Finally, hello to all my people. I don't mean finally as in this is my final post or anything like that, although I know I have had you worried... but I am finally back! Back to working late into the night (ahhhgh), back to getting a paycheck (oooohhh), back to excersizing indoors (oof! one...oof!two... oof! three...), back to the slopes (swish, swish, scrrrrr.... AAACK! thud. (that would be the sound of a happily carving snowboarder hitting a patch of ice, by the way)) back to holiday food (uuungh) icy walkways (oooww!) and tourists who can't drive (what the...?). And back to an abandoned blog (ah-hah!)

If you notice the word excersizing is spelled wrong in the above paragraph, it is because the computer is quite gleeful to tell me it is wrong, but can offer me no suggestions as to how to spell it right. It thinks I am trying for apotheosizing, of possibly metathesizing. I suppose it makes sense. The word probably isn't in the vocabulary of someone who sits for hours adding words to the computer for Microsoft to try to recognize later. At least not in present tense. Yeah, I know. My wit amazes me as well. And did you know (I did not just a moment ago, when I googled it) that you are metathesizing when you "aks someone for a mazagine"?

My goodness, digression might be the curse which keeps this post from being posted for quite some time.

We have been crazy busy, like twelve hour days busy, until thanksgiving. Now, we are taking a breath before Keystone's 36 hours. The 36 hours is a (you guessed it) 36 hour skiing, snowboarding, drinking, music, and videogame marathon that keystone hosts to kick off the season. All day, all night, and all day, until eyes are bloodshot, Redbulls consumed, arrests made, injuries patched, property management exhausted. This year, it may not be so bad because of the age profiling being done by reservations. We hope. We have been having about a dozen units recarpeted at the last minute, which means racing to them after a guest checks out, pulling all the furniture into uncarpeted areas, letting the carpetlayers in for a day, then racing back to vacuum all the little fibers that pop out of new carpets, and put all the furniture back in place just in time for the next guest to check in. And in the meantime, do several complete refurnishings, several paint jobs, a new tile floor here or there... these units have been ocupied all summer, so now is the only time we have had to do these upgrades. Every time we turn around, there is someone with a trailer and a furniture dolly in need of assistance. And the curse of this particular job is those heavy, polished aspen log beds that some people find so beautiful. Just a bed is one thing, but those of you who know a few of Dick Seymour's fetishes know that he loves bunk beds. If a room can hold a queen sized bed without rubbing the walls, it can hold a queen/queen bunk bed, which doubles the room's sleeping capacity. And those beds are HEAVY. they simply cannot be moved without being disassembled. And because of the nature of log beds, they must be disasembled by breaking them down into individual logs. A giant set of lincoln logs that takes three or four people to hold up all the pieces to keep it from collapsing once a few vital supports are removed. We have fit so many log ends into holes, and stacked so many of them, and heaved so many matresses around, it all seems like a giant blur of bruised ankles and splinters, late nights, take-out food in condos, ratchets and drills, bedskirts and pillow shams.



But thanksgiving day, I found my snowpants and put them on again. My parents were out to help us with a few remaining deep cleans, and we had Scott and Anthony Nichols from Alpine here for the afternoon and evening. Anthony and I hit the slopes for a few hours. I let him talk me into renting skis. Sort of a disaster, since the slopes were nine tenths ice, but i still had fun falling. I put my snowboard on after a few runs, since Anthony wanted to ski a bit faster than I was capable of. And yesterday, I escaped work for three hours, pulled on clothes still wet from last thursday (they had been in the jeep, too frozen to dry out) and went up again, on much better conditions. The snowblowers have been transforming the slopes into a moonscape, giant alien spikes of snow in front of them, waiting to be spread out by the snowcats. Icy knobs begging to be ridden. I have been working on a casual, mid-cruise 180, reluctant to try it on a big jump until I can do it flatfooted. it was a day for riding slowly, riding backwards, taking jumps and riding bumps. I am feeling muscle groups in my lower body that I have been wondering how to target.
















And finally, a picture not from our life, but from a bit of the heritage that is ours. Anyone recognise this guy? that would be Grandpa Koehn to me, Jim to the rest of us, in front of majestic Mt hood in his glory days.