It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . .

So begins Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, one of three novels I read over J-term, the others being Oliver Twist and Hard Times. I was also supposed to read Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and I read some of each, but it would be a stretch to say I really read them. My class was called "Short Dickens," and my twenty or so classmates would no doubt agree that it ought to have been called "Long Dickens," or at least "Dickens of Moderate Length." It was a pretty good class, aside from the reading overload, and Tale of Two Cities, I can now say from experience, is an excellent novel. Hard Times and Great Expectations are pretty good too. Oliver Twist kinda sucks. Dickens died before he could finish Edwin Drood, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it could have been good, but the first half or so didn't seem particularly brilliant. Neither did any of the three papers I wrote for the class, but that's par for the course in J-term.

In Middlebury, January is a month for exploring and enjoying the outdoors. When your fibia is recovering from a mid-December fracture, your options are limited, but you can have a good time nevertheless. Last weekend, for example, (six weeks after I broke my leg, so it was pretty much completely healed) I went on a hike to the frozen Falls of Lana. Kevin (one of my roommates) took better pictures than I did, but I don't have his right now, so I'll throw in some of mine.

Sebastian is in the yellow. The others are tough to identify. They are below the falls, I am above them. In August, we jumped off the cliff right below me into the pond that Seb and the guys are currently standing on.

The frozen creek above the falls, with a narrow band of unfrozenness running down the middle.

I realize now that I didn't take any pictures of the waterfall itself. Shame. Visualize a decent sized waterfall, but paused in time. Close enough.

I'll this opportunity to apologize for my disappearance on this blog. This is my first post of 2014, which means I've been slacking a bit. I'll also take this opportunity to say that I was the last of us to miss a post date. I think I should win something.

Also, I don't think I'll be trying too hard to keep to the ordinary Monday schedule. I'm going to post when I find time, which has been hard to come by this past month, and will hopefully be just as hard to come by in the coming months.

Kevin and Jason visited me a few weeks ago. It appears I have no pictures. Oh well. They saw Middlebury at its ugliest: cold, dead, and no snow. The day after they left, we got a ton of snow and it was beautiful again. Sorry.

Besides running and skiing, my broken leg robbed me of an opportunity to play intramural ice hockey. We had put a team together and were all ready to play, but it was not to be, for me at least. So I went and stood in the bench and was their coach. I yelled at them to forecheck and backcheck and move it to the point and go to the net and watch the weak side and all that stuff. I pretended to get really angry when we got scored on. I used some hockey coach words. Fun was had by all.

My team. Aside from a couple of them, they sucked. Luckily, we were playing the girls soccer team, who were drunk during the game. I think the final was 4-1 or 5-1 in our favor. No goalies, so you have to hit the top of the tilted net.

During this past week, we watched all three regular (non-extended) LotR movies. First time for Sam. Got me (more) excited for New Zealand. I'm going there a week from tomorrow, for the semester. Should be just dandy.

Today, I watched Feb graduation. Some folks have things lined up in such a way that they graduate in February. My friend Melake is one of those folks. So I took the bus up to the Snow Bowl and watched graduation. Feb graduation, mind you, takes advantage of its time of year. The tradition is that all graduates make their way down the mountain, most of them on skis, some of them on snowboards, a few on sleds, some on foot. Melake doesn't know how to ski, so he walked down with a group, and then broke into a dangerous-looking sprint at the bottom.

You can't really tell, but they're all wearing grad gowns.

Made me want to Feb myself. Much better, I assume, than regular May graduation.

Did you guys catch the Ducks-Kings game played at Dodgers Stadium last weekend? Pretty cool. Ducks won, 3-0. Their 85 points are best in the NHL.

Alright then. I fly back to California tomorrow (Sunday 2/2), and I fly out of LAX to New Zealand the Sunday after that. I don't think any of you are in SoCal next week, but on the off chance that you are, let me know.