Reading, watching and falling

For our current read aloud, we've just finished The Mysterious Benedict Society



and have launched straight away into the sequel, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey



We also recently enjoyed a film adaptation of E Nesbitt's The Treasure Seekers



It's cheezy in a delightful English way.
A very young Keira Knightley (the DVD was released in 2000) is briefly in it and as usual I was struck by the fact that something about her mouth makes her look frighteningly feral, and that she looks so much older than she actually is. I would have guessed her now to be in her early 30's. I thought that in the Beckham movie she was in her late 20's trying to pass for late teens. Ooooops. She really is young which makes me wonder what it is about her that makes her look so aged.

Speaking of aged



That's yours truly, having decided to take a beginner snowboarding lesson last week.



This is the falling part, as promised by the title of this blog post.

It was fun, though the legs & butt did a lot of protesting. Our instructor was a young Australian boy. The Vancouver area mountains are staffed entirely by Aussies as far as I can tell. And it's a true sign you're getting old when everyone (except Keira Knightley) starts looking like they're too young to be doing their jobs, but I really wondered if he was old enough to be out that late at night.

The first 10 minutes of the class were agony and I was already mentally rehearsing how to excuse myself gracefully and extricate myself from the class, when things started to get just a teeny bit easier, and it stopped feeling like my knee bone was about to separate from my thigh bone and the thigh bone unplug entirely from my hip bone and slide down the hill without me.

Then of course we went to the big hill (well not really big; we started on a teeny knoll so going to the edge of the bunny slope was a large advancement) and things got difficult again but by then, it was also a bit fun. There was lots of giggling, and lots of big loud thumps as we fell again and again to the perennially cheery background Aussie tune of "Good on ya!" and "You right?" The butt and legs got numb and once I stopped feeling them, I could ignore their protests, though they did have something to say about it the following day.

I was totally slayed by the stupid tow rope which dangles low down by my ankles somewhere, which means that to grab it I have to bend over in half. The tow rope slope has also been groomed by evil gnomes into a series of olympic moguls. It's true, I swear it. Just when I got the hang of the damned rope and managed to hang on for 20 feet or so, I'd hit a colossal bump and fly off.

I did enjoy it all so much, that I'm going back tonight, just to goof off on the slope with the kids and my mom - yes, my mother learned to snowboard before I did.

I do get to check off a bunch of things on this year's to do list. You know those creativity lists which have you take up something new, do something silly, try something embarassing, something you're bad at, and challenge yourself a bit? Check, check, check.

What new things are you trying this year?