1. Spring? 2. Ski racing 3. Econ

Today, I went for a noon run btwn classes, and I could've swore it felt like spring out there. The clouds were breaking and sun was poking through, and we had melted off the half inch of snow from the night before. Things were looking good, at least for about an hour. It didn't take too long before heavy sleet was falling a couple hours later.

Last weekend we drove up to welches to stay overnight, and get some skiing in. They had a little 10k skate race at meadows nordic so I decided to give it a go. Why not make the first ski of the season a race? These things are not very heavily attended, but there were probably about 25 people all together. The race started out, at a pretty conservative pace, so I tried to dart off the front and get out of sight, to see exactly what I was dealing with here. Well, It was a good idea, because I got a lead, but I didn't get out of sight. I was in good form (technique wise), and not so good form (speed wise). Plan A was to ski hard and ignore my competitors about 30 yards back. Plan B was to fall back and rest, ski behind these guys, and then go for the sprint at the end. I was working hard, so I decided to stay out front. The race ended with one lap around the meadow, which would be the 3rd time through the meadow for the race. I made it to the end of the meadow where we turned around and came back to the finish and my lead was still about the same, or a little less. So I tried to punch it a little more. There was no looking back, I had the race. I was starting to experience the trill of victory, about 100 meters were left in the race. Something happened. I must have planted a pole in between my skis. I fumbled once, bounced on one foot, then bam my knees hit, and I was face first on the trail. My glasses came off my head. Should I pick them up? No you dumb ass, get up and go. But it was too late. I got passed by two old guys, and although I was still on the podium, I got a little agony of defeat. There was my wide world of sports weekend. It was awesome to be back on the snow, and it's definatly something that is worth it to make a little more time for this winter. Here's a pic of the wonderful drive home, and it was wonderful, depending at how you view winter weather.


I'm no economist, but I've read some books, and think I'm pretty reasonably educated. Today on the AM news, there was more bad news about the housing market. You'd have to assume that we would have another couple hundred point drop in the stock market, but in fact it was just the opposite. DOW was up 1.45% and S&P was up 1.76%. The screwballs on wall street think the fed will drop the rates another 1/2 point. I know I'm probably not the only one that's thought of this, but to me, this sounds like a coming mega economic disaster. How did we get into this housing 'crisis'? I might be wrong, but low borrowing rates sure didn't hurt. Why not lower rates even more, and make it even cheaper to borrow, so the whole thing starts back up again. Where do these idiots running things think this will go?

And the damn economic 'stimulous' package? How much less do the retards at the white house want the US dollar to be worth? Why not print up a few trillion dollars and give us even more money to spend. I have no solution to the mess, I guess we'll have to wait and see how things play out.