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."