A winter in Aspen, by the numbers

108: days on the snow
3: personal effects completely destroyed via regular wear and tear (1 pair brand-new Nordica ski boots, 1 pair Burton Gore-Tex mittens, 1 pair American Eagle jeans)
3,164: miles on my car in JUST the month of February
12: containers of windshield washer fluid put into my car from December through March
76: boxes of Girl Scout cookies delivered to my friends
5: am, the latest I ever stayed out
4: road trips undertaken (Frisco twice - if that counts - and Steamboat and Vegas)
37: dollars a month I paid for cable in the Teacup
1: roommate/other half/partner in crime
2: times I took the bus into Snowmass instead of driving
16: people in Jared's hot tub on Superbowl Sunday and closing day
0: regrettable experiences

Okay, okay: I figured out Twitter, and it's AWESOME. It's like Facebook status updates, but more frequent, and they get sent to me as a TEXT MESSAGE (and I mean, come on...everyone knows how much I love text messages).
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In addition to my current title - the Queen of French Braids - I've realized I'm also the Duchess of Wanderlust.
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I get excited about the stupidest things: a) CSU apparel - I love it (not wearing it, but seeing it on other people. I'll walk right up to a stranger at a bar in Aspen if they're wearing a CSU hat); b) anything that points to home (like seeing a FoCo.gov sticker on the bumper of a car in Denver last week); c) things that remind me of other people (I heard a John Butler Trio song on KBCO and immediately thought of BM, then called him to tell him so); d) reconnecting with people I haven't seen or spoken to in four years, and then spending every waking minute for a week straight either hanging out, talking with or texting them. TW, I'm lookin' at you.

Sound bytes

These are two of my favorite new songs:

and

Like a pretty bird on a breeze/Or water to a fish...
Neither of the videos are even remotely interesting, so play them as you read further down or something.
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"We're wearing the fun we had yesterday." - CSP, on how sunburned every Aspen Skiing Company employee looked on Tuesday, the day after our epic (and sunny) employee party
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"No problem... you just need a margarita and a good partner. Two margaritas and you don't need a good partner. Three margaritas...and good like finding a partner." - EG, on Salsa dancing
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I have a Twitter account, but I can't really figure it out.
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The discernment retreat on Thursday was kind of neat. I didn't glean much from it, save from deciding to write my candidacy essay on pond skimming as an analogy for seminary.
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Katie had this in her blog, and I think it's hilarious:

Here's the deal - no one sings at college, and from what I can tell, this is America's ONLY singing high school!

Keep Well

So the season is over, and at the risk of being melodramatic - I guess that's always a small risk with me - I'm devastated. I'm so, so sad. I have the same feeling as I have leaving camp, except I'm not completely wrung out yet, and because most of my friends are from foreign countries and likely won't get visas next year, there's a good chance I'll never see most of them again. Ever.

It's cliché, but as Amanda reminded me yesterday, we don't cry because it's over, we smile because it happened. In my case, it's both - I'm really happy it happened but I'm still gonna ugly cry for a few days.

This past week was a total whirlwind. I think I'll be easiest to write about each day individually.
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Wednesday, April 8
Wednesday is No Work Day, so I slept in, ran some errands with AB in Aspen, had a latte (my only day-off "must"), did two loads of laundry, read three magazines, drove to Snowmass to play volleyball at the rec center, came home to shower and spontaneously went to a bluegrass show at the Belly Up with AB and our friend AS, whom AB is working with in Chile this summer. We had a rad super-hippie-dancing night.

Thursday, April 9
As it was Maundy Thursday, I planned the day around a drive to Glenwood for church at 7pm. There aren't any ELCA Lutheran churches anywhere between here and there; for that matter, there are only 2 between Grand Junction and Denver. Church was wicked cool - fun pastor, lots of teenagers, great liturgy (in one night we were annointed with oil AND had a footwashing AND Communion). It was like an hour-long deep breath of fresh air. When I left, I met AB, BK, GC & JH at a fantastic Pan-Asian restaurant in Basalt for dinner. We had this great adult meal - a bottle of red wine, three appetizers and four entrees, and we shared everything. Everyone just took chopsticks and we passed the plates around. I loved it. We talked and talked, and I reminded AB that perhaps a month earlier she had made some derogatory comment about lifties...but now they were our best buddies. Hah.

Friday, April 10
I had a private lesson with a 5-going-on-35-year-old little lady (at one point she literally said, 'This is how I roll, bitches!' Of course I scolded her...); I ended up with this bruise
but I'm not dead, so whatever. Katie pulled the 2009 equivalent of showing up on my front door by texting me on her way out of the Springs to tell me she was coming for the weekend (which THRILLED me!!!!). We had this mammoth dinner party planned at Jared, CK & AL's house. DR's roommate is a chef at The Little Nell (Gucci, Gucci, Gucci), so 27 of us (!) chipped in $20 to have a 10-course meal prepared for us. It was RIDICULOUSLY good - we're talking gourmet food. The sixth course, for example, was a "quail lollipop" consisting of a quail drumstick stuffed with a marcona almond & apricot paste wrapped in Spanish prosciutto. Yeah. Delicious. Appropriately enough, we washed it down with plenty of really really cheap red wine.

(Not a good shot, obviously...but better than nothing.)

Saturday, April 11
I had a half-day private lesson with some famous little British girls, then spent the afternoon at Ink! Coffee with Katie reading magazines and drinking lattes while it rained outside. (It was such a wicked cool afternoon that as I write this, I'm jealous of myself.) Katie and I went to the Easter Vigil at Good Shepard in Glenwood (that service was so cool, it deserves its own post), had dinner at Qdoba & came home to watch Slumdog Millionaire...during which I immediately fell asleep. Whoops.

Sunday, April 12
Easter service in the morning with Katie = awesome. The sermon was phenomenal (Pastor JC's sermon was so cheeky - he included long-running jokes about Monty Python & "Jesus gettin' up in your grill!"), and lots of people personally welcomed us. Everyone was in jeans and carrying coffee cups, but we were still glad to have dressed up. Instead of the usual massive Easter brunch we usually share with family, we dropped by McDonalds and had Egg McMuffins and coffee before Katie headed home and I headed to work. It'll probably be one of my favorite Easters ever.
The rest of the day = completely anticlimactic. Oh, and it was the last day of the season.

Monday, April 13
Employee Party. I would say "enough said," except it's not.
I got into work at around 10 and met up with AT, RS, DP, JF, AL, AB & RB. We grabbed cans of Tecate (sorry Mom) and headed up the lift. Snowmass was only open for employees, which was really freakin' cool, because everywhere you looked, there were only good skiers on the hill, and we knew most of them. And the snow was amazing! We ripped a bunch of powder turns before heading to the lunch/party/pond skim zone after a couple of hours. THAT was a riot - lots and lots of good food, lots and lots of free beer, lots and lots of sunshine, lots and lots of people, and then, finally, lots and lots of opportunity to make a fool out of ourselves.
Exhibit A:

(I have no idea how I made it through the pond at that angle. No idea.)

Exhibit B:

(AB bites it)

Exhibit C:

(This was just a bad idea from the start)

After the party, AB and I did our usual rounds - Zane's to play with the lifties, JF/AL/CK's house to play with our friends (except it kinda turned into The Napping House for a bit), etc. After a billion hours of laying around, AB and I went to say our goodbyes - we hugged the lifties and the rest of our friends at the house, went to the Commons to wake up GC and BW, then drove home in tears. (Well, I was in tears. I'm sure AB was crying on the inside.)
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GC sent me a text the next morning that said something like, "Thanks for coming round last night. Keep in touch, thanks for everything. Your friendship means a lot to me. :) Gonna miss everyone but we'll meet up in the future. Was an unbelievable season, loved it. Keep well, safe travels."

Kasiwa i makasimba ere

Tonight I saw the "Dispatch: Zimbabwe" documentary/concert footage on TV - video straight from the concert I was at in Madison Square Garden! This song, "Elias," is one of my favorites.

kasiwa i
makasimba ere
ndakasimba kana makasimba ow
ndakasimba
you raise your head, you beat the sun
but your boys they lie so close to you
do you dare get up and wake the two
oh elias, I see you there at work in the day time
do you think you could answer all the questions in the world
in just one word- I think you could

[CHORUS:]
'cause if you die will I get word that your gone
or will I hear it in passing conversation
or will I stop short and fall to the ground
distance is short when your hand carries what your eye found

hold my hand just one more time
to see if you're really going to meet me
hold my hand just one more time
to see if you're really going to meet me
honest and manuel, well they're at school now
given the chance that their father's never seen
to see what's beyond section 17
and in ten years when you look back at your boys
well you know they've grown way taller than the tallest
sugar cane in the field

[CHORUS]

I see your wife she stands stooped over by the fire outside
and I see your boys and when they look up
you know I think they got their mother's eyes
'cause she looks so proud she looks so happy
she looks so proud she looks so happy

[CHORUS]

At least if I'm ever paralyzed, I can say I used it while I had the chance.

These past few weeks, I've been pretty hard on my body. I haven't treated it like a temple so much as like a dish rag. For instance:

-I've had a raging case of Bronchitis since maybe mid-January. Like any good virus infecting an obliging host like myself, it'll go away for a couple of weeks if I'm especially healthy, but then returns full-force once I'm back to my normal (read: over-exerting, sleep-deprived, generally dehydrated) routine. We've almost gotten to be friends, this disease and I. This week I'm sick enough to garner a fair bit of sympathy but not enough to warrant sitting around.
-Tuesday night I tripped in heels and fell. It was ugly, a classic spread-eagle-splayed-out-on-cobblestone face plant. I landed on my right knee first (it's now a rainbow of pretty blues, purples and greens) and hurt my left hand something fierce.
-Wednesday night I played volleyball at the Snowmass Rec Center (more on that later) and beat myself to a pulp. Aside from further jamming a number of fingers and sliding across the wood floor on my already-injured right knee, I worked up some lactic acid in muscles I haven't used in a while (as volleyball uses muscles not primarily involved in skiing or running).
-I hiked Highlands Bowl twice yesterday with a couple of pals. Given the maladies I've already described (lungs full of fluid and a knee that won't bend), it actually wasn't hard, but I warned my buddies beforehand that I couldn't hike too fast due to the risk of the virus traveling to my heart and killing me. They looked at me like I was insane, which I probably was - if I'm too sick to run in the gym, why the crap did I think it was a good idea to hike to 12,392' with a pair of skis on my back? It seemed like a good idea yesterday, and I was extra-conscious of keeping my heart rate down, but...maybe it was too risky.
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"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life." - Anne Morriss, from 'The Way I See It #76' on the side of a Starbucks cup
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I have had such a great couple of weeks. First Rando, Karen, Katie, Tom and my whole family (minus Christian) came to visit, and then BB showed up unexpectedly for a few days. I had SUCH a good time with all of them. Yay, life!
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I wish I didn't look so ridiculous with black nail polish. I think it's cool, but it definitely doesn't think I'm cool.
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I have a lot of Facebook friends, largely because a) I'm very friendly and b) I'm very Facebook-addicted. I don't often think twice about friending people I've only hung out with a couple of times. I see Facebook as more of a networking tool than a "these are my best and closest friends" online scrapbook, and hey, if I would recognize you on the street and we'd stop and talk for a few minutes, why shouldn't we be Facebook friends? Here's my beef: I think I've hit a sort of glass ceiling of Facebook friends - like, I honestly think people (from high school, past jobs, whatever) see how many friends I have, think that I'm just trying to collect the most, and decide to un-friend me out of spite. That's not my intention at all! It makes me sad.
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I take a bus to work every day. On Tuesday, I saw this:
and all I could think of was, 'yep, only in Snowmass.'
Then on Wednesday (April Fool's Day), I saw this:
and all I could think of was, 'yep, only in Snowmass.' :)
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Yesterday marked my 100th ski day of the season. It was also my 100th day on the snow without an injury. Hooray! I thought my ACLs would be history by now. That's really the only reason I have health insurance.
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The other day I had to explain the difference between a vegetarian and a veterinarian to a six-year-old. I feel this begs the question: are most veterinarians also vegetarians? I think they should be. I mean...wouldn't you feel weird eating a steak if you knew all about that particular muscle tissue?
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Eve 6's song "Inside Out" was played in a recent episode of "This American Life." Rad.
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My buddy BC, on helping his friend move out of her very dirty apartment: "This place was so full of shit - sauce, hair... There was a Red Bull in the fridge, though. That was nice."
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I might be drawn and quartered for this, but I'm thrilled that Jay Cutler was traded yesterday. Good riddance! I think he's an embarrassment to Denver, and as my buddy JA pointed out, there's already a No Pit Bull law in Denver and Michael Vick is almost out of the pokey...
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This volleyball league at the Rec Center is AWESOME! I found out about it only a few weeks ago (which is a shame) but I haven't missed a Wednesday night there since. It's just drop-in, but the same people come every week, and they're all really good. One girl used to play at the Junior Olympics level; a couple of kiwi guys played back home; one guy has such a mean spike that the stitching on the ball left a bruise on my arms when I dug it (but I dug it! That's what counts!!). I finally have my serve back, and last week I served eight straight points. It's like playing Norco back in high school, minus the politics and crazy-late-night practices.
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Katie introduced me to my new favorite website (heads up, F-bomb) - www.thefuckingweather.com - it is, as she calls it, "useful genius." The funniest part is the sarcastic comment in 6-point italic font just below the declaration. Check it out. Laugh with me.
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The Target in Glenwood Springs, by my rough estimation, is twice the size of the one in Fort Collins. Twice! It even has a Starbucks inside of it (hello, mothership!). And I can't wait until these rainboots go on sale (because in Colorado, I really can't justify paying $25 for rainboots, even though they're really cute and I'd probably wear them when it's dry too):
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I bought this black Burton base layer for nutso cheap at the Four Mountain Sports sale last week, and me thinks the cloth from whence it came wasn't washed before Burton made the garment, because after wearing it my skin and sports bra have this interesting navy-blue pallor to them that doesn't easily wash off.
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I haven't brushed my hair in almost two months. No, really - I wash it every day, use a bunch of conditioner (Aveda Rosemary Mint, mmmm) and all the tangles just kind of fall out. I run my fingers through it, either blowdry it or braid it, and call it good. It's weird, because it's gotten SO long - more than halfway down my back at least - but I don't seem to need much more maintenance than that.
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I overheard AB tell a mutual friend the other day that we are each other's sanity. She said she was sure we both would have gone crazy this year without living together. Amen, sister!
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Not to be über brand-conscious - or to brag - but right now I'm wearing an IceBreaker top, Prana pants, a Patagonia vest, SmartWool Socks and Keens. I'm a girl after my OWN heart.
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Tomorrow is my darling sister's 23rd birthday. Call her and wish her a good one, okay? Her number is the same as mine but with a 7 in place of the 6.