Motivating Monday Montage (MMM)

-No school!

-Lots of new snow!

-Today is my Mom's birthday! Remember those free skiing passes I won from the Health Fair? Well, my Mom and I made use of them for her birthday (she loves to ski and I thought she would like to have a free ski-day...even though she spent the whole day teaching me on the super easy runs. I love my Mom!!)

-We rented skis and the rental guys were fantastic! They explained many technical things about our boots and skis to help us better understand and to help us get the best out of our ski-day. They even gave Mom an extra discount being her birthday. I love nice people!

-It was a wonderful day to go skiing! (My second time skiing, I have snowboarded only a couple times more, so I am pretty beginner) The snow was falling off and on in the canyons and it was beautiful and sunny in the valley when we headed home. Every time we came down a run there would be a layer of new snow, the snowcats couldn't keep up! It was a little bumpy, and when I got up the courage to go fast enough I was catching a little air off of said bumps. So fun, and I didn't fall (although I had a few close calls)!

-We decided to go up one of the smaller chairlifts (a two-seater with a pole in the middle to separate the two seats) and as I had gotten a hang of getting on and off of the other lifts I thought I was safe. I stumbled up to the "wait here to be seated" line (I am not so graceful when it comes to walking on skis) and tried to keep from sliding away. "Look to the middle!" Mom warned me. I obediently turned my head and "BONG" went the pole on the incoming chair as it collided mercilessly with the side of my face. In a daze I managed to board the lift. I later learned that my Mom had heard my "Bong" encounter, but didn't know it was my head. The lift operator must have held in his laughter until we were out of earshot, and just imagining the scene over makes me giggle. (but then whenever I imagine myself the scenes are always cartoonistic in action which makes me giggle in and of itself)

-Another time on the nicer chairlift we met an extremely nice lift-buddy (this lift was a three-seater) who rode up with us. He told us of how he comes here to ski in the winters from practically across the country and how he had skied almost every day of the skiing season . He had a really genteel and kind spirit about him and I was glad to have shared our seat with him. My day was happier because of his unrestrained and open friendliness.

-I got to spend the whole day with my Mom! We had so much fun together and I look up to her so much. I am lucky to have her. I wish everyone could have a mother like mine. :)

-The BandNeeek

Motivating Monday Montage

This is a new category of posts where I will list things that happened throughout the day that made me smile. I find so many Monday Blues that I decided it needed to be done away with or at least alleviated a little. I hope my silliness will help someone smile through their slow Monday!

-While walking to the Math building I saw a boy who held the door open for not just one person behind him, but the whole gaggle of bumbling math students before he finally left his doorpost.

-The sun came out and was warm on my face when the breeze didn't blow (it is a balmy 43 or so degrees today!).

-I walked with one of my fellow Clarineters to Band (I don't often walk with people between classes...just me and my silly, tangential thoughts, legs walking on autopilot) and talked about our good weekends, our concert on Wednesday, and Clarineter-ish stuff.

-A few of us Clarineters came to a consensus that whenever randomly asked to play (the clarinet) alone during (band) class it is inevitable that your reed will revolt against you, or your clarinet simply decide to be out of tune, but as soon as you go back to playing as an ensemble it goes right back to being in tune and sounding pretty (as opposed to gurgly, airy, sharp, congested, or painful). We laughed about it all.

-Even though my reed sounded not so happy at me when asked to play in aforesaid circumstances both my section leader and band director told me it sounded good. (Although I secretly giggle and think they took my wobbly sounding reed for nervousness)

-I turned in some of my "Band Tour" release forms. (even though I got the strange feeling I was signing away my life's fortune, or first born (kitty/clarinet/saxophone) after reading through them)

-I tripped over my feet when attempting to approach the stairs in the stairwell. A girl behind me and I laughed about how when such things happen when we are alone we don't mind because we already know we are idiots, but that trippings, slippings, and dramatic headlong tumbles often happen while other are watching (in which case I laugh harder)...more on adventures on stairs to come soon, I will devote I whole post to it. :)

-Upon returning to my car this afternoon I found a lovely little coupon for a free medium pizza at Local Pizza Place! Yay free dinner for the BandNeeek at her long-ish dress rehearsal tomorrow night!

-I kidnapped an apple and a grapefruit from my home-home yesterday for my lunchtime munchies this week. Today? Apple+Peanut Butter = So yummy for my tummy!

I hope you have all had a happy Monday! Leave some comments about some of your motivating (or not so much) Monday scenes, I would love to hear from you!

--The BandNeeek