january and february ~ what's new and interesting...

The highlights!

In January we had our 5 minutes of fame with our little time lapse video of us shoveling the snow (posted earlier).  We put it on Facebook first, then we put it on YouTube, then I saw that our local TV Channel 4 wanted pics of the record breaking snowfall, so I sent them the link.  Since then, we have had 13,893 views!  About 80 new views a week.  That's pretty something since the most views we've ever had for one of our YouTube videos was 1300.  So, we officially have 10 times more views with this video.

After the excitement wore off (within a day or so), we moved on with the rest of our life which involved more shoveling!  Lots more.

We're figuring out a couple of things about ourselves regarding "entertainment".  We watched the movie Les Misérables.  It's a beautiful movie and as usual, we had to have the subtitles on otherwise we surely wouldn't have even known what anyone was saying...in song form.  After the movie was over, Jerome says "I wish they didn't have to sing everything".  I couldn't agree more.  Later in January, we went with friends to see the Russian Ballet "Sleeping Beauty".  While sitting in the front row, which is typical with our friends, and gazing upon the "beauty" of the very short tutu and the very tight leotard, we realized that we had no idea what was going on.  So, we all pulled out the Playbill and read the story while the ballet was being performed.  Afterward, Jerome said "I wish they would have said something".  So basically, for Jerome, you shouldn't sing everything but you shouldn't dance everything either, without some dialog.  Musicals and Ballet seem to be out of the question.

We had also gone to see a play at the Wayne State University Theater and decided that we would rather see professional theater or at the least, community theater.  Such snobs!

Jerome mentioned that he would like to go skiing this year.  I can't remember if it was his idea or mine to take a look into Boyne Highlands and Boyne Mountain up in Petoskey Michigan.  Either way, I gave him the go ahead and he started planning the trip.  He thought we would see if some of our old crew would like to come along.  So we mentioned it during a dinner party at our friend's house.  At that point it seemed like we would have them and their son, plus our friend from Argentina showed interest in coming and since he's newly single, he was interested in if any of us had a single girl friend to invite along.  We tried to make that happen but all of that fell through and it ended up only being Jerome and I and our friends Pratap, Deepa and their son Calvin.

P&D were talking about driving together with us but Jerome was going to take a half day vacation and we'd head up Friday afternoon.  P&D had to work the whole day and would come up afterward.

Jerome and I started out kind of late and needed to stop at the outlet mall in Birch Run so that I could buy some snow pants.  The next stop from there was Petoskey.  We wanted to stop at the Boyne Sport Store to see about getting discount lift tickets and see what else the Boyne area had to offer as far as winter sports.  We were going to stop and get dinner at a local restaurant that is known for its fish and chips.  But after getting all the information about Boyne, we left the store and tried to start the car and it just wouldn't start.  Jerome tried several times but it was just getting worse and worse.  We went back into the store - it was closing time. While Jerome got all kinds of info about local mechanics, tow trucks and taxi service, etc. I called our friends P&D to see how far out they were.  They still hadn't left home yet!  So, we called a taxi and left the car in the parking lot.  Luckily we were only a mile or so from our hotel.  We took as much stuff as we could fit into the taxi.

Saturday morning we got up for breakfast, contacted our friends who got in after midnight and had Deepa take us back to the store and follow us to the local foreign car mechanic; Brakes by the Bay.  We got all of that situated.  They were only going to be open until noon that day and closed on Sunday, so they wouldn't have the part for the car until Monday.  We would at least be staying in Petoskey one extra day to wait for the car.  Good thing I don't work on Mondays and Jerome had some extra vacation days from last year.

The Petoskey area is seeing a record amount of snow, just like all over Michigan, so the roads are snow covered and it continued snowing the entire time we were up there.

That day we drove together to the snowmobile rental and we snowmobiled for 4-5 hours.  I haven't snowmobiled since the mid-90's and none of the others had ever snowmobiled.  Rental was expensive, $190 for two to share a ski-doo and another $90 for each ski-doo that was a single person.  Since we had 5 people and one was a child, we had to get two tandems and one single.  We thought Deepa was going to be able to drive one on her own, but she was really afraid, so Pratap asked me if I would take hers.

While out on the trails, Jerome brought our GoPro camera and set it up in a million places all different views.  He would check the view on his iPod and then zoom away.  Well, the trails were like moguls and extremely bumpy.  One time he forgot to zip his pocket and the iPod is gone forever!  We looked and looked but to no avail.

Sunday meant downhill skiing and tubing.  P&D drove us to Boyne Highlands and we separated from there.  We did the downhill (me, the bunny hill) and they did the tubing and headed back home.  Since we were staying an extra day, we could ski til the slopes closed.  Then we got a taxi back to the hotel.  This was Super Bowl Sunday and the taxi driver was not too happy to be working that evening when he wanted to be watching the game.

I was beat.  All of this aggressive activity my body can't handle, so when we got back to the hotel, I was so sore and achy, I just laid down and fell asleep.

Monday morning the guys from the shop came to pick us up.  Our car was ready and willing to drive.  The fuel pump was the issue so that was replaced and so was the fuel filter.  Nearly $800 later, we were off.

We took a detour and drove M-119; the Tunnel of Trees.  It was a beautiful day and we saw a bunch of deer in the snow.

Got home and had to shovel 6" off of our driveway.  Glorious!