Okay, let's get right to the update…

Snowboarding

My first attempt at any form of entertainment based around moving on frozen water ended rather quickly, suddenly, and painfully.

Day one: The Lake Tahoe region had been gasping for snow all season, but on my first day at Squaw Valley, it was coming down in buckets. I took a snowboarding lesson from a young, short Australian lass named Julianna. She wasn't a particularly good instructor, nor even a particularly good snowboarder.

Sample conversation between me and my instructor:

EDM: How do I turn left?

Julianna: I don't understand your question.

EDM: If I'm going downhill, and there's something in my way, I might want to turn left. How do I do that?

Julianna: Hmm, I'm going to have to think about that one.

I rewarded Julianna by smashing into her about an hour into the lesson, putting my board right between her legs, which were bound to her board.

After two hours of semi-instruction in the blizzard conditions, followed by a lukewarm rip-off of a lunch in the lodge, I took two more bad runs and called it a day.

Day two: Determined not to be discouraged by the pain and soreness of my first day, I followed the group to a resort called North Star. For some reason, while Mother Nature was dropping a foot on Squaw, North Star had gotten a measly inch of new snow, which had already been packed down. On the first run of the day, the side of my board drove into the hard-pack, sending me flying forward. I landed with an involuntary "oomph." My snowboarding week ended 30 seconds into my second day, with a bruised sternum and a badly strained shoulder.

Days three, four and five: Sat around the cabin until my ride left town. Lots of reading and videos. Terrible disappointment that I was sitting around while missing feet upon feet of fresh powder dumping from the skies, and with the tiny mid-week crowds at that.

School

I got my final grades, and I did just fine, getting one of each type of grade from A+ to B. Spring classes started Tuesday, with four core curriculum courses (macroeconomics, marketing [finally!], more accounting, and operations) and one elective (New Media Publishing). The big activities this semester are going to be my content editorship of HaasWeek and my search for summer internships.

Women

Things are going extraordinarily well with the new woman. She's a business magazine editor who lives in the Lower Haight. She likes almost exactly the same things I do, and she's really quite a joy. During my week in Tahoe, I had a lot of time to realize that she might just be the perfect woman for me. Of course, that's kind of easy to say when you're only four weeks into a relationship, but when I think about all the things I'd want in a woman, she's got them all. Wow.

Sports

I was glad I didn't get tickets to Raiders-Dolphins, as the game was a snoozer. I'm pretty stoked to see two overachievers in the Super Bowl. America loves its dynasties, so expect the ratings to be pretty small for this one. I think I'm gonna pick Baltimore right now.

And for the record, I refer you to another thing I wrote in my pre-season predictions this season:

"Fake Surprise: The media will talk about the Ravens as the 'surprise' team, even though everyone says they're going to be good."

Music

Have you ever heard a great song somewhere, say in a TV commercial or on the radio, and you didn't know what it was called? And it reverberated in your head and resonated through your bones, and you needed to find out what it was? And then you bought a CD you heard good things about, and you put it on, and there it was: that song…

Ever happen to you?

It happened to me for the third time ever a couple weeks ago. Back in Arlington, I used to watch CNN while I ate my breakfast every morning before work. For a few months, Iceland Air ran this really haunting ad that seriously gave me chills every time I saw it. A narrator with a Scandinavian accent read a Viking proverb that said only men who have traveled are truly wise, while in the background this sweet chorus of strings glided by the darkened images of American and European cities in flurries of activity.

Well, I bought a CD by an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros, because it had made a lot of rock critics' 10-best lists for 2000. And song three, titled "Staralfur," was that very song from the commercial. It still gives me chills. Go get it on Napster. Really.