Yesterday I tried to go to the one act festival, but arrived right in time for lunch break. The next one act was schedule too late for me to see all of it, so I didn’t get to watch any of them.

I met Joey & Linda and we all went to a screening of a great little homegrown movie called “Immigrant Garden” which was from a play written by Caroline Wood. Caroline has written several plays that have been put on locally, and quite a few of them have had Joey in them. In the movie was really only one actor I recognized. That was Kurt Harris who was in Romeo & Juliet and Moonchildren in which I was also.

This morning I realized, I think, why I keep waking up at 3am in the morning. There’s a train that goes through woodland at that time and somehow the sound of the whistle was echoing all the way up here loud enough that I could hear it clearly.

The air in that room is really dry. I’ve been waking with my mouth completely parched, and I think it’s causing my sinuses to dry out too. I’m not sure what to do about that excepting perhaps to buy a little humidifier and run it at night.

I left around 7:30am to meet with Joey & Linda this morning. We left from their house to go pick up Christina and Josh. Christina was in Romeo & Juliet with Joey, Linda & I also. She was Linda’s bride’s maid when I was Joey’s best man at their wedding.

The five of us, with me driving us all in the jeep, tooled up towards Mt. Hood and went to Mirror Lake on snowshoes. Man, that was some good fun. I could have kept going. In fact, it was funny because I was running around in circles once we got up there, zigzagging around, as the rest followed like ducklings. There were actually quite a few people up there. I also tried snowboarding for the first time. Well, I did manage to get down the hill we were trying it on without falling much, but I also couldn’t quite stand up all the way without starting to tip over, so I kind of crouched the whole way as I came down. It was okay, but I don’t think I got a very good idea of what it would be like really. I’ll have to try it again sometime somewhere meant for that purpose that’s smoothed out by other people having gone down the slope.

Anyhow, it was beautiful up there. The ice and snow on the trees was especially nice. At one point I noticed that the pattern in the snow on the frozen lake was the same pattern as the clouds in the sky. There was also a really stunning view of Mt Hood. I got a bunch of nifty pictures.

I had a load of fun. It was the first time I’d been on a snowboard and the first time I’d ever hiked with snowshoes. I could really get into that kind of hiking. It was wonderfully beautiful and I was surprised at how in shape I felt. I was sweating quite a bit, and I was using some bamboo poles that I’d borrowed from Jerry which worked my shoulders and arms, but it felt really good.

When I got home I did the morning yoga routine. I think I needed that to wind down and stretch out the legs. I can feel in my legs, shoulders and arms that I did get a workout, but it’s a really good feeling.

Next weekend, Linda, Christina, perhaps Josh and I are all going to do some crosscountry skiing. That will be the first time I’ve done that ever, so that will be pretty cool. Joey can’t go because he’ll be at work. Anyhow, sounds like Christina is interested in the Seattle-to-Portland bike ride too, so I won’t be alone in beginning to train for it from scratch. We made a pact to be pathetically slow together on the ride.