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My shoulders are sore;
ankle sprained.
hamstrings are pulled;
all the signs of age.
But, hey, I’m not getting old.
It's just that yesterday,
I did snowboard.

I relish snowboarding and the pain that devours me afterward; it reminds me of the fun I had. I started snowboarding in 2007 in Snoqualmie after having given up skiing previous season; I had hurt my knee and wore a knee pad of poison ivy, it was really that itchy, for ten days and limped my way to work.

It didn't go very well on day one of snowboarding. I considered myself inapt at learning but my friend encouraged me and practiced with me. Gave me hope. So I dragged on with the board with one feet tied to it and other lazily pushing it.

With the second and third class I was improving. I'm glad that I had the hope and determination.

I had learned to fall like a leaf and make J turns. I graduated from magic carpet (it's a conveyor belt type ski lift in beginner's area) to chair lift (30 ft off the ground cable lift).

This year I bought my own snowboard :-)


I can ride down without falling down most of the times but I make up for that while getting down the chair lift. It gets me every time. I entangle my snowboard with my co-rider and we fall together. I almost offended someone when I refused to ride the lift with them. I feared for their safety.

Chair lift is a good place to meet people. Last time I met the ski patrol who is a locale to the Mansfield resort and he told me how their street name changed forever when a TV reporter on National TV called 'Possum Run' as 'Opossum Run' to go with O of Ohio.

This time I met someone who stated that he has been skiing/snowboarding his entire life. He started at an age of 2 and is presently 8 or 9 years old.

Yesterday I took lessons to do c-turns and I know that it takes a sprained ankle to do it right.

It's an immense pleasure to snowboard and I'd suggest you to give it a try but let me warn you that it's fatal and addictive.

Snowboarding Video Tutorials
http://www.abc-of-snowboarding.com/learn-snowboarding/
http://www.snowprofessor.com/

Ski resorts in Columbus open in 1st or 2nd week of Dec and close during 2nd week of March.
Mad River Mountain
Snowtrails

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Today I saw the world's largest picnic basket (see above) and world's largest apple basket (see below).

Picnic basket is located at

1500 East Main Street
Newark, Ohio 43055

Apple basket is located at

5563 Raiders Road,
Frazeysburg,
OH 43822

Picnic basket is the working office of Longaberger basket company. They have the basket workshop in Frazeysburg by the apple basket.

It's closed during the holidays so checkout the timing without heading out there. Checkout the hours here -

https://www.longaberger.com/contactus.aspx

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My charcoal sketch of original Baroque (European art marked by ornate details) Horse Series III by Heather Theurer.

Completed it comparitively faster than my other paintings.

After 30 minutes into it, it looked like this -


25 minutes later -


32 minutes later -


Total time to complete the sketch 1 hr 27 minutes.

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This week I took factory tour of Schakolad Chocolate Factory in Columbus, OH.

It is one of the few attractions that Columbus offers apart from monstrous apple baskets, graduation cap etc.

The tour was sweet and so was our host/guide - Judy. She showed us a video on the history of chocolate and served us warm chocolate drink with honey and salt. That's probably the way it was drunk in ancient days.

Then we got to taste white, milk and dark chocolates fresh from the churner. Their pure cocoa butter white chocolate is out of the world. Then we got to make specialty chocolates ourselves.

We learned the 'two finger technique' of dipping in chocolate and 'catching the tail' trick from Judy and tried it. She also showed us how to use templates. She created a lolly and a baseball from templates.

We made chocolate pretzels, chocolate dipped strawberry, chocolate dipped cookie and chocolate bar dipped in chocolate. However, we didn't use any templates.

Then we got to wrap all the chocolates we made. Judy showed us how to curl the ribbons. Very cool!

Mom made the video of us making the chocolates while dad looked on.

It was a fun filled hour and all the chocolates that we made during the time were our take away from the tour.

PS - Oompa-Loompas were missing.

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I've been wanting to draw this for a long time. I abandoned the first attempt. But started afresh last weekend and here I am.

It took some time to locate the poster. It's called "Only for You" by Kim Anderson. It's also called "Red Hat" and appears in "Little Friends" too.

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I've a book of 100 short stories by O. Henry. I read it almost daily during lunch time. I like O. Henry's work - the sarcasm, the humor, the twists and the language. Today while I was reading I realized I was holding 100 individual works of art by Henry. Each written with great deliberation. It's a huge accomplishment to write 100 stories. Of course he would have written many times more to get those 100 published.

Then it came to me. If Henry can create hundreds of masterpieces I should be able to just produce hundreds of my work; quality no bar.

I've decided that I'm going to write and draw more.

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