It's snowing in Crested Butte . . .

but I don't live in Crested Butte.

And it's raining here.

And it's 40 degrees.

Which, of course, is why it's raining.

That just ain't right.

It should not be raining at 8000 feet on the last day of November.

But I'm not going to use the G word. Or really the GW words.

Whatever. I'm not going to use them.

Yet.

A good idea brought to fruition

I've had two massages in less than a week.

This is definitely a record for me.

I had a meeting on Sunday at the Aspen Club and afterwards, my awesome, generous friend sprang for us to get massages.

Early Christmas gift. Sweet!

What a great way to end a meeting. Going to Takah for dinner afterwards was just icing on the cake.

But better yet, while sitting at the Aspen Club comparing notes on favorite spa treatments, I mentioned to one of my fellow spa indulgers that my favorite treatment, the Salt Scrub, just happened to be the November monthly massage/treatment special at Yampah Spa.

Yes, Yampah Spa, the very spa whose possibility kept me sane two weeks ago.

Lo and behold, it turned out that the Salt Scrub is also the favorite of my companion.

In a whirlwind of momentum, we quickly cooked up a plan whereby I would switch my day off to correspond with hers and we would go spa-ing and shopping (at Costco, no less) on this, the second to last day of the month of the favored spa treatment special.

And thus it was that, for the first time in my life, I had two massages in less than a week.

And a good idea, once thought to be an opportunity missed due to excessive meeting length, was brought to fruition after all.

And then, we Cost-co'd. Such a day . . .

Tipperary by Frank Delany

I've been a bit delinquent.

I received this book on August 6, 2007 as part of the Advance Reader's program through LibraryThing and read it soon thereafter, finishing it on 8/27/07.

Part of the deal with the Advance Reader's program is that, in return for a free copy of the book, you're supposed to review the book. It doesn't matter if it's a good review or not, you're just supposed to review it.

For some reason, I wasn't very motivated to review this one. I don't know if it was because I only read it out of obligation. I had requested it so I had to follow through on my part of the deal.

I don't know if it was because I wasn't thrilled with it. I don't know if it was because I felt obliged to be kind.

Just not sure.

But, I was in Explore, Aspen's local bookstore, the other day and I saw Tipperary displayed on the counter with the new releases. Checking with Amazon, I found that the book had been published 11/6/07.

So, here I am, writing this review. More as a clearing it off my to do list and assuaging my guilt than anything else.

Not such a great lead-in, huh? Not making you want to rush out and read it, am I?

Rightfully so, perhaps.

I'm fairly ambivalent about this book. I found it a bit difficult to get going. I often found the protagonist annoying.

Let me back up a bit. The book is a cross between historical fiction and a romance novel. It's a romance novel from a male perspective but a romance novel nonetheless. Set in Ireland during the turn of the century, the book unconvincingly entwines the simple, country-boy protagonist, Charles O'Brien, with many a famous individual.

The book is written as Charles' journals and for most of the narrative takes on the often stunted prose of an amateur diarist. Delany also resorts to the improbable artifice of the discovery of writings from O'Brien's mother when faced with the need to include a perspective other than Charles'.

Towards the end of the book, I did start to get interested in the resolution of the "mystery" involving our present day narrator. Not being very familiar with Irish history, I also found some redeeming educational features in O'Brien's story.

I didn't hate it but wouldn't recommend it except to someone with a particular interest in the author, the Irish people or the period.

I do understand that Delany's other book, Ireland, which I have not read, comes much more highly recommended.

Sitemeter outage

Sitemeter.

It's pretty addictive. For someone who claims to not care if anyone's reading, I sure do check Sitemeter often. It's also a lot of fun to see some of the ridiculous search terms people come up with. Or puzzling to see how including a certain image or UPC code (?) generates unexpected traffic.

But Sitemeter was having issues this past weekend.

I spent many a minute refreshing my Sitemeter link over the last couple of days. I could get data for Mountain Musings Project 365 Photoblog, albeit extremely slowly, but not for Mountain Musings.

I consoled myself with the thought that I just had to be patient. When the weekend was over and the tech guys finally fixed the problem, I'd be able to log on and satisfy my curiosity.

Only, not really. I got nothing, nada, zip, zilch, no data from 8:36 pm on 11/23 through 1:19 pm on 11/25. All gone. So sad.

I want my money back. Oh wait, I have a free Sitemeter account.

Sitemeter says:

We’re slowly bringing the downed servers back online but in some cases we’re unable to retrieve data lost during the outage. If your stats are hosted on s21, s24, or s25 you will most likely be missing data from approximately Friday Nov 23rd to Monday Nov 26th.

We are of course very disappointed to learn of this failure; especially after all we’ve done to minimize these kinds of things from happening. We understand the inconvenience this creates for you and although it isn’t much help for those who have lost stats we do apologize.

I know! (making lemonade here) If you stopped by on late 11/23, all day 11/24 or early am 11/25 or if you think you stopped by or if you thought about stopping by, or if you wish you had stopped by, leave me a comment. Yeah, that's it. A comment.

It'll be like a manual sitemeter. Kinda like when you revert to the old credit card slide machine when your power goes out.

It shouldn't

I've often wondered why it matters.
(from PostSecret)

“It is a serious offense to mock God.”

From the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

The Eight "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts"

1. I'd really rather you didn't act like a sanctimonious holier-than-thou ass when describing my noodly goodness. If some people don't believe in me, that's okay. Really, I'm not that vain. Besides, this isn't about them so don't change the subject.
2. I'd really rather you didn't use my existence as a means to oppress, subjugate, punish, eviscerate, and/or, you know, be mean to others. I don't require sacrifices, and purity is for drinking water, not people.
3. I'd really rather you didn't judge people for the way they look, or how they dress, or the way they talk, or, well, just play nice, Okay? Oh, and get this into your thick heads: woman = person. man = person. Samey = Samey. One is not better than the other, unless we're talking about fashion and I'm sorry, but I gave that to women and some guys who know the difference between teal and fuchsia.
4. I'd really rather you didn't indulge in conduct that offends yourself, or your willing, consenting partner of legal age AND mental maturity. As for anyone who might object, I think the expression is go f*** yourself, unless they find that offensive in which case they can turn off the TV for once and go for a walk for a change.
5. I'd really rather you didn't challenge the bigoted, misogynistic, hateful ideas of others on an empty stomach. Eat, then go after the b*******.
6. I'd really rather you didn't build multi million-dollar churches/temples/mosques/shrines to my noodly goodness when the money could be better spent (take your pick):
1. Ending poverty
2. Curing diseases
3. Living in peace, loving with passion, and lowering the cost of cable
I might be a complex-carbohydrate omniscient being, but I enjoy the simple things in life. I ought to know. I AM the creator.
7. I'd really rather you didn't go around telling people I talk to you. You're not that interesting. Get over yourself. And I told you to love your fellow man, can't you take a hint?
8. I'd really rather you didn't do unto others as you would have them do unto you if you are into, um, stuff that uses a lot of leather/lubricant/Las Vegas. If the other person is into it, however (pursuant to #4), then have at it, take pictures, and for the love of Mike, wear a CONDOM! Honestly, it's a piece of rubber. If I didn't want it to feel good when you did it I would have added spikes, or something.

The quote in the title is from Mrs. Kathy Martin, District 6 member of the Kansas State Board of Education when that body was deciding whether to require that the alternative theory of Intelligent Design be taught along with the theory of Evolution.

Fascinating stuff

There are 68,246 Bridgets in the US.

There are 4,000,755 Marys in the US.

There are 910 people in the US with my last name.

There are twelve people in the US with my first and last name.

There are zero people in the US with my middle and last name.

There are 367,014 Rachels in the US.

There is one and only one person in the US with Rachel's first and last name. I'm guessing that's Rachel.

That's kinda cool.

There are 1,185,986 Stevens in the US.

There are 2,120,215 people with Steve's last name in the US.

There are 8,290 people with Steve's first and last names in the US.

Rachel:

HowManyOfMe.com

There is 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Me (and all 12 are my first cousins . . .):

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 12 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

No wonder I started using my middle name!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 4,000,755 people named Mary in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Can I Sit with You?

There's a blog, Can I Sit with You?, which is collecting adult stories about adolescent ostracism and bullying for the purpose of publishing a book to be used to let kids know that even though it hurts, they're not alone and others have experienced the same sorts of things.

A laudable concept.

Unfortunately my response wasn't quite so high minded.

While browsing the blog, I came across one story which named names and I immediately wanted to write a post calling out all of those nasty grammar school girls who had been so mean to me.

Petty, huh?

Here I am, 30+ years later and I want to name names.

Sue Bohn, Cathee Collier, Donna Huspen.

Oooo, that felt good.

Happy Thanksgiving

While I feel sheepish about my lack of originality, I don't feel energetic enough to do anything about it, other than acknowledge that I feel sheepish.






Things I am thankful for:

-- Darling Daughter who is old enough to bake the Thanksgiving Pumpkin Spice cake (recipe below) so I don't have to.

-- postcard coupon for $50 off at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse which we redeemed last night.

-- friends who host potluck Thanksgiving dinner which means that I only have to bring a Pumpkin Spice cake which Darling Daughter made.

-- husband who periodically goes far away to work in Tropical Paradise.

-- husband who comes home to Mountain Paradise after working far away in Tropical Paradise.

-- extra money to spend in pricey Mountain Paradise which husband earns when he works far away in pricey Tropical Paradise.

-- visiting husband in Tropical Paradise when he works far away.

-- extended family who spend every other Christmas in Mountain Paradise, pricey though it is.

PUMPKIN SPICE CAKE
Recipe from Bridget’s Family Files

4 EGGS
2 CUPS SUGAR
1 CUP OIL
1 16 OZ CAN PUMPKIN
2 CUPS FLOUR
2 TSP BAKING SODA
½ TSP SALT
2 TSP CINNAMON

MIX ALL INGREDIENTS TOGETHER. POUR INTO A GREASED AND FLOURED TUBE CAKE PAN. BAKE ONE HOUR AT 350°. COOL COMPLETELY BEFORE FROSTING. REMOVE FROM PAN.

6 OZ CREAM CHEESE
1 LB POWDERED SUGAR
1 STICK BUTTER
2 TSP VANILLA

MIX INGREDIENTS TOGETHER. BEAT UNTIL SMOOTH. THICKLY FROST ENTIRE CAKE.

AT ALTITUDE: ADD 1 EGG. OMIT 2 TBSP OIL. OMIT 3 TBSP SUGAR. OMIT 1/4 TSP BAKING SODA. INCREASE OVEN TEMPERATURE APPROXIMATELY 20°, SHORTEN COOKING TIME. START CHECKING FOR DONENESS AT APPROXIMATELY 45 MINUTES.

Christmas music

Since this is what I awoke to this morning, I've got the Christmas music going right now.

It just feels right, looking out the window at the bright white and listening to Peace on Earth.

So many people turn their noses up at Christmas music. They talk about how annoying it is that the stores are playing Christmas music earlier and earlier every year. They talk about limiting their shopping to online shopping in an effort to avoid Christmas music.

I don't understand.

I'm repeating myself here but I'm a Christmas music freak.

It puts me in a really good mood to consider that not only do I have my own Christmas music collection of 520 songs (yes, 15 more songs than a year ago!), 1.2 days, 1.68 GB but there's also now my Sirius radio subscription which will provide me with 3 stations of round the clock Christmas music starting this past Monday.

Although, I do have Christmas music envy, since I read somewhere that XM has 5 Christmas music stations. I wish they'd hurry up and merge like they keep threatening.

KUUR, Your! Radio is also doing the Christmas music thing but I'm going to have to find out what its frequency is because it's only My! radio this time of year. (the rest of the year it pays sucky, sappy music. oh, wait . . .)

And while RadioFreeAspen doesn't seem to be repeating their Christmas offerings of last year, it's early so there's still hope . . .

Christmas music makes me happy.

That's just wrong

Being wrong annoys me.

I like to know what I'm talking about. If someone tells me something that's contrary to what I believe to be true, I get frustrated. With myself.

Like why didn't I know that? I should have known that.

Or why do I think it's different? Why am I misinformed?

Enough so that I go out of my way for things that are entirely inconsequential.

Take the other day, for example. I ran into a visitor who, granted, used to live here. In the course of our conversation, he complains that the bus from the airport into town isn't free.

I think, yes, it is. I just told my brother that it is. It is, isn't it? When did they change that? Why didn't I know that?

I say, "Really?"

Yep, he maintains. Gotta pay to get from the airport into town.

The conversation moves on and shortly thereafter we go our separate ways.

My separate way involves an immediate detour to the bus station that's 2 blocks away where I ascertain that, in fact, it is free to take the bus from the airport to town and from town to the airport.

Ok, I feel so much better . . .

More reasons I heart Aspen

Yesterday, since it was unseasonably warm, I decided to take Ellie for a stroll through town.

I was meandering down Cooper Street, watching some visitors load their kids in their rental car, when the mom says "Hey, I know you!" to me.

I'm thinking, huh?

"Yep, I hiked the Grand Canyon with you!"

Sure enough, standing in front of me was one of the people with whom I had hiked the Grand Canyon Labor Day weekend of 1998. This being the life changing trip which led almost directly to me moving to Aspen the following Memorial Day weekend.

I hadn't seen her since a party shortly after I had decided to move here.

Encounters like this are such fun. I've had multiple since I moved here.

One day I was walking down the street when a car pulled up next to me. The driver rolled down his window and said my first name, which just happens to be a name I stopped using when I was in 9th grade. Turns out it was someone with whom I had gone to grammar school. He was in Aspen with his whole family including his parents who are very good friends of my parents but who now live hundreds of miles away from where we all grew up and even more hundreds of miles away from here.

Another day I was walking up the street and happened upon one of my old bosses from over twenty years ago.

I also live down the street from a retired judge from Skokie who worked with the father of one of my high school friends.

I recently spoke on the phone with a gentleman whose eight kids all went to my grammar school. When he asked if he needed to spell his last name for me, I said, "No, I went to OLPH."

Just some more reasons why living here is different from living most other places.

I heart Aspen

In Aspen, the students, no matter what grade, call almost all of their teachers by their first names.

The rare teachers who insist on being called Mr. or Ms. just come across as silly (but of course their wishes are "respected").

When Rachel went on the People to People trip this summer, the chaperones were 3 teachers from Grand Junction, all of whom insisted on being called Mr. and Ms. Rachel ended up getting in a heated discussion with one of them about how ridiculous she thought this was.

In eighth grade, one of Rachel's unmarried teachers became pregnant and had a baby.

Nobody said a word about it. There was no negative backlash, really no commentary at all.

The other day, Rachel, now a sophomore, informed me that her world history teacher who is unmarried has announced that she is pregnant.

All I could do was laugh out loud, exclaiming I love Aspen!

No wonder I fit in here so well . . .

Double Dissed

Not only won't Peter Dewolf be my friend but I seem somehow to have fallen out of favor with NaBloPoMo's Randomiser.

After an initial spike in traffic driven by the Randomizer, I haven't had a Random visit since November 8th.

Hmmm.

Maybe I've pissed it off by pointing out its indecisiveness in that it can't seem to chose between S and Z.

If so, it's awfully touchy . . .

(shhhh - maybe it's a good thing. There appears to be an awful lot of random tagging going on amongst NaBloPoMo members and I'm not such a good joiner so maybe I should just keep quiet. Hmmm, which would I rather; traffic and tagging or no traffic and no tagging?)

Prematurity Awareness Month

November is Prematurity Awareness Month.

Rachel was 10 weeks premature. Born at 30 weeks weighing 3 lbs 4 oz, she was in the NICU for 51 days. Her weight dropped to 2 lbs 9 oz.

My mom's best friend was struck by the fact that Rachel weighed less than the chicken she was buying for dinner. Check out just how tiny a three pound chicken is the next time you're in the meat section of the grocery store.

Rachel was a scrawny little thing. She looked like a peanut with her wrinkly skin.

Rachel on the day she was born

She came home after her extended hospital stay weighing just under 5 lbs.

Rachel the day she came home from the hospital

Once she was home, she thrived.

Rachel at 6 mos.

Now, almost 16 years later, she's nearly as tall as I am and will probably pass me soon. Her feet are already bigger than mine . . .

Rachel now.

Colbie Caillat

Colbie Caillat's coming to BellyUp Aspen on 12/20.

So, I now have 35 days to listen to Coco continuously (and seriously annoy Rachel) . . .

A good idea

Yesterday I was whining about how horrible my day was going to be today.

I was moaning about how I had to get up so early and I had to be on the spot for so long and then I had to hang around 45 miles from home for 3 and a half hours with nothing to do only to be on the spot again.

I was finding my complaining quite annoying.

But my boss, my unbelievably generous boss, even though I made her listen to me, even though I made her read yesterday's entry, came up with a really good idea.

She suggested that during my break, I go over to Yampah Spa and get a massage or just relax in the vapor caves.

Wow!

She even offered to pay for it.

Double wow!

The existence of this possibility made my entire day easier to face.

And the fact that my first meeting ran long and I didn't have time to take advantage of her offer is almost beside the point.

Waffling

My interior dialogue:

(background - I have a 7 1/2 hour meeting that starts at 7:30 am tomorrow at a location that's an hour away from my house and for the entire duration of the meeting, I need to be the reincarnation of the Eveready Bunny.)

Hmmm, maybe I should stay in a hotel close to the meeting place tonight.

But, I have a dinner meeting tonight here and wouldn't be able to leave until about 8 pm.

But, if I get there at 9 pm and go straight to bed . . .

But, there'll be a TV. What are the chances I'll be able to resist the temptation?

But, if I stay home, I'll have to get up at 5:30 am. I'll be toast before I even get down there.

But, what if I can't sleep at the hotel?

You don't have a problem sleeping.

But what if it's a noisy room?

But how good will it feel when you wake up tomorrow and you're already there?

But I'll have to be organized enough to pick out clothes tonight and to make sure I don't forget anything.

There's no winning an argument with me . . .

Who remembers this stuff?

Deckchair Danny aka Laura B is conducting some research for a class:

We are conducting this survey on menarche (first menstrual period) as part of a research project for our anthropology class at Whatcom Community College. Over the last 150 years, there has been a reduction in the average age at which girls have their first menstrual period. We hope that your answers to the following questions will help us to understand some of the factors. Thank you very much for your participation.

Well, I definitely can't answer many of these questions. Can you?

Maybe the questionnaire isn't aimed at women of my advanced age . . .

Its

Yesterday, NaBloPoMo's Randomiser brought me to Tillerman's blog, Proper Course wherein he was discussing pointless blogs.

He gave two examples, neither of which he has since decided adequately illustrated his point. But he did manage to hurt a complete stranger's feelings with one of his examples so that's something.

He's now wondering if there is a such a thing as a pointless blog or if all blogs are pointless.

But that's not what I want to discuss.

One of his examples was a blog that documents instances where the letter i is dotted when it shouldn't be. Now granted, I don't see much reason to get my panties in a bunch over this. I'm going to assume that when people do this, they know they're doing it. I mean, we're talking about capitalization here. Really straightforward capitalization.

No, my complaint, my pet peeve, my obsession lies with its.

My entry into Tillerman's pointless blog category (other than this one and this one) would be a blog dedicated to calling out all those instances when otherwise literate individuals use it's when they should be using its or its when it should be it's.

I fear, however, that this would be too overwhelming an undertaking. Just googling blogs for it's its gives me 4 errors on the first page, three in blog titles and one where the writer uses its incorrectly and it's correctly in the same sentence.

It makes my head hurt.

Basically, I'm too lazy, busy, dispassionate, unengaged, _______ (fill in the blank) to do more than write a single blog entry about my frustration with the misusage of its and it's.

Dissed

Peter DeWolf won't be my friend.

As I wrote the other day, Peter DeWolf is responsible for me finding out about NaBloPoMo. Somehow or another I found Such Great Heights which I liked so I RSS'd it.

This past week Clink has been in Boston on a business trip so she had guest bloggers. Peter was her guest blogger on Tuesday and after reading his post, I checked out his blog. And became acquainted with NaBloPoMo.

So I joined. NaBloPoMo is actually a social network like Facebook, only much smaller. And its software, Ning, isn't as functional.

Now, I'm no Little Miss Popularity. Not really interested. On Facebook, I have 16 friends, mostly family and Rachel's friends.

This does not bother me. Really, I'm ok with it.

On NaBloPoMo, I got friended by a complete stranger and thought, what the heck? So I have one friend.

Since Peter, unbeknownst to him, was really my first friend on NaBloPoMo, I thought it'd be "fun" to friend him. Expecting the opportunity to send the request with a short explanation (since of course Peter doesn't know me from Eve), I clicked Add as a Friend and was immediately dismayed to get a little message stating "Request sent!"

Well, don't be so happy about it, Ning, 'cause you suck. You're supposed to let me add a note the way Facebook does.

A short while later, Sitemeter tells me that Peter has checked my blog. (which, BTW, I quickly edited to add a reference to him in the hopes that he would make the connection.)

And then, nothing. Silence.

Peter DeWolf doesn't want to be my friend. Sniff.

She Loves Me

The Aspen Community Theatre's production this year is She Loves Me, a 1963 Broadway musical.

One of four adaptations of Miklos Laszlo's 1937 play, Parfumerie, (the other three being 1940's Shop Around the Corner, 1949's In the Good Old Summertime and, most familiar to us, 1998's You've Got Mail), She Loves Me is the story of two antagonistic shop clerks who are also in love with each other as anonymous lonely hearts club penpals.

It's a cute pretext with humor sprinkled throughout and well-performed by our local talent. While the first half drags a bit, the play really hits its stride in the second half and makes up for any first half shortcomings.

Real life husband and wife Nikki and Jonathon Boxer play the romantic leads and Bryan Gonzalez has a great time playing the cad, Steven Kodaly (pronounced co-day).

Yikes!

Yesterday evening, Rachel and I heard the fire station whistle at around 5:30 pm. Since it wasn't noon, we both said, "Uh-oh, that's a bummer."

Quite the bummer.

Started hearing news reports on the radio that the fire involved a property right across the alley from my parents' condo. Since I'm the designated property manager for their condo (I even get paid for this title), I felt an obligation to go check the situation out, being that I'm so responsible and all.

The desire to gawk had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Smoke blanketed the entire city. Driving down Main Street was a bit surreal. Like a really dirty fog.

I parked a couple of blocks away so that I could maneuver better and walked over. Spent a fair amount of time watching from just across the alley. Almost got sprayed by the fire trucks on the street on the other side of the building. Figured out after, oh, 45 minutes or so that I was probably inhaling toxic materials. D'oh.

Two hours into the fire, they still hadn't gotten inside, since the hot spots kept flaring up.

While vacant, the building, the Holiday House, is employee housing owned by Aspen SkiCo and they were going to start moving in seasonal employees in less than a month. They were just about to finish up with interior renovations. The building is a complete loss so now they're down 60 beds at a time when they were already short on housing. Uggh. I saw Mike Kaplan, the CEO, walking down the street on his cellphone. Must have sucked to be him last night . . .

I got a few pictures. Not as many as I might have since, while I had the presence of mind to grab the camera on my way out the door, I left the memory card in the computer. The internal memory on my camera is pathetic.

Got home and smelled so smoky that I couldn't stand myself . . .

Recco

Aspen Highlands has a fine slate of avalanche dogs, dogs trained in avalanche rescue. Since my affiliation with Highlands, which began in 2000, Recco, a black lab, had been the grande dame. She was awesome, all business and a bit standoffish with the public, unlike Emma, one of the newer additions who loves to play with the public as they get off the Loge lift. Recco pretty much kept to herself, waiting for those opportunities when she could get out in the snow with her handler. She adored working in the snow. Her entire demeanor would change when Suey was getting ready to take her out.

Ironically, for an avi dog, she really didn't like the avalanche bombs. I remember sitting next to her on a bench as she sat very still and trembled while the patrollers were bombing the Highland Bowl.

Recco retired a few years ago and since she wasn't up at Highlands much or at least not when I was up there, I lost track of her. I assumed she was enjoying her retirement and living the good life here in the Roaring Fork Valley.

I was saddened to see the above remembrance of her in the paper today.

But is it worth it?

I really like Seal's music.

He was supposed to play Jazz Aspen Snowmass in September of 1999 and I had tickets.

$45 tickets.

Shortly before the show, he cancelled.

Story was that when his manager booked Seal, he neglected to book Seal's band. Oops.

Oh well, I did get my money back.

Seal's coming to play BellyUp Aspen on 12/22.

General admission is $250.

$250.

Reserved seating is $450.

This will be the third consecutive December that Seal's played BellyUp Aspen. All sell-outs. All really pricey.

I really want to go . . .

NaBloPoMo Randomizer

Blogger has Next Blog but it doesn't work so well since it's been hijacked by hacks. More than 50% of what comes up on Next Blog is either obscene, an advertisement or both.

So, an unexpected benefit of NaBloPoMo is the Randomizer (or Randomiser depending on which of NaBloPoMo's webpages you're looking at).

Probably due to the fact that NaBloPoMo is a much younger and therefore smaller community, almost every blog which comes up when clicking its Next Random Blog link is an honest to goodness real live person's musings about his/her life.

Very refreshing.

My own blog actually came up. That's never happened for me on Blogger's Next Blog.

actually posted 11/9/07, 7:01 pm

Locals' Discounts

We spent the weekend saving money.

Too bad saving money is so expensive . . .

The "we" are me, Rachel, my brother and sister-in-law. They (B3 & SIL1 and only so far) are coming, along with the rest of the immediate family, to spend Christmas in Aspen.

Christmas in Aspen is pricey. No discounts.

As I have already noted, B3 & SIL1AOSF flew to Aspen to take advantage of the crazy savings on the Classic Pass. In addition, SkiCo's gear shop, Four Mountain Sports, was having its Blowout Sale all weekend long. In addition to that, the Ski Swap was Saturday.

Fall off season can really be the time for locals to score.

So many opportunities to save . . .

After 3 trips to the Blowout Sale and several hours at the Ski Swap, not including the stop at the Buttermilk ticket office, we ended up with 2 classic passes, an employee dependent pass, a locals' clinic pass, 2 pairs of used skis, a pair of new skis, 2 new snowboards with bindings, a pair of new poles, a pair of new bindings, a pair of new ski boots, two pairs of new snowboard boots, a pair of new ski pants, a new jacket and assorted socks, gloves, mittens, long underwear and goggles.

The credit cards were smoking . . .

Factor in the five restaurant meals over 2 days and the live theater (Rachel's high school play) and we certainly did our share for Aspen's off season economy.

actually posted 11/7/07, 12:09 pm

Fighting for Myself

Dara Harvick and Sydney Sailor in Fighting for Myself

Rachel is/was in the Aspen High School fall play which just happened to be performing this weekend, the same weekend that B3 and SIL1AOSF (see tomorrow's post if you're confused) were making their "knuckleheaded Aspen trip" (to quote B3).

So, lucky B3 and SIL1AOSF got to attend a high school performance. Aren't family obligations great? (They claim to have enjoyed it.)

The play which was underwritten by Valley Partnership for Drug Prevention and Response (the local domestic abuse agency) had a decidedly dark cast to it. It consisted of a number of short skits dealing with different adolescent/teen girl issues such as sex, drugs, peer pressure, pregnancy and alcohol.

Two days before the performance, two of the girls were kicked out/dropped out and so there was a last minute scramble to reassign parts and learn entirely new scenes. The cast was entirely female and the girls (Rachel, Erin Daniel, Heather Boronski, Sydney Sailor and Dara Harvick) became fast friends. It was awesome to see how they bonded.

They'll be performing it for the 8th, 9th and 10th grade girls next week but due to the touchy subject matter, they need to get permission slips. The subject matter also threw a wrench into the plans to perform at other schools in the valley to the dismay of the director, Merrily Talbott.

We did go out for a yummy dinner at the bar at Jimmy's afterwards. Bar menus rock.

Actually posted 11/8/07, 6:01 pm

Classic Pass

Aspen SkiCo has this thing called a Classic Pass. It's actually a really good deal. Such a good deal that they make you purchase it in person the first time you buy it.

For $259 (this year), you get seven days of skiing on any of the four Aspen SkiCo mountains. That's $37 a day. Compared to a single day ticket which prices out at $87. That's a significant savings.

In addition, once you purchase it in person, you can renew it every year online, so long as you don't miss a year.

Such a deal.

In fact, it's such a good deal that my brother and sister-in-law who will be coming here at Christmas flew here today to take advantage of the savings.

Interestingly, the savings is $308 each. And they just happened to find an airfare from Chicago to Aspen for (pause for dramatic effect) $308 each.

Coincidence?

actually posted 11/7/07, 12:12 pm

NaBloPoMo

National Blog Posting Month.

Inspired by National Novel Writing Month,

. . . you look at the calendar, and when the whole world goes, "Oh, I can't believe they're already playing Christmas music in the warden's office!" you'll know it's November and that is the month in which you post something to your blog every day, in accordance with the National Blog Posting Month challenge!

I'm only starting out 5 posts behind but I think I'm going to try this.

They (the people over at NaBloPoMo) will probably consider it cheating to fill in posts for the past few days but I justify it by the fact that I just learned about this today from Peter DeWolf, who is a guest blogger at Such Great Heights, a blog I read regularly.

So there, that makes it all ok.

I seem to like the pressure of having to post every day, as evidenced by my desire to do this and my photoblog.

in the interests of full disclosure, this post was really posted 11/6/07, 10:02 pm.