contented

away and back

2007-12-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

New Years eve morning, reading and catching up with mail, wondering what I should do, winds are too high in the mountains, so I'm in Seattle. I'm drinking bad tea since I ran out of the good stuff, and tried to get the tea I wanted yesterday but Peets was out, so it's settling for a tea bag of black tea to start my day.

I'm not sharing my resolutions, I don't have hard rules for the new year but I seem to always have ideas and thoughts, things I want to work on to make a better life for me and everyone around me.

It's been a long year(about 365 days), like almost all of my years it seems to be a year of great joy and great loss. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the things I've lost and maybe not enough time thinking about the things that I've gained or that I've always had.

To start off with a clean plate and an empty chalkboard, I want to ask for forgiveness for the things I've done that have let anyone down, or hurt them, and I want to say that I've let go of the angers, disappointments and pains of the past. I'm more interested in the present than anything that has happened before. And thanks for everything all of you have done to make my life a better one.

This year (like all years) has the potential to be the best year, lets all walk towards that idea.
Thanks for looking, reading and being around,
Christian

2008 daily photos will be here.

more...

2007-12-31T09:27:00.000-08:00

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. "

This time from Thoreau's Walden

maybe like no big men in history, there are no big moments either

2007-12-31T08:49:00.000-08:00

"The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody’s life really consists of small things. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. The present moment is always small in the sense that it is always simple, but concealed within it lies the greatest power. Like the atom, it is one of the smallest things yet contains enormous power. Only when you align yourself with the present moment do you have access to that power. Or it may be more true to say that it then has access to you and through you to this world."
Tolle

here is to less photos of bella posted next year, or more

2007-12-30T20:32:00.000-08:00

sometimes some light shines though the clouds

2007-12-29T16:14:00.000-08:00

more tunnel

2007-12-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

someday maybe I'll understand people

2007-12-28T08:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/world/20071227_BHUTTO_FEATURE/index.html?#section1

09.03 Alpental

2007-12-27T16:20:00.001-08:00

tiger day

2007-12-27T15:46:00.001-08:00

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/345078_sftiger28.html

This story is so interesting to me. Sad to see people and animals die, but damn, so odd.

08.01 Central

2007-12-26T18:08:00.001-08:00

More than a foot of super light powder, best snow yet.

Long drive home, but thankfully I was passenger this time, better than yesterday, but this photo seems more like the road to Baker than I-90

I now am in love with taking photos in tunnels.

07.02 Alpy

2007-12-25T22:02:00.000-08:00

Fun stuff on top lots of snow up there but it's awfully bumpy. The snow coming down made for a long, slow drive home, snow on the ground almost all the way back to Seattle. Lots of people had unhappy Christmas days after they crashed in the snow. I hope they were taken care of in better ways before they crashed.

where did jesus go?

2007-12-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

away for school holidays, I suppose...

crisp, cold, but a good feeling

2007-12-24T08:53:00.000-08:00

double entendres?

2007-12-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

aren't all entrances accessible?

2007-12-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

Driving Bella to the park

2007-12-21T17:43:00.000-08:00

99 -- going home from taking Samantha to the airport

2007-12-20T13:48:00.000-08:00

more from Walden...
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them.
Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Mercer exit home form the mountain

2007-12-19T20:20:00.000-08:00

06.01 Alpental Opening Day

2007-12-19T19:09:00.000-08:00

+ More snow thn I've been in all year
+Snowing all day
-Getting stuck in waist deep powder is rough
+2 opening days this year, Alpy and Baker, very cool.
+So fun to be back at Alpy.
- More people at one place than I've ridden with all this year
-Beingsideways on I-90 on the way home with a big rig heading towards us.
+Managed to get it straight and drive slower the rest of the way home.
+A great day.
+Even made it to yoga.

when

2007-12-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

05.02 Snoqualmie West

2007-12-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

Deep but not steep

Been reading Walden

2007-12-17T14:58:00.000-08:00

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can.

--
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
--
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

--

04.01 Snoqualmie West

2007-12-17T14:56:00.001-08:00

Super deep, super fun.

She likes the holidays

2007-12-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

waiting for enough snow to not destroy it

2007-12-15T12:21:00.000-08:00