It was a bitterly cold morning just watching the die-hard skiers and snow boarders get their first taste of skiing for the season. The snow was being whipped-up by a turbulent and gusty wind as the photo captures.

Early afternoon Alpine Meadows closed its slopes as the first real winter storm that we have all been waiting for arrived and on-mountain visibility become virtually zero.

The Tahoe area weather forecast is snow for the next few days, perhaps the whole week, and right now there is a winter storm warning until Monday evening.

At last some real snow, let the skiing season truly begin!!

More Tahoe Photos posted at Tahoe Photos and Tahoe Photos Gallery.

Fans lined up to see “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” this past weekend. The film brought in over $140 million, making it the 3rd highest earning 3 Day opening weekend ever, behind The Dark Knight and Spider-man 3.

How many of you saw the movie? Let us know what you thought.

A few weeks ago the NHL dropped the puck on its new season, which many of you may have missed. Even those who watch hockey might not know opening weekend took place in Helsinki and Stockholm. Another misguided, failed business move by the league, though I can’t say what they failed at since its not clear what the goal was.

For the NFL, MLB, and NBA, international makes sense since these sports are near a saturation point in many domestic markets and need to establish themselves outside the country to develop new revenue streams. Further, most of the world is not as familiar with baseball and football – though baseball has come a long way recently and is big in the Pacific Rim, so the mission of those leagues is part educational, part evangelist, all to drive future business, similar to what the NBA did starting with the Dream Team.

On the other hand, hockey is arguably more popular in some Northern and Eastern European countries than it is domestically. Not to mention the NHL is far from a saturation point in the US, and still has growth opportunities in its home base of Canada. By taking opening weekend out of the country, it became out of mind, out of sight on the sports scene. The games started at noon, a losing proposition during the week or on the weekend against college football. They were buried on Versus, so no casual fan was likely to stumble upon it. And most importantly, the league did next to nothing to market the games, neither hear nor in Sweden, according to reports from the game. If the NHL plans to have the games, at least stand behind the decision and try to make it successful.

Here’s my confusion. No marketing push. No chance that a team will move to Sweden, so cross off market testing. No need to establish the sport there, as its already popular. Maybe I’ll buy extending the NHL brand, but Sweden has produced numerous NHL players, so fans are likely familiar with the league – and Sweden does play in the Olympics, often finishing better than the US.  Attendance was disappointing, and the league garnered no additional media deals or sponsorships (to my knowledge), so not much on the revenue angle.

All this said, what exactly were they trying to accomplish? While they were trying to accomplish this, did they notice they missed another opportunity to gain some notice with casual fans in local team markets by pushing Opening Weekend, or by having a big game on Versus (think Crosby or Ovechkin) to start the season. Instead, local television in Florida decided not to air one of the games in Helsinki. Explain how that helps a struggling franchise.

Hockey may never compete with the other leagues, but with continued in fighting and poor business decisions, its going to move in reverse as smaller sports surpass it.

It’s going to be a busy weekend for me, but I’m still going to try to squeeze in a couple of movies. I haven’t been to the movies in like 2 weeks, and that’s just too long.

1) “Jennifer’s Body” starring Megan Fox

Jennifer’s Body is on my list of Fall Movies I’m Excited About. It’s another sexy vampire movie and it’s the closest thing to a scary movie I’ll ever see:

This last week, we launched a new Thursday morning shift! We are now open 8:30-noon on Thursdays. Our first shift went well. Foster and i will be the regular team for that shift, but because it was opening day, Hannah came alongside to help us out, and she was very much appreciated.

As with our first Sonday, it was dollar day. That makes it hard to really guess what traffic will be like in the future, but it gets people in the door and acquainted with us. It was great to meet so many new customers! In particular, i loved that the pace was manageable enough that i could really talk to people while making their drinks– one of my favourite things about working in a cafe.

We received some good feedback, too, regarding what some customers would like to see in the future. We had two requests for skim milk and one for soy; we’ll be watching to see if those are requested often enough to launch. We also had two requests for chai. Chai has been requested numerous times on Sonday mornings as well, actually, and next weekend we will be having a chai sampling to coincide with C4’s annual ministry fair! Our new team member, Michael, will be trying out a number of varieties this week, and will bring the top three to the fair. We’ll choose one of the three to be our regular variety based on customer feedback.

The summer has been very slow, as the coffee business always is in summer. It has honestly been pretty discouraging. G-d is good– we know that! But we’re behind on our bills and it’s stressful and worrisome. Our really wonderful lessor has actually reduced our lease, though– to $150 from $200! And we have a possible monthly donor in the wings, and someone anonymously donated a bottle of chocolate sauce for our mochas! So while it’s stressful, it’s also a little hard not to trust that things will be okay. We anticipate an increase in traffic as the weather cools down, kids go back to school, families get back into routine, and travelers come home to roost. This last Sonday was much busier than of late, at least in part owing to the temperature being in the 60sº. And adding Thursdays and beginning to serve chai make this the start of a very exciting fall season! If we can only make it to January, we’ll add Fridays, and at that point i think we’ll essentially be set. But we’ll have to be saving ahead for next summer.

Another change we’ve made recently (it’s been about three weeks; i haven’t been very good at updating lately!) is to change the layout of the cafe. i don’t have a picture yet, but so far it’s working a lot better than the old layout. It’s more streamlined. It looks more like a coffee shop! Basically, what we’ve done is move the counters so that they’re all parallel to the wall, and angled the ordering station so that it faces out into the Gallery a bit more. This looks a lot nicer, makes it easier to see what drink is next in line, and makes it a little more uncommon for people to try to sneak behind the counter. The only real hitch right now is that we don’t have an “out” table for serving finished drinks. When we’re very busy, it’d be a lot easier to be able to set it down on a table or counter where the customer could find it, rather than having to hunt them down and/or make eye contact while also trying to start another drink. (When we’re less busy, i sure don’t mind making eye contact with customers!!! But if there isn’t a place where they can pick up their drink easily, it does bog us down at times.)

Now as the weather cools down and i start itching to turn on the oven, i start thinking if there’s any way to sell baked goods…

Welcome to my first blog post as a student of the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont!  I’m excited, but also nervous and tense about being a first-year student at UVM.  This is the time when I really find out what people say about college is actually true or not.  I moved in on Friday morning, after a 3 1/2 hour drive from my house to UVM.  Once we got here, I moved into my room and met my roommate for the first time (although we had exchanged a few e-mails before).  The first day was designed to be informative, as we had to learn about the rules, regulations and policies here at UVM.  For example, UVM is a dry campus, so there are no drugs or drinking in the residential halls and on campus as well.  We had to go to a few presentations and sit in a RA meetings, but at the end of the day, we all converged in our student center, the Davis Center, for a first-year party where it featured bands and comedy shows as well as a chance to meet people.

Today, we went to another presentation to learn more about the student life here at UVM.  But, after that it was all fun and relaxation.  The Class of 2013, about 2,500 of us, crammed into the indoor tennis courts at the gym due to the wet weather we had in Burlington today.  There were food and information desks regarding a number of clubs and organizations that exist at UVM.  Because of the rain, we could not do much instead of going to the gym and enjoying what they had to provide, but the problem was that there were too many people.  So, I returned to my dorm and hung out with some friends as well as my roommate.  Overall, I can hear what people are saying and laughing about, but sometimes it gets really hard when I can’t see them.  This is why the first few weeks will be difficult because I need to have time to get used to everybody, including their speaking habits, their lip movements and whatnot.

Right now, we are just hanging out at the dorm and getting to know our floor-mates.  The upperclassmen will be here tomorrow (or at least the rest of them).  My floor is about half full, with the rest being the upperclassmen that are not here yet.  Tonight at 10, it’s Game Night at the Davis Center and after that, we’ll be enjoying, albeit a late one, movie of Star Trek at the Davis Center.  The movie starts at midnight, and is expected to go until 2am.  So, I don’t know if I’ll make it through, but I’ll try!

Tomorrow we basically have the whole day to us, and the weather is supposed to be nice, so we can all sleep in and just hang out.  I might ride my bike and explore Burlington on my bike.  Also, I might want to go down to the mall (which is just up the street from the Davis Center) and get some food and snacks for my room.  All we have is popcorn and crackers with some water!  Also, I might go down to the bookstore and buy a few UVM stuff.  So, there is a lot of things that I can do tomorrow that are fun, and productive!  The only thing that we all have to do tomorrow is to attend Convocation and the “Twilight Induction Ceremony”.  Convocation starts at around 6:30 and the Induction ceremony goes until 9pm.  It will be the last time the entire Class of 2013 will gather until graduation, so it should be an interesting event.  So far, I feel pretty comfortable at UVM, but the real test has not even begun yet.  Classes start on Monday and I can only guess how much work I’ll have to do this semester, but we’ll see!

That’s it from UVM…I’ll have more later!

It’s just less than a day left until I leave for UVM.  I’m kind of nervous and unsure of what’s going to happen, but at the same time, I’m excited to get busy although I’ll hate being busy pretty soon with all that homework and projects I have to do!  I’m still packing, but I’m doing it carefully and slowly because with a lot of stuff, you want to pack efficiently.  I haven’t talked with my parents yet, but I do plan on leaving at 6:30, that way I can arrive at UVM at 10am although my dorm opens at 8am.  It’s just easier that way than driving up the day before and paying $200 a night for a hotel room.

This is a quick blog post, but I better get packing again if I want to be able to relax for the rest of the day before I leave.  Check back later this weekend to read about my experience during opening weekend at UVM!

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM: Now that official numbers have come in, controversial Inglourious Basterds opened with $14.3M Friday, but then dropped -10% Saturday to $12.9M from 3,165 theaters. So, with a Sunday estimate of $10.3M, that’s a bigger than expected $37.6M first weekend for director Quentin Tarantino. (The most moolah anybody projected for Friday-Sunday had been $30M.) “The Weinsteins live to fight another day,” quipped one rival studio exec about the World War II film on which beleaguered The Weinstein Company had hung its financial future (along with next weekend’s reboot sequel, Halloween 2). Basterds scored Tarantino his best North American opening since the $25.1 million earned by Kill Bill Vol 2. And eased Harvey Weinstein’s fears of another Grindhouse-like flop. Expected to dominate on both coasts, the “Hard R”-rated pic was predicted to play much softer in the middle of the country. [read]

Well the first weekend, 5 shows, down in the books. It was an interesting ride for sure, but without a doubt I can say our best weekend this summer.

We opened our preview matinee to a house of about 800 or so people. That’s very impressive for a Thursday afternoon. Seriously, the nursing home buses were lined up like it was a huge event or something. The show was awesome, and sounded perfect. Great way to start off a five show weekend. Friday night wasn’t exactly the same. The house was smaller than the previous day, disappointing but not to big of a deal. Except the show sounded like total and utter crap. It sent me scambling to try and find the problem and come up with a solution. (More about what happened in this previous post)

Oh well, onto double show Saturday. This is where scenic got to have some fun. With this show rail space is at a premium. We are packed very tight up there, especially around mid-stage (I may try and get a picture of the grid before we strike it all). Its so tight in fact two pieces of scenery knock into each other fairly regularly. Saturday’s matinee, they decided to knock hard enough to break. During the first show, trim around the top of the archway was pulled off. Not really a big deal, and it was fixed in between the two shows.  The evening show wasn’t so pretty. On the way in, the bottom of the archway got caught, snapping off a brace. When the archway was pulled back out, the brace broke off and fell to the stage. In the middle of a scene. Luckily this all happened during the Finale number, which was at the end of the show.

In order to fix the problem, we had to replace the broken braces and add several others around the length of the arch to give it more support. Thankfully we haven’t had any other issues with the arches (fingers crossed).

Sunday’s show went pretty smoothly, without anything really major to note. Goot way to leave off for this weekend.

Paramount felt vindicated after “G.I. Joe” raked in the coin its opening weekend. Good enough, the LAT reports, to move forward on a sequel, with stars obliged to return. (Director Stephen Sommers is not.) Par vice chair Rob Moore told AP that movie critics can have a hard time getting their arms around movies like “G.I. Joe” and “Transformers,” an earlier hit for the studio. ”But the audience got exactly what it was: A fun summer movie, a great way to end your summer. You just relax and have a good time,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about global politics or global warming.” Don Harris, executive VP of distribution for Paramount, seconded that emotion in an interview with The Wrap. “The audience took this movie for what it was,” Harris said, “a big piece of popcorn fun.”

Here we go with the weekend of July 1-5:

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Ray Romano – Dennis Leary) This film is already having its ups and downs with the box office as it defeated Revenge of the Fallen its first day and fell short on Thursday. This film doesn’t really interest me, but looks like it could have certain potential. It doesn’t look look like it has too much recycled story or bland humor, but kind of corny. I already heard they are thinking of a fourth one. I not getting my hopes up any time soon.

Public Enemies (Johnny Depp – Christian Bale) I was looking forward to this movie, but it doesn’t seem like it has been getting much hype after its’ release. I’ll have to go see it just to get my own opinion, but I am not rushing to go see it. It looks like just another star driven movie to boost its potential for a weak plot. It looks like it could be kind of boring, but has a slight edge with people who are into gangsters and mobs.

Until next Friday………Brüno, I Love You, Beth Cooper and Blood: The Last Vampire

It’s the weekend and the weather is horrible! Wooo! Seriously, it’s JUNE. Is NY unaware of this? Whatever, all the more reason to spend indoors in the movie theater. Here’s what I plan to check out this weekend:

1) “Year One” starring Jack Black and Michael Cera

The immature tomboy in me finds this movie so appealing. I’m actually leaving to see it in an hour. Michael Cera’s awkwardness combined with Jack Black’s obnoxiousness sounds like a great recipe for comedy. Let’s hope I’m not wrong:

2) “The Proposal” starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds

Another one of those romantic comedies where you KNOW the outcome, but Sandra Bullock has grown on me over the years. When she was first deemed America’s new sweetheart, I did not approve, but now … I kind of like her. And the “Funny or Die” clip featuring Golden Girl Betty White being a bitch to Ryan Reynolds made me laugh. Check out the promotional “Funny or Die” clip below:

"We didn't want to kick his ass but after he ran his mouth off it was unanimous."

Unaminous (U-nan-i-mous)

Unanimous – in total agreement. Unanimous is a synonym of accepted, accordant, agree, agreed, collective, assenting, combined, common, consensual.

Unanimous is used much more frequently among men than one may imagine. When amongst friends, decisions sometimes are simply made in unanimous fashion. When the big game is on, it’s unanimous that all the guys will be watching it together. When the new shoot ‘em up action movie hits the local multiplex, it’s unanimous that you will all be attending opening weekend

We all thought Spiderman 3 was a piece of shit. The feeling about the movie was definitely unanimous.