SPRING BREAK '09 RECAP

Molly and I travelled to a quaint little town in Washington for a few days where we caught up with some old friends, ate more food than we thought possible, and then washed it all down with an excess of libations. Seattle has some amazing restaurants. We ate some excellent sushi at Maneki, the oldest Japanese restaurant in the city, ranging from eel to octopus. I just ate the salmon. Food should not have suckers and be neon purple in color. Aside from the edible delights, I got to ride my bike at the I-5 Colonnade bike park. Google it. It's rad. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Frozen

After my first winter was coming to a close, our good friend in Bozeman mentioned what a mild winter we experienced for our first winter in Montana. I felt quite lucky about this. Monday hit and I think I got a preview of what cold means here in Big Sky Country! I believe it's -5 out right now and our dog still feels it's walking weather. His walks yesterday consisted of me freezing my nose off at Bozeman Pond (which is well frozen over as you can imagine), and I couldn't fathom another walk of torture so ended up at Petsmart for his evening walk. We made a couple trips around the store and Moose enjoyed trick or treating, as everyone in the Bozeman store is very quick to hand out treats to dogs and Moose has picked up on this quickly. The minute someone in a store vest walks near, he immediately sits and wags his tail.

Last weekend before the extreme cold arrived, we were able to go on our first Ski outing to Bridger Bowl. It was really amazing - it had snowed 10 inches overnight and was still snowing when we got there. We got to experience some "wicked powder" as the local winter extreme sports fanatics would claim. Tyson went all out and tried his brother's snowboard for the first true snowboarding experience. The first time down, his board would not allow for any speed whatsoever, so he had to get a temporary wax (whatever that means) - and from that point on, he basically went straight down the hill fast. I was not so confident in trying snowboarding on my first time back to ski world since '97... So i rented some alpine skis and had a great time. There is something to be said about avoiding cross country paths with 12 inches of new snow.... I was following Tyson, but he got ahead of me and I though I was going the correct way, but ended up on this hill that had two ski tracks and otherwise untouched. It was AWESOME until at the bottom my options were cutting across to the main area via cross country - or going down another slope well out of my ski expertise... 20 minutes later, as i got to the end of the cross country road - I though my shoulders might explode! But fun nonetheless.

Finally - thanks to the many who called to check on us during the explosion in Bozeman last week. We were thankful to not be downtown during that tragedy. Tyson took a photo (above) from our favorite trail to walk moose on that overlooks the city the day of the incident. You can see the smoke from the building.

Health Care Reform

Meet Mr. Giraffe. He had an untimely run in with a duo of canines that left him needing serious medical attention. Thankfully though, he's one of 25 million giraffes living in the U.S. that has health insurance, and he was sure that his provider would take care of his rapidly rising medical costs. Due to the severity of his injuries, his stay in the hospital was lengthy, and his rehabilitation time thereafter was also exceptionally long and costly. But, he had great insurance and could rest easy knowing that he was being taken care of. Then one day a letter came to Mr. Giraffe. It was a bill from the animal hospital. A bill? But, certainly this is a mistake. His health insurance had already paid for his initial surgeries and subsequent follow up visits, so what possibly could he be receiving a bill for? Well, it appears that Mr. Giraffe was not completely truthful when he filled out his insurance application. He had failed to mention that he was a stuffed giraffe and that stuffed giraffes are pre-disposed to dismembering by canines. He would have to pay the bill in full or have all of the work done to him, undone. Seeing as how he did not have $750,000, he had no choice but to be taken apart again. He was completely distraught. How could a country as wealthy as his not be able to provide health coverage at an affordable cost. He thought that everyone should have the right to free health care. His friend, Mr. Elephant, called him a socialist and told him to go back to Russia where he belonged. But Mr. Giraffe said, "Socialism? What about the Post Office, and Public School, and the Civil Services? Those are run by the government and funded by our tax dollars. Why couldn't we do the same thing to our health care system?" And that's when Mr. Elephant replied, "Because we can't make money off of people living. There's too many lobbyists to pay."