It's Sunday morning here and rain is falling outside. I'm still going to go skiing though, even though I've got a bit of a cold lingering. On friday night, after I returned from skiing, I felt it swelling in the back of my throat so I decided to take action instantaneously. I had half a bottle of gin (Bombay Safire) sat in my kitchen from New Years Eve so I used that to tackle it. No matter what people say, booze DOES work when you've got a cold coming. It won't cure you, but what it will do is hammer it down in size substantially. I haven't felt fantastic this weekend, but I haven't suffered from what would have been a fully blown cold. I went to watch Lord of the Rings 3 with Aki yesterday, and I felt fine all the while I was sat in the cinema. Terribly hungover, yes, but without the cold.

The movie was good. Lots of epic battle scenes etc. I hadn't seen the second one though so some of the plot was lost on me. It was St. Valentines day as well, so Aki brought me round some chocolate cakes and I treated her to Sushi after the film. Skiing on Friday was pretty cool. I spoke to my supervisor first and asked him whether it would be OK to take an hour off at the end of the day. I didn't need to lie because he's a pretty cool guy. I think he knows that the only reason I take leave is for skiing anyway. He told me to go to the vice principal and feign an illness, which would actually be favourable on my part because it would look like I was using my own holiday allowance when I could actually be taking sick leave. Hee, hee, hee! I met a guy called Eric, from Oregon, who is also a JET and later a guy called Ernie, also from Oregon, and skiied the Big Jump and did some mogul runs. In fact, the mogul runs are what I want to practise today.

Right, I'm going to get ready now. Laters...