Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where yours truly is hoping the eggs weren't too bad. More on that later.

I am at home waiting for the first of the back to backs to be called in by housekeeping, so I can go ready them for the guests checking in this afternoon. Since my last post, I have... let's see. Had yet another close friend announce a pregnancy, effectively removing her from my go-to sking/riding/biking partner list, gotten Lasik surgery on my eyes, can see without glasses or contacts for the first time since I was eight years old, undertaken a massive house-cleaning campaign, all but won the battle with the most horrible four-week cold in recent memory, fixed my massive shades on the front bay window of my house so Andy can no longer strangle himself on the loops of string while he is sitting in the bay window behind them, exhaustively (and, most likely, pointlessly) researched all foreseeable facets of a move to Maui, met another girl who's husband "created a monster" by moving her to the mountains, climbed A-basin with her and skied down under warm sun and bluebird sky, painted a mural of a beach and waves on the bathroom wall, painted another snowboard, swept and vacuumed nearly the entire coat of a shedding Golden Retriever off my floor, gave him a shower, attended three dinners at friend's houses, inspected over sixty arrivals, put 40 eyedrops in my eyes, eyedrops that promptly found their way from my tear ducts to the back of my throat, where they caused five days straight of a vomit-like burning taste in the back of my throat that completely removed my appetite and ruined every single meal that I could finally taste after my cold, coughed until I thought I was going to pass out, took the dog for walks in cold air and coughed even harder, ate lots of Hall's cough drops, fell on the ice and slid under my car, lay under my car gasping and thinking about how Maui never has ice, and went to Denver four times for pre- and post-op eye appointments.

This morning was actually the morning we did the A-basin trip. I got up at 6:30 this morning, grabbed an apple and some gatorade, picked up my friend, and we made our way up Highway 6/Loveland Pass, where we parked and joined the trickle of people who were strapping on snowshoes, tele skis, splitboards, back country XC skis, and AT skis and heading up the mountain, an hour and a half before the lifts opened. It was good. After we topped the first brutal uphill, the sun rose above the East Wall. We turned around three quarters of the way to the top, and I took my snowboard off my backpack, replacing it with snowshoes and poles, while my friend removed her skins from her tele skis. I had decided against wearing snowboard boots, wearing my rubber and canvas snowboots instead, and strapped them into my board, wincing at how the straps cut across my toes and ankles, and how the back of the binding dug into my calf, and how much movement my heels were allowed. I got more comfortable with having no ankle support halfway down, in time to hit a bump run, and by the time we were down, the lift was running, so we pulled out our passes and made two more runs down on the steeps and bumps, the backs of my heels and calf muscles bruising more deeply with each jump turn and trough, with me ignoring the pain of having no foot and ankle support in the thrill of the moment. I must have been riding okay in spite of it, since I did garner a few compliments on my method from the chairs a few feet above my head as we rocked and slammed and beat ourselves up as we rode and tele'd, respectively, down the bumps on Exhibition.

I got home starved, and decided I needed a breakfast of champions- potatoes and protein. I got out a potato, peeled and diced it, and put it in my six inch cast iron skillet to cook. Then sat down at my computer and check Facebook, my email, etc, and forgot about the potatoes until I smelled smoke. In chagrin, I scraped the blackened chunks into the trash, rinsed the pan, and started over. Almost did it again, but caught it just in the nick of time. I rummaged in the fridge until I found a tortilla and an egg, and cracked the egg into the pan over the potatoes...and gaped in horror at the hard, grayish yolk and chunky, gelatinous white. Rotten. Very. I grabbed the skillet off the stove and scraped all the potatoes that had come into contact with the egg into the sink, returned it to the stove with just a few potatoes and bits of green pepper, and cracked a second egg into a measuring cup. Also rotten. The third egg looked healthy (as healthy as something that comes from a bird's butt can be), so I dumped it in, and tried not to think about the now scorched bits of rotten egg that still clung to the edges of the skillet. Finally got it all cooked, dumped it on a tortilla, and grabbed the massive jug of picante sauce from the fridge, and was ready to dump...and stopped just in time to keep the big, fluffy, white spots of mold from landing on my already iffy breakfast burrito. Then I threw away the jug of moldy Picante sauce and ate a very bland burrito.

And that is the tale of my day so far. Now I need to go to work, and it is an absolutely gorgeous day today, as long as the wind can stay down. This afternoon, I need to take Andy skiing or on a bike ride, or something, because nothing is more destructive than a one-year-old Golden retriever who has not had enough exercise lately, because his people have been too busy coughing and wheezing and blowing their noses to take him out. Unless, of course, it's a less-than-a-year-old Golden Retriever. He is maturing, be it ever so slowly.