Winter Wonderland

Every winter for about three or four days, my family almost always takes a trip to Reno/Tahoe together. We wake up at around five, pack our ski jackets and snowboards, and drive on up. Usually arriving before ten, my family and I are able to grab a quick lunch and get to the ski lodge just in time to catch the afternoon gondola shift. After a day on the slopes we check into our hotel, sore and exhausted, to take a quick shower, then go out for dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet. To finish our day, my parents try their luck at gambling in hopes of earning back our dinner price while my brother, my sister, and I try to show off our skills by winning stuffed animals at Midway.



This is a shot of Circus Circus and Silver Legacy, which is where we usually say during our trips.



And this is me, my brother, my sister, and my cousin along with his friend in front of Emerald Bay. It was snowing pretty hard that day, and we slipped and fell quite a few times trying to get to that spot.

And the book I really want to read right now is "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson. It's still a mystery how it became a part of my possessions, for I found it randomly lying on the middle of my desk one day, like someone left it there just for me to read, although everyone denies ever seeing it before. I read the first few pages to get an idea of what it was about. It seemed like a very inspiring novel, but I'm currently reading something else and I hate starting a book before you are done with another. Here are some lines I read that I really love:

"I can't really tell what's beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young gellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped up against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. [...] So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spend."

Tiffany