Hello and Welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the skiers ski and the riders ride and sometimes, the sun shines. I am back to a fairly normal schedule these days. It took me a while, but I mustered up the courage to ask for only three shifts a week at the ski shop, which gives me time the other four days to work for my real job, and when that job's demands drop to me just needing to be on-call and available, I have time to ski and take the dog on walks.

The new skis ski like a dream. Really. You just can't sink a ski that's 115mm underfoot. We took two snowmobiles and one pair of skis up to Vail Pass yesterday and used one snomobile to shuttle whoever was skiing back up to the top of the hill we chose. Since we share the new skis, B got first turns on the skis while I shuttled him, then I got to make a few runs before it started to get dark. I had been nervous, never having skied in deep powder before. But a few turns in, I realized that, short of crossing them up, it was almost impossible to fall. They are like water skis. They rose out of the snow in front of me, and when I fell too much in the backseat, the tips rose above the surface of the snow and turning was easy. The whole several trips down the long, mellow hillside had a dreamlike quality. It was such a graybird day, the light was so flat that it was difficult to tell ground from sky, and there were no trees to judge speed by, and every once in a while one leg would dip, or one knee would come up and you would realize you must be on a side hill, and other skier's tracks would suddenly cross your own and you would tense up, wondering if a ski was going to get pulled out from under you, but with a marshmallow poof you were through and back to the floating fall you had been in, wondering if you were still even moving until you felt the ground drop from under you or rise to meet you.

This morning B took me to Denver for an eye appointment, a preliminary consultation for a retouch surgery on my left eye, the one that did not manage to heal to 20/20 after my laser surgery last spring. Although I am not looking forward to going through the whole healing thing again, having to tape protectors to my face so I don't accidentally tear off part of my cornea while I am asleep, no high impact activities for two weeks, constant eye drops and no makeup for two weeks, it will most likely be the same prescription as my right eye and I won't be doing all of my focusing with my right eye and my depth perception should return to normal. Turns out, they only have one day available for the surgery between now and February, and that's December 27. Ha, ha. We did make an appointment to have it done then, but we will see if we can keep it. In the meantime, I still have pupils that are widely dilated, thanks to the drops they put it so they could pear inside. I slept most of the way home because I could not open my eyes, the sun reflecting off the snow was just too bright even behind my sunglasses. When I got home, I put on an even darker pair and took Andy cross country skiing, and now we are both back, and both feeling quite mellow, and I have a condo I need to go set up and ready for winter guests, but it is already 4:40 pm, so I will do it first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I sit here munching popcorn and feeling guilty about the fact that I am doing nothing. So off to do someting, I am.