Bowl me over

I feel like I'm getting in a rut here just reporting the weekend news, but suffice it to say, other than just being generally busy, not much notable seems to have gone on during the week for a little bit. I haven't been able to get my outside riding in and that has contributed to my blah attitude as well. At least the weekends have been full of some good times.

Friday in the midst of the snowstorm I opted to hold our plans to get together with Pete and his daughter for a fun evening. We hit Hu-Hot for dinner and Miranda decided she'd like to tag a long since it's one of her favorites. Who was I to say no. Plus, it gave her the opportunity to get to know Pete just a bit as well since they really hadn't met. The food was good as always. Really though, if it isn't very good, you've just about got to blame yourself for making up some weird combo of meat, noodles, veggies, and sauces since it's all up to you. Pete and I each polished off close to two plates full before we decided enough was enough and closed out the tab.

You'd have thought the hour and fifteen minutes it took me to get from the east side to dinner on the west side would have been the eventful part of the evening. Or maybe it was hopping up on the median island to go around two cars stuck side by side going up a hill. Nope, the real fun began when we tried to hit our planned after dinner activity. We were going to take the girls to Glazed Expressions to try to get some craft time in and maybe have them make something neat for mom's for Valentine's day. Alas, we pulled up and a nice sign informed us they were closed due to weather conditions. Bummer. We floated the idea of hitting the inflatable indoor kids park called Jumpin Jacks and headed that direction. It was equally vacant. Finally, we settled in on bowling. Funny enough, that probably was the best fun we could have had. The girls had a ball, Pete got scolded for walking down the lanes after a dead ball, and we both laughed like madmen watching the girls.

The girls contemplating a split

Corley waiting for a 3 MPH ball to ease its way down the lane

Part of her victory dance when any pin was knocked down

Pete giving Ava a pointer or three

I can't quite tell if she like bowling or not...

Saturday was the return of Valentines. We opted to stay pretty low key this year. Sometimes we do a little more for each other and other years we just enjoy our time spent with each. As long as you show your partner on a regular basis how much they mean to you and you love them, do you really need a day where you pay homage to them by trying to outspend the next guy in line? Seriously, its such a farce to think that a single day of gift giving could make up for 364 days of not giving a rat's ass. OK, enough ranting for now. I hit a little over 2 hours in Lou's pain cave on the trainer along with Pete and Kris. I still wasn't feeling all that great, but I put in a decent effort. Saturday afternoon we found ourselves enjoying some time with my cousins who were all in town to help celebrate our grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. It was good to see all the family.

Keeping with the low key theme, we rented a movie on Saturday night and snuggled the night away on the couch. I know I'm a bit late on the bandwagon here, but Iron Man was a pretty kick ass movie and will probably be one we add to our collection.

Sunday was an early up and meet a few other hearty souls for an hour of snow shoeing through the fresh powder at Denman's. Squirrel had been out laying tracks and Saturday and I definitely felt a tinge of jealousy knowing I didn't have time to get back out to enjoy some bike time on perfect singletrack. We did have a good time shoeing though and even crossed a few of the ice flows that were dotting Denman's due to the river backup. A scant hour later and I was on my way home to spend some quality time in the garage.

I have this engine project that has been ongoing for closing in on 3 years. A guy paid me to build a motor and transmission for his car and it took about 2 years to get all the payments in place. In the mean time, life got busy and shifted directions as well so I hadn't put it together yet. Well, it's finally time to pay the piper so to speak and I started in on putting it together. It's amazing how quickly all the little things come back on building these motors. There are just so many little steps that I developed as I learned how to build these and things I won't skimp on. So, it actually slowed me down a bit as I had to run and get a few various supplies that I hadn't had the need for in several years. I did get a small dent put in it and now I'm on my way to crossing another thing off my list.