Hello from the land of little crystallized water molecules that form high in the atmosphere, and fall on us high country folks in what we like to call snow. In a week, we have gone from balmy breezes to winter. I snowboarded last week for the first time. It was wonderful. Maybe the snow wasn't so great, and maybe it was just several runs down the "ribbon", but feeling the snow under my board is something I have missed all summer. It seemed like I was really kickin' tail, until I remembered that I had my edges sharpened before going up. No wonder I was actually able to carve out some turns. By the end of last year, my edges were actually round. Nary a turn could I make without having my board slide out from under me unless i was in enough fluff that dull edges did not make a difference. There was a day or two at the end of last season, I was beginning to doubt my abilities to even stay vertical. Doubt no more my friends. I am back. Back to the days of driving while pearing around the goggles hanging from my rear view mirror. Back to carrying my snowboard strapped to the rollbar of the jeep. Back to muddy boots in a box behind my seat. Fresh gray tape on my mittens. I love those gloves. They have a five-fingered liner snuggled inside roomy, yet flexible mittens. I found them between two couch cushions in a condo one year after a whole buss load of kids from the University of Austin had gone. They were almost new back then. Now, the right one has carried the knife-sharp edge of my snowboard through so many parking lots, the palm has worn thin, and finally shredded. It is through this inevitable fact that I achieve identification as a true local. The finger end of my right mitten has been wrapped round and round with duct tape to ensure that it remains waterproof. The guy who invented gray tape aught to be made an honorary shredder.

There are several reasons that mittens are a good choice for snowboarders. One, they do not carry anything, have no need for fingers except for strapping in, and that can usually be done without much dexterity. One can curl one's fingers up and keep them much warmer. And the last reason is a somewhat discriminatory one. There can be no obscene gestures toward anyone encountered on the slopes. Well, there can be, but no one will know it for sure.

Actually, that is just the reputation that snowboarders have. Disregard for the rules, dangerous, fast, rude, uncommunicative. Mostly because of the earbuds jammed against their eardrums. Not necessarily true. Maybe on a micro scale, just as many skiers can fit that same description. Mostly, they are an aggressive, flirtatious bunch. I slide my gloves off sometimes in a gondola cabin, when the testosterone gets too thick. The sparkle on my left hand is enough to turn aggressive into painfully polite. But while snowboarders own the space around them, many skiers can be equally unpleasant. These are the old-school snobs who look down on anything less than the purity of the sport. Who spend the entire ride up the chair huffing about how someone followed them through their powder stash, and who slam the bar down on my unsuspecting head, impaling my thigh, with nary a warning. But then there are those wonderful people in both sports. It is a real pleasure sometimes to just get out, on a bluebird day, and go spend the morning with people who are exactly where they want to be. Even the most grouchy old codgers can be coaxed into being jovial on such a day.

In the meantime, we work. I know, some of you thought that notion was foreign to us. We have been rearranging the office for the last week. Some of you who have spent time in the claustrophobic aisle between shelves that all of our laundry is stored in and all of our bags of clean linens are packed in know how tight and nonfunctional it was in there. And we have grown into a big enough company that often, two cleaning crews are trying to pack for their day at the same time. We opened it up, and rearranged it so that two crews could pack without climbing over each other. While we were doing that, we also went through our linens and threw away a couple hundred sheet sets that were getting too ripped or stained for our guests to use. We haven't broken that fact to the owner yet. He's going to be paying several thousand dollars this year for new linens. Now's when it's nice to just be an employee.

To add to the sudden frenzy, Keystone resorts has stopped providing card keys for our units. We used to order hundreds of dollars worth of keys from them, already programmed for the doors they opened. But the other day, we got a tactful letter from them saying they would no longer be providing this service. This means several thousand dollars worth of new equipment to be able to make all of our own keys, as well as a week's training seminar in Las Vegas, or else we will find ourselves indefinitely locked out as of November first. Hmmm... couldn't be all bad. No getting into units might make work fairly impossible, and we could spend a week in Vegas. I have never even seen the inside of a casino, except on our honeymoon, when I was sicker than a dog and crawled from our hotel to a pay phone in a casino in Lake Tahoe to call my mother to check in. I seriously doubt I would even be able to gamble. It is something that genuinely scares me. I lost a ten dollar bill to a Mexican restaurant once, when they gave me the wrong change, and that was so distressing I called them as soon as I noticed it missing. It was just unthinkable that I had paid twenty dollars for a black bean and shredded pork burrito. What if i just fed ten dollars to a slot machine and it swallowed it whole and laughed at me? That would haunt me every time I went shopping, and something cost ten dollars more than I was willing to pay for it.

But still, the lights of Las Vegas is something I have never seen. And nothing is more needed more after a vacation than another vacation...

The boys are all involved in watching the Indians and the Red Sox battle it out on the ball field for a chance at playing the Rockies in the World Series. It seems we picked a good year to become baseball fans. We went to a game at Coors field this summer, and have been following the Rockies in their 21 out of 22 game winning streak. We shouted advice at the tiny players on the TV screen as they were one pitch away from losing their shot at the post season in their wild card game against the Padres, and celebrated with them when they finally won it in the 13th inning...and kept waiting for them to lose (this is our Rockies we are talking about, after all) and gained faith in them as they gained momentum and swept the Phillies and the Diamondbacks, and finally, it sunk in- the World Series will be played in Denver. Denver! Nobody expected that one. Of course, the downside is, tickets we are used to paying four dollars apiece for will now be selling for four hundred apiece . No sliding into the Rockpile bleachers on a ticket that costs less than your hot dog during these games. I imagine we will be not going, even if the World Series in Denver is not something you see all the time, to say the very least.

And behind my laptop screen, the Bosox just won the game. Looks like it will be them and Denver. Good. Now I can finally go to bed. Goodnight to all.