Back to the Bay for a Happy New Year!!

We skied as a group with Reid, Hannah, and Hannah's friend Danielle (the two girls pictured above) while their parents went snowshoeing!

It was an absolutely beautiful day! The sky was totally clear and the most gorgeous color blue that contrasted so nicely with the snow-covered trees. It was still pretty chilly though! My fingers were hurting from the cold by the time we got to the top of the one long lift (called the Motherlode...hahah). We took some time off to warm up at the lodge with some hot chocolate with mini marshmallows! Genius! They also have homemade soup which was a nice way to warm up.

I'm going to have to get mittens because taking off the fingers of my gloves to ball up my hands (Hannah taught me how to do this...maybe the problem is that my gloves are to big?) makes me risk dropping my poles! On our trip to Kirkwood some guy lost one ski and both poles on the lift! We saw him getting off, which was definitely a challenge, but I have no idea how he got down the mountain or recovered his gear. We saw it from the lift while riding up the slope. Luckily it hadn't hit anyone.

That's me taking a rest on the slope while we waited for the snowboarders to go down the roads (Reid is sitting in the back, he kept throwing snow!)

We pretty much spent the rest of the day just relaxing. We played games with everyone, this fun game called Tripoli. This was my second time playing it and somehow I always manage to win. We play with quarters, so it's pretty funny how everyone gets really into it. At the end we just give the quarters back, though. It's like Monopoly!

The day we were supposed to leave Ryan and I really wanted to stay! We left really late because we were debating on what to do. In the end we figured Mrs. Scoots and Senator were going to be lonely and we had to get back. Also, we were planning to go to LA the next night but ended up staying.

This worked out really well since otherwise this would have meant that Julie would have been all alone on New Year's Eve! We went up to see her and had a plan to head to a sponosered event, but it turned out they were mostly sold out! I called Noah, who hadn't had much of a plan except to go to the North Beach area and just walk around, so we decided to join him for the evening. We decided to have a "fancy dinner" at this place called Goldenboy's Pizza. Noah laughed at us and said we would probably end up there again at the end of the night. Ryan LOVES the food there! Pizza and beer, I think he truly thinks it's the perfect meal!

Noah had a bunch of friends in from out of town, most of which also knew my cousin, Adam, since they all went to the same school. It's funny how we all maintain such close relationships with our high school and even younger friends. The internet has made it so easy, not to mention free nights and weekends with cell phones.

We started over at his friend Mark's house who has the most amazing view of the city from his rooftop! It was just goregous.

Noah's friends are really funny! Mark had one of those singing fish on the wall, and Julie and I kept showing people so I think it played about 10 times, (how irritating)? Dan decided to give it a kiss. Who knows why? I think he knew it was a blog photo op!

The apartment was amazing in general. It was one of those very typcail houses for San Francisco, with the bay windows and wood floors. It makes me really want to move to the city! It's also cheaper than where I live, but it also requires the trip in to school. I'm a total SoCal girl in the sense that I cannot imagine taking public transportation. I also like to sleep in late, so I'm not sure how well that would work. But where else can we get a view and house like that?

Apparently we could have seen fireworks, but we decided to head out to Grant and Green instead. Most places charge quite a bit but instead we just found a place that let us in for very little money. On the other hand we didn't get any champagne (except for the big champagen balloon we pretened to drink from)! But it definitely beat paying upwards of 75 dollars!!

We stayed there until midnight, at which point we decided we were done with the bar and were headed to another place with better music for dancing. We stopped at a restaurant halfway down to our next location when Noah bumped into someone he knew (he's so popular)! She invited us over to hear place which was, again was a gorgeous place in the city. It has stairs on the inside of the door. Julie and I were in quite a bit of pain at this point from our high heeled shoes (we had walked around looking for Mark's apartment, to the bar, to the restaurant and then to this apartment, so we were ready to go back. It was just before 1AM so we left Noah and his pals and figured we would be safe to get a cab at this point since we figured everyone else would still be staying until last call at the bars, but we could NOT find one ANYWHERE!! We walked to the Hilton, hoping they would let us use their service to call for a cab, but they weren't too friendly. We were standing on the street corners with about 10 other people in any given area, and we knew that no matter what happened, everyone would be mobbing the same cab, so we pretty much had no chance.

We ended up walking up to the Broadway tunnel, thinking every cab would pretty much come through there. Unfortunately they all wanted to head further north for longer cab rides, and more money I'm sure. As I was giving up hope and crouching down in vain so that me feet wouldn't hurt so much, I heard Ryan shouting something from the other side of the street, I look up and see a cab going by with Noah's friend Yaron hanging out the window!!! He actually shouted at me "HEY I KNOW YOU!" But they didn't stop!!! Apparently Noah said later that Yaron had said that and he didn't believe it, although Ryan had seen him! I called Noah but their cab was already too full. They had 6 people and it was NOT a minivan, so it only seats 4 besides the driver. That may be a partial explanation as to why Yaron and Noah were both hanging out the windows!

We finally gave up and decided to get some food at a chinese place in China Town (where we were) and figured by the time we were done we'd either get a cab back, or take a room at the Hilton because it seemed hopeless. We sat down and ate some chicken and beef, and suddenly a rat ran across the dinning room!!!!! I couldn't believe it! I was so grossed out I immediately stopped eating. The guy sitting right next to us was laughing so hard, but Julie just kept eating! She completely regretted it at the end.

We did get a cab in the end, it was actually a town car, and we paid a pretty penny, but it was definitely less than a room. The driver was laughing at the "rat chinese food" we ate, and told us that we probably didn't need to worry, but was completely maused. Julie started getting really disturbed and by the end just kept saying "I just ate a rat"!

I guess this is a typical BMI New Year's Eve?