hour away, and get a ride back home without raising any suspicions. Since then, both my dad, my older brother, and I had surprised the family at one point or another. This past Christmas was my little brother’s chance to get in on the surprising end of the action.

I was going to drive from New Mexico out to Oklahoma to spend the holidays with my little brother. Since he was enrolled in intersession classes, we didn’t expect to go to be able to go to Atlanta (where my older brother lives) or Bahrain (where my parents are residing). The night before I left for Oklahoma, though, my little brother said his professor cancelled all classes between Christmas and New Years Day and he suggested that we roadtrip 14 hours out to Gerogia and surprise my older brother and family. It was a phenomenal idea! I drove to Oklahoma on the 21st and we took off for Atlanta early on the 22nd. We arrived late and weary on the 22nd and surprised my older brother, Bhabie, niece, nephew, Bhabie’s sister and her husband. My older brother was shocked, to say the least, and even though Keshav and I were exhausted when we arrived, we ended up staying up until 4am playing Pictionary. Yes…we’re all board game addicts.

On top of playing various board/card games, I got to take my niece and nephew swimming and rockclimbing, we played basketball and video games, and we went to see butterflies and some amazing holiday lights at Callaway Gardens. The roadtrip itself rocked, too: my little brother and I listened to music, bonded, and had some great BBQ at the The Golden Rule in Irondale, Alabama. I couldn’t find it on the menu, but order “a Pork sandwich, sliced, inside cut, spicy.” Thanks for the heads up, LeMonte.

Sigh. It was all awesome. All the things I had intended to get done over the break didn’t get done, but everything I did was so much better than anything I had intended to do.

About two weeks ago, I went back to Wolf Creek for for a three full days of surfing and skiing. I still love that place.

I organized a trip for 8 or 9 friends and scored this great place in Pagosa Springs. Luxury. The kitchen was huge, the ceilings were high, and the craftsmanship was beautiful. If you’re ever staying in Pagosa Springs, definitely consider Lisl and Dan Keuning’s homes; they take really good care of them and are very hospitable. Even though our house came with a hot tub, we spent our warmer moments over at The Springs. There is nothing like having your hair freeze while your body is soaking in hot water and your muscles are unwinding.

The week before we arrived, Wolf Creek got pounded with snow…again! No avalanches this week, but they had about 140″ base on Friday and it was still snowing! Though most the runs got packed out by our second day, there was still tons of fun to be had between the trees. On Saturday, the sun came out and the trees were looking fabulous. At the top of Treasure Chair, there was a particular grove of evergreens that were blanketed by some of the thickest snow I had ever seen coated on trees. I unstrapped from my board and just went wandering around taking shots. It was pretty surreal.

On Sunday, James, Erin, Julie, and I strapped on our telemark skis, slapped on some climbing skins, and blazed our own trail at the top of Wolf Creek Pass. It was my first time cross-country skiing with my telemark skis and I loved it! Some of my favorite parts were having the winter silence occasionally broken by gentle “whooophfs” caused by large quantities of snow falling off a tree into deep powder. My personal milestone that day: I took my first backcountry telemark turn down a gentle slope…and bit it. I still have a long, long way to go with telemark skiing; luckily the season is still long.

Sunday was also the first time I got to play with my new toy: a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. With it, I was able to track our XC route and when I imported the track file into Google Earth, I was able to get this terrain map. Pretty sweet!

After the snow settled and the sun started shining again, Wolf Creek was sitting under 51″ of fresh, light snow. Wanting to learn how to telemark, I burned my thighs on a couple of runs with my skis, but then I just had to strap on my snowboard and start surfing in the powder. It was amazing! I can’t believe they’re expecting to get *another* 40″ of snow this weekend! Unfortunately I’m going to have to wait until the weekend of the 14th for another chance on the snow. But since I’m organizing a trip for a group of people, that weekend will be full of skiing, cooking, board games, and sitting in the hot springs in Pagosa Springs.

Yes.

If the current weather predictions hold, Wolf Creek is expected to get 53″ of snow by Sunday.

Fifty-three inches!

Can you feel my excitement?

About a month ago, I went hiking along the Big Tesuque trail in the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains around Santa Fe. It was my last chance to see the fall aspen leaves before the cold nipped them off the trees. At the lower elevations, the leaves were still looking good, but as I took the trails to the top of the ski area, the leaves were thinning out. This thinned out look combined with the filtered, harsh sun made for some eerily beautiful shots of the aspen groves. Close to the top of the trial, I found a great clearing where I could read, munch on some dried mangos, and watch the sun go down behind Santa Fe. Here are some pictures from that afternoon.