groomer

At about five past six thursday morning I was standing in the dark outside the lodge at Bolton Valley waiting for my ride.

If you're anything like me, you think the two coolest things about seeing The Shining were the opening scene in which you suddenly realize that the Dies Irae is playing in the soundtrack and the super cool footage of the snowcat.

When you're skiing sweet corduroy first thing in the morning you should carry an awareness that someone worked all night driving a huge and complex machine up and down the slopes. I have always wondered what it's like to be inside the cab of one of those things.

So Thursday morning I met Mike, the snow reporter, in the hotel lobby at six o'clock and he walked me up to the place where the driver would pick me up on his downhill pass.

It is very quiet on the mountain in the early morning, and very dark. I am often on the mountain when the first chair spins, but that happens after sunrise, so I don't often see the mountain during hours of darkness. Yes, I know they have night skiing and I used to go sometimes but really the best hours of my day are before noon and with my minimal skiing skills and my failure to have a full set of connective tissue in either knee it's best if I go when i'm fresh and the trails are fresh.

It is a weird, silent landscape and I am straining my ears to hear the machine. I see the light way up through the trees and I'm guessing It's on Lower Fanny. Slowly the huge machine comes into view. It drives just past me, then stops. The driver gets out.

This is Bruce.

He comes around to my side and he shows me how to work the door handle (rubber covered and not where you might expect it) and where to step on the steel treads and where the handles are for climbing up into the cab.

Already this is way cool.

The door handle, by the way, once you are up in the cab is not so much a handle as it is a pedal.

The striking thing about the cab is how much of it is window. Past that, the seats are huge and comfortable and there's plenty on foot room right up to the bottom of the windshield, where there's a sort of footrest. That footrest will seem more important to me later.

Bruce has a wide array of controls around his seat: he has a pair of levers for his left hand, and a joystick for his right. The joystick has more buttons than a bassoon. 

OK, not. A bassoon has nine buttons for your left thumb alone and the joystick in this vehicle probably only has six or eight buttons total.

It's still a lot.

And at Bruce's elbow is a console with rows and rows of switches. One of these switches controls the snazzy heated windshield wipers. I can only guess what the other switches do.

Above the driver's seat is a set of controls that works a really cool spotlight that shines out ahead of the cat and swivels very usefully so he can see way out ahead. That's really handy when you're driving a thing the size of a small condo on a ski slope.

Sometimes, Bruce tells me, you slide it a little.

It makes sense, but the idea of sliding a thing with that much mass sounds a little scary to me. When we go up a steep trail, we are nearly lying back in the seats. Going down, nearly standing on the footrests.

We're on trails I know well, but it's a little disorienting because bruce is driving up and down, around and around in circles. up one trail, down another. He makes a pass to smooth the trail and a pass next to it and then one to smooth out the seam until he gets all the way across.

He is so skilled that he seems hardly to be paying attention but I am noticing a lot of complicated machinery making a lot of subtle movements. On the front of the tractor is a 12-way plow. At first I mishear bruce and I think he is telling me it's a 12-weight, and I make a mental note to ask later what that means. 

The blade goes up and down and side-to-side and it tilts and also has remarkably agile side flaps. 'Member that joystick with all the buttons?  Yeah, that.

He uses the blade to scrape snow from where it's too high and to fill the bellies where there's not enough snow. It's kind of delicate; it's important to smooth the snow out so it skis nicely, but also you want to keep most of the profile of the underlying terrain.

The weight of the machine and the tracks themselves pack the snow down quite a lot behind the blade. Those levers for bruce's left hand? They control the treads, which move independently.

Behind the cat is the tiller. This is a huge wide thing with a spinning bar of teeth that chop up the snow very fine and then "dumbo flaps" that shape and comb it down after.

Bruce gives consideration to how many passes he needs to make to make the trail ski well. He thinks about whether beginners will be on a trail, or where bumps should be left in or how the snow will drift and which trails should be done just before the first lift spins. Trails off the Vista Chair need to be done before Vista opens and then he's got another hour to work Timberline.

After that, he grooms a terrain park, which is some fancy driving. 

All those boxes and boards and jumps in the park? They're dug in. You can't just drive over them.  The snow is only right once you have gone over it FORWARD, so anything that has an edge needs backing up and then pulling forward.  Bruce has to back up to the edges of both the takeoffs and the landings and then pull forward. It's close quarters in there, with a lot of turning.

The most impressive driving of the morning, I think, is the part where he does the ramp at the top of the Timberline Chair. When we're there the chair is already spinning, so he has to back the tiller in and pull forward between chairs. 

He could ask the lift op to stop the chair, he tells me, but if he can time it right he doesn't have to. He does it so smooth you almost wouldn't notice.

If he's showing off any, he's got a right to. It's a very good show.

The sun is up. The lifts are spinning. A little boy riding a lift above us waves. We wave back. The boy keeps waving. We wave some more. The boy's dad waves, too. It's the end of Bruce's shift. Before he goes home he has to clean the snow off the blades and fuel up the cat. He drops me off at the lodge and drives off toward the shop, snow falling.

The mountain is waking up. The snow is perfect.

I'm going home.

two modes of dinner at my house

mode 1: i plan a meal, assemble the ingredients, and prepare the meal in such a fashion as the elements arrive on the plate at more or less the same time. this is then eaten on the sofa.

mode 2: i wander into the kitchen and begin eating whatever is in reach while preparing items that may or may not be entrées or side dishes and more often than not eat them as they become ready. even when i have consumed enough food to make a meal, for some reason i am not yet not hungry and so wander around the house thinking: maybe i should eat something crunchy. no, wait. i HAD something crunchy. what i really want is some of those horrid little gummy candies, but i don't have any, so maybe a little dish of bittersweet chocolate chips will suffice?

man, i really have to get a grip.

from a cold morning

i wanted to show you this earlier, but you know. hard drive problems.

this is sunshine through mist on a wicked cold morning.

and see that brown streak on the snow? that's the shadow of the smoke from a neighbor's stove.

wowch

i would love to show you pictures of the bruises, but it's too hard to take off my tights except if i really need to pee, and if it's ok with you, that's not the best time for me to be taking pictures.

sunday was closing day on the mountain. unless you just came in in the last ten minutes, you know this.

so i went skiing. and it was FABULOUS. and run by run i said goodbye to my winter mountain. last run off number one chair. last trip to the firetower. last run down cobrass. last run down fanny hill. ticking them off.

and finally i got to last run of the year.

it was going well, too. i was moving fast.

until i caught an edge and suddenly was not going much of anywhere.

which is sort of not true. the way i remember it, i was going fast and then i was lying in the snow.

the way the eight or nine teenagers who stopped to help described it, "dude, you hit hard.",  "you bounced and flew and bounced again."

apparently i bounced two or three times. and i laid motionless in the snow, unable to even lift a hand. the kids, i think, took my skis and crossed them in the snow above me in the snow, which is a caution sign to uphill skiers. when i got up later they had put them in the snow for me to step into, but the holes were there in the snow from the crossing.

they wanted to know if i needed ski patrol.

i didn't think so. i told them i was going to need a few minutes before i'd be able to move. i did not explain to them that it's a known thing with me that a hard body blow usually results in a temporary total paralysis and sometimes unconsciousness.

i felt myself going dark, but didn't actually pass out. it was weird. it's like when you go halfway through a door and then realize you weren't going there anyway.

one by one, my arms and feet came back online. i could feel all my parts, and i could feel some very bad bruising on my right leg. pretty sure nothing broken. no familiar snap of connective tissue, but obviously a lot of swelling.sharp, burning pain. felt like broken skin, but under layers of ski clothes. gasping, breathing hard from pain.

i got up. the kids stayed with me until i looked all right. i got back on my skis and very gingerly skied down. at the lodge i managed to get myself out of my boots and into the muck boots i wear between home and the mountain. they're not exactly tight boots. they slip on.

the swelling of that right leg filled up the boot pretty firmly. by the time i got it off,  there was a clear line where the boot had compressed the bruise.

ice, NSAIDs, elevation, good compression tights.

it is a spectacluar bruise, and the swelling was sufficient to prevent me bending the knee much. and yes, i managed somehow to tear the skin. there's a wedge-shaped place where the top layer got peeled off and i guess the flesh twisted enough to tear. it's not too wide, but it looks deepish. i've never see a wound like it, so i don't know exactly  how it would have happened.

today, even through clothing i can see the leg is swollen, but it bears weight ok and as long as i don't jiggle the bruised muscles too much, it's only mildly painful. ice packs are my friends, and i have spent a lot of horizontal time today.

and really, it's no hardship wearing the tights. i pretty much wear athletic tights 24/7 eight months a year by way of long johns and / or pajamas. i am simply choosing to wear my springiest, most supportive pairs for a while.

it's funny, because as the bruise (which is very deep) blooms, the color of it it shaped by the pattern of the wrinkles and seams.

wow. ouch.

wowch.

but it was an awesome day skiing, and since the mountain is closed, i care little. i'm not missing much.

weeding out

some of the photos i am able to view now that i have my photo library back include such fine images as this one.

in my defense, i took that one sort of by accident while i was learning how to use my new camera.

still, i can't tell it's rubbish and not the thing i wanted to save until i am able to look at it.

and i happened to have had THREE copies of that one and six others like it.

excellent use of disk space.

open letter to bolton valley ski resort

dear everybody who makes the mountain work,

today is closing day 2014.

that makes me cry a little. it makes me cry a little to say goodbye to the mountain for the year, goodbye to ricker, goodbye peggy dow's, goodbye number one chair.

it was a hard season, what with the failure of a lasting and deep snow to arrive especially while all over the country OTHER people who didn't want it so much were getting record snow dumps.

but you guys did all right.

i mean, i don't know how you guys did in terms of ticket sales because while i have more than a passing interest in the financial viability of the mountain, really all i know about is how the skiing looks and what the people say.

the snow was nice. thank you, snowmakers and groomers. it was not lost on a lot of us out here that you took what snow you had and what snow you could make and you did a good job giving us nice skiable surfaces for a season.

and while we're at it, thank you also work crews who service and maintain the trails in summer because i have SEEN those trails in summer and it takes somebody thinking about how the winter trails will groom out later to keep things nice.

and thank you, people who run the lifts. not just the great gang who shuffle us on and off the chairs and keep our takeoffs and landings clear and groomed, but the people who maintain those things because it's a heckuva lot of moving parts. yeah, we notice when you take the time to beat the ice off that seat we're going to sit on, and we notice when you have the golden touch and slow the chair down just right so it doesn't clip the backs of our boots as we get on.

we thank you; our knees thank you.

most of us don't come to the mountain and think: how nice that the lifts aren't all rusted and broken down today. we don't think it because you guys take care of it out of our sight.

and you guys working in the parking lot: thanks for directing the peak traffic, thanks for knowing when to move the cones, and thanks for watching out for us.

hosts, ticket sellers, food workers, hotel workers, all of you: your work it noticed and it is appreciated.

when i am on the mountain i talk to people. and the thing i hear from the people who come and buy lift tickets is that the come and keep coming because you are friendly and affordable. i talked to a group of people who came to vermont to ski stowe and ended up skiing bolton instead. i talked to a group of people who come up from virginia every year to teach their kids to ski, going back three generations.

and me, personally, ricker mountain is the home of my soul. i have been skiing long enough at bolton that my first pass is old enough to vote. do you remember that horrible year the mountain didn't open?

i do.

i had to ski that year at a different ski mountain, a more famous one, one people seem to like a lot.

it's a nice enough mountain, but i hated it. i have no happy memories of that season. the parking was wrong, the lodge was wrong, the trails were wrong, and i was far from my home.

do you guys get what i'm saying here?

it is half about my mountain and it is half about YOU.

my mountain, the mountain i love, is a place i can hang out and have a good time and make myself comfortable because of your work.

so.

it's the last day of the season. when you shut down the lifts today i won't be there. it would be too unbearably sad for me.

but you guys go have some drinks and a nice dinner or something. put your feet up. you have done good work and you deserve to rest.

i'll come up and see the summer mountain when i can, and i'll look forward to seeing you when you start the lifts up again next season.

is it a date then?

thanks for this season, and see you next.

anyone who follows my story knows that i habitually sign all my open letters "love, flask", but some days i really mean it.

like today.

love, flask.




  peggy dow's
today at bolton valley

end of season

friday afternoon may or may not have been the last of the good skiing for the season. the mountain closes for 2014 sunday afternoon, but right now (friday night) it is raining.

i'll probably go up there this morning anyway, though, since today and tomorrow they will spin the number one chair and even if it's not beautiful skiing, it's still my beautiful mountain.

flicker gallery: today at bolton valley

 

falconwatch

news flash!

it's official: yesterday morning the audobon society declared that the peregrine falcons have returned to a nesting site (somewhere near here).

i was on my way tot he mountain for some morning skiing and on my way i came across a couple of people standing in the road with spotting scopes.

now, i have been birderwatching before, so i recognize the look. and quite frankly if something interesting is going on i will pull over and ask about it.

it's kind of a way of life for me.

so i got to talk with the nice lady from the audobon society and her associate, and i got to look through their very nice spotting scopes.

a peregrine falcon is an impressive bird, and it is super cool to see the male bring lovely gifts of freshly dead stuff to the female.

so the cliff is closed to climbers until the chicks hatch.

bread pudding

"flask", i hear you ask. "how can i make awesome bread pudding like yours?'

well, i am here to help.

start with stale bread. i like to use homemade bread, and maybe a quickbread that got freezerburned. you can use any bread but if you start with good bread, you're going to get a pudding with more flavor.

i use about 3/4 of a loaf. take whatever bread you're using, cut it up into cubes and toss it into a big bowl. toss the cubes with spices. i always use cinnamon, and usually cloves and a little ginger. i also like coriander and cardamom and today i tried out a little sumac.

then put in raisins. you can use as many or as few as you like. i like a lot of raisins, both black and white.

meanwhile, take some nice eggs, two or three, and beat them lightly. splash in about three cups of milk and some vanilla. i tend to go heavy on the vanilla. put maple syrup in that mix. don't skimp on the maple. and use good maple. don't even bother to measure it. put a lot in.

then pour the wet mix in on the dry mix and stir it up some. mash it more for a denser pudding. mash less for fluffier. tuck the whole thing into a lightly greased loaf pan (i like a baking spray), and pour a couple of tablespoons of melted butter over the top.

stick it in the oven at 350 degrees for a while, until a knife comes out dry-ish if you stick it in. not dry, like a bread, but you shouldn't be drawing out liquid.

when it's done, take it out of the oven and let it rest until it's cool enough to eat without burning your mouth. then but it on a flat plate and put maple syrup on it. use a flat plate so you can lick it clean without pulling a muscle.

it's kind of like french toast loaf.

i like it. i like it very much.

puddinhead

the fun doesn't end when your data gets recovered and you fire up your photo program.

today i held my breath and opened iphoto to start importing the photos that i took during the hiatus and discovered that while the photos are all there, they lack the sorts of labels that i am accustomed to enjoying, such as the dates they were taken.

and there was a lot of video i shot before the crash. video takes up a LOT of room.

a  LOT.

and some of it is garbage, but some of it is stuff i needed.

but you need to be able to look at it in order to determine which things are the ones you need.

and because of the panic of the crash, i needed to make sure i had things saved and because of a downloading glitch i had multiple copies of some of it.

it is taking time to review and delete the copies because i can't trust the labels. and i have to relabel the whole library. while i'm in there i'm doing a little housecleaning and throwing out pictures that on sober reflection i don't need anymore.

short version: i still have no photos to show you.

in other news, i made bread pudding today.

why? because for some reason cookie seems to think i should make pudding.

stay tuned.

recovery

i know you were all dying to know: i got my hard drive back today. i also had a meeting with the mediator. i'm never good for anything after those meetings, so this morning i did an amazing proactive thing: i made a batch of freezer burritos.

so. food.

and drumroll:

....

all my photos are back.

maybe tomorrow i will post some.
maybe tomorrow i will make pudding.

satan's own game

i think i'm depressed.

i meant to do things today, because stuff.

but even though it was cold enough to work the snow today, the driveway was still a river and it was hard sledding.

and then i thought i'd play a couple of rounds of 2048, and somehow several hours were lost.

i'm not so much working construction on snohaus, as restoring it. over time  it lost some volume, and therecent warm weather took a half dozen inches in height alone.

today a couple hundred pound of snow were enough to repair a step and a half on the stairs. tomorrow it will have been cold all night and i hope it will warm up slowly in the morning to give me a couple of hours in which i can work.

i did not make any pudding today.

i have been meaning to make pudding for days.

i tell you, satan's own game.

terror of the deep

it only gets worse.

a long time ago i wrote about a blog i am not linking to.

the horror of it is that the woman passed through some more therapists, some more jobs, a couple more girlfriends, and had gotten involved in a BDSM relationship with an addict, so now that she's read up on it, she's an expert on that, too.

i am not against BDSM for people who like it.

i think people who are train wrecks to start with are only asking for trouble taking on a boyfriend/addict/dom.

that isn't even the worst of it, though.

she thinks she's pregnant and she thinks it's a good thing.

and spends some time telling the child to be that she has no intention of quitting drugs or smoking, because "that's just the way i am", get used to it.

in case you are wondering, she still thinks everything is somebody else's fault, and that she is the best poet in the world.

that about wraps it up.

let's see.

so today it rained all day, which has not been good for snohaus.

the nice young computer technician called to ask some questions about my operating system and ten days into a data recovery he still isn't sure if there's going to be a recovery.

i am sick of hearing privileged people complain that their loss of control over other people somehow amounts to persecution. this applies equally to christians who are bitter about marriage equality, agribusinesses that lobby for ag-gag laws, rich people who feel entitled to kleptocracy, and oil company executives who sue to keep fracking pipelines of of their property.

around lunchtime i accidentally put a hot skillet down on a ziploc bag. that did not end well.

that 2048 game i told you about yesterday is serving as an excellent reminder about why i should never use crack.

and earlier today i thought it would be swell to put fresh sheets on the bed, only i am not quite done that project and it is now bedtime.

plus i smell bad.

yep, i think that covers it.

2048

i'll tell you what happened: 2048.

so i woke up this morning not all better but nearly better and worked on snohaus ahead of the rain and went to find a geocache and did some other things and then i meant to do another thing but my laptop was open to that game and the next thing i know it was four hours later.

i'm going to bed.

play it at your own peril.

feels like a done day

it's ten thirty in the morning and already i feel like the day is lost to me.

i woke up this morning thinking: i will check the weather and if it's nice for skiing i will go skiing and if not i will work on snohaus.

but then as i moved about waking up, it became obvious that something is wrong in my lower back. so. stretches, gentle exercises.

the sun came up. it is cold out, but with sun that strong, perfect for skiing and there just aren't that many good ski days. i thought: i really should go skiing.

so i started to get suited up for that.

and there really is something wrong in my lower back. i thought maybe i could just do some gentle skiing, but while you might be able to ski gently, there's no gentle way around lugging all those pounds of gear. plus if you get into trouble and need to lie down, you are up at the mountain with all your gear and no way to get home.

so. more gentle stretches and exercises.

i will have to leave the house to go find a geocache and later on i will work very gently on snohaus. the day is too nice to do nothing and while maybe shoveling snow isn't the best idea, i can at least modify the activities so i'm not moving heavy sleds. i can move a half sled at a time and still get something done.

or a quarter sled.

and if i need to lie down, i am at least at home where i can enjoy the full range of NSAIDs and muscle relaxants available to me.

and have a little nap.

tomorrow i will be good as new.

the right way for things to go wrong

yesterday it was in the news that a police officer in a nearby town was being charged with drunk driving.

that is sad and it is not the right thing that happened.

the right thing that happened is that when the police in that town pulled him over for driving erratically and they realized he was one of their own, they immediately called the state police, who responded to the scene and who are conducting the criminal investigation.

they maybe could have let him off. they maybe could have covered it up.

but they didn't. they handed it over to the staties from word one and it cheers me up to find an example of a police department  behaving properly, with respect for the law and concern for avoiding both conflict of interest and appearance of conflict of interest.

notes from the glitch diaspora: here be monsters

here be monsters is hardly a new game, but it's relatively recently that it stopped being just a facebook game, and since i do not facebook i wasn't going to play it until it was browser-based as well.

when it went browser-based, i was paying attention to something else and  didn't look in on it until last monday.

i like it. it has a lot of the components i liked about glitch, but it is not as rich. f'rinstance, the graphics are not as lovely and there's only the one sound loop.  the story arc is far less imaginative and the player's journey in it is much more scripted.

if i'm only going to compare it to glitch, it's a pretty poor substitute.

but if i'm going to think about it on its own merits, it is a very pleasing little game. it is played on the actual globe with travel costs, so it has a feeling of placiness that i like. it also has complex little crafting trees and an interesting harvesting system that's fun for me.

although other players are on the same field, aside from chatting with them there's little interaction, unless you count going to your friends' houses and fertilizing their crops and sending and receiving gifts from your friends.

the gift giving is nice, and it's free stuff, because there's no cost to the giver of the gifts, and simply hitting the "say thank you" button puts coin in your pocket.

i'm kind of ambivalent about that.

on the one hand it's good manners but on the other, it's very transactional.

the game has fishing. the kind of fishing where you tie flies and then go stand at a body of water with your little digital bait on the hook until a digital fish bites and you have to reel it in.

it's a pleasant way to pass time and i think it's set up to poke the reward center of your brain.

short version: you won't land in the game and think "OMG, best. game. ever." but it is a playable game, and it's interesting and fun.

if you want to try it, you can do that here: http://www.herebemonstersgame.com/play

why i don't like my neighbor

it's because of the dog.

my neighbor has a lanky black lab and i have never seen the neighbor walk her farther than the garage or the dumpster. i have never seen the neighbor put the dog in the car and take her anywhere.

every morning the neighbor opens the door and ties the dog to the railing for long enough to pee. grass won't grow in front of the neighbor's condo, or in front of mine as far as the dog's tie-up reaches.

when you buy a puppy, you are buying a living creature with needs and desires. dogs like to go places, sniff things, and did i mention GO PLACES? a dog needs exercise and company. the neighbor leaves this dog alone all day nearly every day.

but the neighbor has a nice flowerpot with the dog's name on it, and at halloween carves a pumpkin with the dog's name in it.

because, you know, a dog really appreciates personalized accessories.

i think a lot of people like the IDEA of a dog more than an actual dog. same goes for kids.

if you don't want to spend time with a dog, play with it, give it exercise and attention, you should not have a dog.

of course there aren't

of course there aren't many pictures for you to see.

more to the point, there are, but i can't process them.

here's one i was able to pull up without too much trouble.

it was a big day at snohaus. today for the first time i was able to slide into the cave on the sled, get off the sled, push the sled out, and crawl out headfirst.

this means that i have to turn myself around and for a few moments have to be positioned so i can't get out the door right away AND it means that for a few minutes the sled (full of snow) is between me and the exit, blocking my way.

consider my deep and sometimes paralyzing claustrophobia.

because really. what's more fun than an entertainment that pushes right up against your second-worst fear?

anyway, the cave has to be pretty big for me to be able to go in there and turn around.

strangely, if i don't turn around in the hole, i can hang on to the fiction that i am not entirely in the hole. i can pretend that my feet are still outside and for some reason if i am face down in a hole underneath three tons of snow and have to slide out backward, that's better than if i am sitting up and turned momentarily sideways in a hole large enough to turn the sled around in.

i have to be careful going in and out, though, because while the cave itself is pretty big, the door is only about eighteen inches tall and not that wide. the wall at the door is about two feet thick. it has to be that way to keep the structure safe and to minimize melting.

but if i bump up against the door going in or out, if i can FEEL how small it is, i suddenly lose the ability to maintain the fiction that there is plenty of room and i can stand up and get out right away if i need to.

and this fiction is really funny, because for safety reasons i don't go in the hole without both a snowscoop (a digging tool) and an avalanche shovel. one digging tool is in my hand at all times because IF there's a cave-in, i will need a digging tool in a hurry.

every year people die building snowforts.

i prefer to think they don't know what they're doing.

it can be dangerous work, but if you know what you're doing it's a minimal risk.

it's important to have a well-packed base, and it's important to let the thing settle and sinter before working it. you should also not work it too much at once.

snow, properly packed, can be carved like butter and sets like concrete.

get the wrong weather for too many hours and it will fall like souffle.

important update

i'm sure you are all dying to know how the thing with the gasoline ended up.

it was a close call, but i got to the gas station. i made it, though. this was no easy thing, since it takes a good fifteen minutes to get to the nearest gas station from my house.

so that was a nail-biter.

plus i was stuck for about five miles behind some guy with pennsylvania plates who was either driving bald tires and knew it, was drunk off his seat, or had never seen snow on a dirt road before.

seriously? ten miles an hour? AND BRAKING? ON A FLAT?!?!?

sadly, there were not many places to pass, and by unfortunate coincidence there was oncoming traffic in those places. so i just settled in and watched the show.

i mean really. my road is flat. if you are only going ten miles an hour, you do not need to use brakes. you just don't.

here's a video of my road:



 exciting, yes?

can i get this many?

today i left the house to go get the one geocache i had to get, only i left without my wallet and also without any cash.

and once i was some miles from home i noticed how very low i was on gas.

i thought maybe i could get home before the fuel light came on.

nope.

and i did not think that was enough gas to get home and back to a gas station, so i scrounged a dollar forty in change from the console and under the seats and marched into a gas station and asked if i could get that much gas.

hey, it got me home.

totally, amazingly cool

this morning just past six i was waiting for my ride, a guy named bruce driving a huge tracked vehicle with some scary-lookin' appliances on both front and back. i have pictures and video and stuff but since my computer and i are still not in agreement about what constitutes an acceptable data transfer, i am saving the telling of it until later.

then after i found the geocache du jour and came home expecting to work on snohaus (also, no pictures now, so no real story for you) but it was too warm to work on the structure without damaging it. tonight it will set up a little and tomorrow morning early i'll get out there and see whether it's going to be cold enough for piling or warm enough for refacing and if i'll be ready to excavate.

either way it will be cold enough for a couple of hours to work the snow in some way.

right now i'm waiting for my rice and beans to cook because i NEED me more o' them burritos.

NEED.

wintry mix

that's what the weather forecast says.

wintry mix.

i'm calling shenanigans.

it's SNOWING here. yay!!! i might be the only person in the northern hemisphere who has not had nearly enough cold weather or snow, but as long as it's sunny and the snow is good, i don't care if spring don't come.

i would like to tell you about snohaus because it has been a big couple of days, but we still don't have pictures. let's just say that late tomorrow if i have energy i will be starting to DIG THE HOLE.

because the structure itself is now well over six feet tall. early on when i'm working on the base, 600 pounds or so of snow barely raises the hight an inch, but as the thing goes up the dome gets narrower and the same 20 sled loads raises it a couple of feet.

and speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow is kind of a big day in other fronts. tomorrow i get to ride in a snowcat.

i know, how cool is that?

later on i will have pictures for you.

now i have to eat dinner and go to bed because i have to meet the guy at 0600 and even though i often leave the house before six, somehow it seems more complex and difficult when i have an appointed meeting time that early.

woooo!

and i bought a box of paczky to share with the driver in whose workspace i will be intruding.

i am not sure what makes them so different from jelly donuts, but they are special POLISH jelly donuts you get at lent.

oh. and i took my hard drive in to the nice guys at the computer store to see if i can get a data retrieval. there was a thing last night where i melted down and there was crying and i tried to call my mom but i got my stepmother which was just as good because if you're crying over computers my stepmother knows more about that.

and i am working on a new song for louise because louise, who has never met me, thinks i am awesome.

basically there is a shortage of new material in the wold of round singing and louise likes my work.

i'm outta here. i have to go microwave a burrito because last week i made a recipe of vegetarian burritos and rolled them up and froze them and i meant to, you know, KEEP them for a while against menu emergencies but they are SO GOOD i have just been eating them.

make it stop.

make it effing stop. i wanted to tell you about a little geocache trip with a friend's grandkid, or a game i've been playing, or snohaus.

but after spending three days rebuilding a photo library, i opened my photo program today to find that it can't find THE rebuilt library, but it CAN find some "rebuilt" library that has most of my photos up to 2009, AND my podcasts for some reason are screwed up and keep downloading fifteen copies of the same four year old episodes and calling them new, but not downloading the actual new episodes.

come to think of it, this crap always seems to happen every time i click the "no, don't download the newest version of itunes"

it's sort of like a couple of days ago when everything on my laptop was running fine until one of those automatic download things snuck in and i didn't catch it and the new download to "improve" my sound actually disabled all sound on my laptop.

same thing with my photo library.

when everything works fine and you can plug in all your devices and they work, what you need is an update that makes everything NOT work.

literacy is important.

let's pretend.

let's pretend for a moment that the citizens of the US get tired of the corrupt and incompetent government and a group of people led by a coalition of the tea party, the KKK, and the ACLU get together and overthrow by force the constitutionally elected but repressive government and then new england decides that it is totally NOT COOL to fall back on forcible overthrow of the government we hate and then canada "protects" us while we hold a hasty referendum on whether or not we should join canada.

we don't particularly feel canadian, even though we didn't care for the corrupt and incompetent government.

we'd really prefer to be left alone and maybe not be ruled by the old corrupt government but also maybe not have to become canadian.

up here in new england we don't care for the KKK. we are divided on the matter of the ACLU and the tea party.

basically, ukraine.

if you need an explainer about that, john green does a pretty good job here:




but the thing about the united states getting all bunched up about putin's russia sticking themselves into it is that if any country has a right to be indignant about invading another country on some false pretext and setting up garrisons, it is not the united states.

that referendum is constitutionally invalid.

yep. so was the overthrow of yanukovich.

it is against international law to invade another country to "protect" it.

*coughcoughafghanistancoughiraqcoughyemencoughgrenadacoughsomaliacoughcough*

i heard a commentator on the radio last week (i wish i could remember who) saying that there's a price for the US and EU supporting an unconstitutional and violent revolt against the corrupt but constitutional government, and that price is crimea.

and of course if the big colonial powers hadn't been so busy colonizing all those countries and messing in the affairs of other people for national profit on someone else's backs, we wouldn't have this mess to be outraged  over in the first place.

i also heard on the radio last week some whackaloon trying to explain that since sevastopol is largely settled by retired russian naval personnel, they should have the right to decide to be russian and claim that land for themselves and russia, just like US retired military have the right to do in the US.

orly?

only the retired US navy guys haven't settled toronto.

onna other hand, sevastopol is a place where a lot of russian blood has been spilled in a lot of wars.

late in the day

i know, i know, i know.

usually i have the day's blog post queued up and ready to go at 0700. these days, however, i'm waiting on some pictures i took.

and my computer is running REALLY slow because last week it inexplicably ate a week's worth of photos and i have been running an application that will (supposedly) rebuild my photo library.

only now i am learning that there isn't enough room on my hard drive for TWO FULL COPIES of my photo library, so i'm having to park some files elsewhere while i get the thing sorted out and can throw away the bad copy.

it is frustrating and time consuming.

a thing i wrote to my US senators

you guys don't have to answer this next question because really, you can't answer it and still expect to do business in washington but there's no reason that i can't ask: do you ever just look around you in the senate chamber and wonder how this corrupt group of narcissistic losers got elected?

seriously?

yes, i did.

how likely, how, soon, how severe?

i'm looking at today's winter storm warning:

Posted 3 hours, 32 minutes ago – National Weather Service

• How likely:
• How soon:
• How severe:

The original text for this alert has been automatically reformatted to correct capitalization.

Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 8 pm EDT Thursday.

The National Weather Service in Burlington continues the Winter Storm Warning for heavy snow, until 8 pm EDT Thursday.

• Locations: The Northern Adirondack Mountains, Champlain Valley, as well as central and northern Vermont, including the Northeast Kingdom.
• Hazard types: Heavy snow.
• Accumulations: 12 to 20 inches of snow, with locally higher amounts.
• Maximum snowfall rate, 1 to 2 inches per hour, mainly this evening and tonight.
• Timing: light snow falling across the area will increase in intensity Wednesday afternoon and continue into Thursday morning. Snow will taper off to snow showers on Thursday. The snow will likely mix with sleet across parts of Rutland and Windsor Counties Wednesday evening.
• Impacts: difficult travel expected with heavy snow and areas of blowing and drifting snow. Near blizzard conditions with visibilities below one quarter of a mile and brief wind gusts up to 35 mph will exist at times.
• Winds: north 10 to 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph.
• Temperatures: highs around 30 today, with temperatures falling into the single digits tonight. These temperatures combined with strong winds will create wind chills of 0 to -20 tonight and Thursday morning.
• Visibilities: below one quarter mile at times in snow and blowing snow, especially from Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning.

i have been noticing this about storm warnings: how likely? the four dots stand for unlikely, possible, likely, and observed.

likely? really? we are in the middle of it and you guys can't commit to "observed"? just "likely"?

and on the soon-ness scale: past, future, expected, immediate.

expected? the thing's been been going for seven hours and is going to go for another 29 hours, so i think we've passed "expected" and gotten right onto "it's happening right figging NOW".

i GET that you might want to hedge your bets a little and call two feet of snow "moderate" severity, but there's really no doubt about WHEN it's going to happen. it has been happening for hours. it's going to be happening for more than a day yet. it's happening NOW.

that's pretty soon.

it is too fabulous.

i have fourteen inches of snow overnight, not counting what fell during the afternoon yesterday, and it's still snowing like a sumgun.

i am WAY TOO HAPPY about this.

snow

there's going to be snow today, maybe two feet of it.

every time the weatherman says there's going to be a lot of snow it ends up being no big deal.

if there isn't going to be two feet of snow by tomorrow, i will be very disappointed.

birderwatching

sunday afternoon i went up to waterbury center to look for that northern hawk owl that for some reason has settled this winter on gregg hill road. birders are all a-twitter about this and are driving from as far away as virginia to see this guy, who keeps hanging out in the same tree.

you know, for months.

it's not hard to find where. you just drive up route 100 into waterbury center and then you look for all the parked cars and people standing around with spotting scopes.

i came after skiing and i was cold and hungry and didn't want to spend a truckload of time there, but i did get to see a lot of people with spotting scopes, which i felt was worth the trip.

i'll go back later, because i live nearby and because i can.

affordable health care

once a long time ago an insurance company drone actually told me that i would be more cost effective if i were dead.

effective health care is a relatively new invention in the history of humankind. health insurance as we know it only dates back to 1929 in the US.

in the US, we have excellent health care and access to health care for those who can afford it, and apparently things that make you not die or not be crippled with pain are popular commodities people are willing to pay a lot of money for, so there's money to be made there.

as medical treatment got more complex, there started to be a greater divide between what adequate care was going to cost you and what you were likely to be able to afford. and once upon a time there was a shiny hospital that wanted to guarantee a certain amount of business and some teachers who wanted to be able to pay a fee up front in return for health care if they needed it and blue cross was born.

it was a great idea. people got health care.

but later as the business grew, it started to be more about making money than making money while benefitting both health care professionals and health care consumers. it got to be profitable to provide expensive services to people who could afford it, and we were back to square one.

only now MORE money was at stake.

do you remember HMOs? how they were going to be the progressive wave of the future?

yeah. someone figured out that it was more cost-effective to keep people healthy than to wait to treat them for acute conditions, but what happened is that the businesses behind them realized pretty quick that it was REALLY cost effective to ration adequate health care to people who could afford it, and the upshot is that fewer people end up with access to health care they need.

only now there's even MORE money at stake.

gigantic health insurance companies are now squeezing both ends of the tube: they wring every last penny out of hospitals and health care workers AND they ration adequate health care to people who can afford it, which means a very few people are getting very rich off of the work of others and the desperation and sickness of others.

the affordable care act was supposed to help with that, but the gubmint is too much in the pocket of the insurance industry and the healthcare corporations and the pharmaceutical companies who cannot BEAR to part with any fraction of their enormous profits.

i have said this before and i will say it many, many times: there is a substantial difference between profit and profit maximized on the backs of everyone else.

if you can make a truckload of money providing goods or services that people want or need without impoverishing your consumers, workers, or the community and resources where you're doing business, bless you and carry on.

if your business model is predicated on extracting maximum gain at the expense of everyone else, you need a sharpish poke with the business end of a flamethrower or something.

in the long term, affordable health care -that is, health care that is affordable for the people who need it- is more cost effective than making people go without health care. acute care is expensive, lost wages are expensive, the damage to the community and the economy is expensive.

and by "economy", i mean the economic systems that are made up of all people and resources and not just the paper profits of the speculatory rich.

costs to the economy are not just measured on the stock exchanges. costs are measured in employee absenteeism, in spread of disease, in urban decay, collapse of civility, rise of crime, cutting of public services.

adequate affordable health care for all lowers costs for everybody.

or nearly everybody. a few people wouldn't make quite as much money, but they'd still make money. they'd get used to it.

GPS come home

wednesday afternoon i lost my GPS receiver.

if you know me, you know that is spend more time with my GPS receiver than i do with my toothbrush. if i go to a doctor's appointment, i bring my GPS.

and as near as i can figure what happened, my garage door opener popped off of its clip wednesday and when i pulled into the driveway, i couldn't find it. so i stopped the car and got out and eventually found the garage door opener under the seat.

i did not notice my GPS had dropped out of my pocket.

thursday morning when i went to use it (that's thursday morning at 0530 when i emerged from my house with full gear for wandering around outside in -17 temps) i didn't have the GPS which didn't alarm me very much because i sometimes leave it in my car overnight.

when it wasn't in the car, i was scared. i searched the house. i searched my bags. i searched and re-searched the car and the garage.

thing is, wednesday afternoon i went out with my recycling and i looked over there and saw a dark spot on the driveway and dismissed it as dirty ice.

and wednesday night i noticed i din;t have my GPS and assumed it was in the car.

thursday morning i was standing in the driveway, crying.

i had to go to my mom's house and borrow the old GPS i'd given her when i got the new one (i'm not so generous; she paid for the new one) and thursday afternoon i put up a sign out by out mailboxes:

i am hoping very much that you found my

GARMIN GPS RECEIVER

in  the driveway wednesday afternoon and don’t know whose it is or how to return it.

it’s kind of old and freezes up for no apparent reason, but i’m rather fond of it and if you are looking for how to return it, i live (my address). you can call me at (my phone number) and i will run right over and pick it up, even.

thank you.


friday evening i was halfway through my supper and somebody knocked on my door. i jumped up and bolted to the door faster than anyone could reasonably expect to do. the guy there handed me my GPS and said he was just on the way to the mailboxes to put up a sign asking if anyone had lost a GPS receiver.

he wished me a happy weekend and he went home.

this makes me happier than just having the GPS back. when people are good, it makes me happy.

circular crisis

yesterday i did not shower. didn't sweat much, running low on underpants (read: longjohns)

today i sweated all morning and i smell bad and itch.

i can't shower because i have NO CLEAN UNDERPANTS.

had to do laundry. clean underpants not dry yet.

i hate the way i smell.

waiting.

can't shower yet. need clean dry underpants to put on.

i'm going to go eat a bowl of instant udon noodles. because suck.

some of my favorite things

i leave the house most mornings with both a laptop and an avalanche shovel. it makes me feel awesome and intrepid. i've never been in an avalanche, but the shovel comes in super handy out where i play.

i love all my cute little fashion accessories.

i have decided to share with you some of my favorites:

the lifelink avalanche shovel:

 it is cute, lightweight, packable, and i use it every day. the handle telescopes out.

microspikes!!

apparently i am the last kid on the block to get a pair of these. they are that thing you've always wanted that's between yaktrax and ten-point crampons. you know how most of your traction-improving thingies come off when you walk through deep or crusty snow? microspikes stay ON YOUR BOOT. and they are super  grippy. if you are wearing them you will be tempted to walk up vertical ice walls.

and they come in black. mine are black.

and they are easy to put on and take off.

experimental sammidge

i wanted to make something good to take with me thursday night because barb was going to come out on a bitter cold night to celebrate my halfway and she comes straight from work.

it doesn't matter why, really. i wanted something nice and packable and also a little different and special and i'm pretty good with chinese cooking and i thought: hey why don't i just whip up some chinese dishes and roll them into a wrap?

so.

on the very outside next to the wrap is some wilted cabbage leaf. chinese cabbage would have been better, but plain green cabbage is what i had. i seasoned it with a little rice vinegar.

then on top of that is the pile of spicy peanut noodles and then julienned carrots and sliced shiitake mushrooms, each simmered separately in master sauce.

i rolled it right up.

it is very good.

it also does not suck if you take a little sliced turkey breast and stick it in there for the extra protein. i tried it both ways.

weight distribution

last week i was out caching and i went for a roadside quickie but once i got over the top of the plow pile the snow was so deep i sunk in to my hips and still couldn't find the bottom.

your best bet when that happens is to swim out.

and if the snow will not support your weight standing, you might be able to get along the top if you distribute your weight a little more broadly, which means you crawl.

*sigh*

fun times.

spectacular news.

all right, boys and girls. last week or something like that i wrote to the nice people at bolton valley ski resort, which is where i do my skiing.

this is what i wrote them:

i'm about to head out to the mountain for a lovely morning of skiing.

i was thinking last week that it would be really cool to ask if i could ride along in a groomer sometime and take pictures and maybe write a few words about it. i'd be lying if i said it was for my tiny little blog that gets about two dozen readers, because there's nothing so special about that blog that demands a piece on snow grooming at bolton valley.

i would, of course, post it there, but the real reason to ask to do it is because it is unfathomably cool and just once in my life i'd like to see what that's like.

so here's what i'm suggesting, in handy bullet points:

• i'd like to ride along and take pictures and maybe shoot some video from inside a cab
• i'd like to write a piece about it with pictures that i will post to my tiny blog.
• you will be welcome to use my piece on your website.

because really, i bet you a nickle that i am not the only one of your longtime skiers who would love to see what it's like for the people who do your grooming and that would be a cool addition to your website.

i look forward to hearing from you.

and i just got an email from the mountain saying they'd be happy to have me ride along and take pictures and write about it.


that is FANTASTIC.

VT plate EWS 616

i watched this person toss cigarette butts out the window.

entitled asshat.

best bumpersticker ever

owwie

on tuesday up at the mountain i took a deliberate digger and wow, that hurt.

here's how it happened: i was coming down cobrass, which is a sweet trail and sweeping and curvy and it has fantastic views but at the top there's a steep pitch that ends up going very sharply around a blind corner.

people who know cobrass know it opens up on a wide flat and just hold the corner and fly by, but you have to be careful because people who do NOT know cobrass well are often hanging back there and it pays to have a plan for what you'll do if you come around the corner and someone is there.

so tuesday i was coming around that corner and there was a woman and two very small children over on the left side and kids can be very erratic so you want to give them wide passage so i decided to go tight to the inside on the right and just as i committed to that line, one of the kids moved out to center and the other cut hard to right and i did not think i could guarantee NOT hitting both of them, so i ditched well above them.

and THAT, my friends, is why we wear helmets.

dashing through the snow

here's a little video that shows all the fun of climbing up a snowbank so we can ski on the other side.

halfway there

i am working on a little geocache challenge, and quite frankly sometimes it feels more like a job than it does a game.

there is a challenge cache near my house for which you need a caching streak that's longer than your longest caching slump. a streak is a number of consecutive days with cache finds. a slump is a number of consecutive days without.

my slump is 236.

i looked at my goal number for that challenge, 237, and i thought: i will NEVER get that.

today is day 119.

granted, you won't have to do every cache, but i'm trying to pick up a challenge i like that will go easier if i can do the challenges near my house. and i have another little cache project i'm working on that i'm not talking about, plus i have decided that i want to finish out the year with an average of 3 caches found per day, for no particular reason.

the weight of the world and the weight of my illness hangs kind of heavy on me sometimes, and having a project helps.

today is day 119.

i have plans to go out tonight with my friend barb and do some night caching in stowe. when you hit your halfway mark, you ought to maybe celebrate with a friend. i am going to bring some nice sammidges and maybe a couple of bottles of ginger beer.

because i am halfway to the seemingly impossible goal.

peggy dow's

once a season i feel i should remind you that i keep a gallery of photos taken from the elbow of peggy dow's, which is a ski trail at bolton valley.

the elbow of peggy dow's is maybe my favorite place on earth, and ricker maybe my favorite mountain.

and also reminding you of the existence of that gallery is a good time to remind you also that there is a video of my love song to that trail and that place. of course, you can only get there by the number one chair.

budget cuts to military wages

ok, it's not exactly a secret that i'm a pacifist. i don't approve of militarism, and i don't approve of wars. sadly, there are some wars that need to be fought.

i think we haven't been in one since 1945.

mostly wars that are fought for "honor" and "security" are really fought for somebody's money. sometimes wars are fought to pacify and control a domestic population: we're at war! we HAVE to abrogate your rights! we HAVE to spy on our own citizens! for SAFETY! because REASONS!

really it comes down to somebody's money, and often the money of the guys who own the military contract jobs.

like remember that time the army said it didn't want to waste any more money on tanks it neither wanted nor needed, and congress said great. we really need to save money. here are your new tanks?

there are a great number of men and women who are willing to lay down their lives and the dreams and hearts of their families for the sake of defending this country and we keep squandering their blood and body parts and their minds by leaving parts of them in foreign deserts so that big corporations can make obscene profits by taking whatever they want by force and calling it the "global war on terrorism".

and now the gubmint is talking about cutting the pay and benefits of the very soldiers whom they engage to fight in its name because it needs to SAVE MONEY.

are you kidding me?

that obscenity, that never-ending war is  11.26 million dollars AN HOUR.

i'll tell you how to solve that budget problem. stop the fucking war. stop wasting the lives of the people fighting it.

i think there ought to be some new rules: universal draft. if you're going to have a war, everybody's eligible for the draft, no exceptions, no exemptions. i bet congress would think twice before sending off their own kids for the sake of the oil companies.

and the next rule: we pay the salaries and medical costs and job retraining and home costs of our soldiers and veterans BEFORE we pay defense contractors or oil companies, and if there isn't enough money to do that, the defense contractors and oil companies don't get paid.

period.

the shape of the plate

i have realized that when i have a helping of bread pudding, i ought to eat it off of a small plate, and not out of a soup plate, as i used to do.

the reason is simple: it is very hard to completely lick a concave surface.

i know i have helped you.

dead serious

my friend john is a political prisoner.

the prison system in the US is already brutal and petty and retaliative, and it's not a secret what abuses our prisoners suffer.

do not make the mistake of thinking that i want more fun for criminals; the thing about rule of law is that the law protects all of us. if the law does not protect criminals and guarantee their safety, the law does not protect the rest of us either.

john is in prison because he is the whistleblower that revealed the information that the US government was torturing people in CIA prisons.

revealing the government's illegal and immoral behavior is, of course, a crime.

and if while you're in prison you write letters telling what brutal and illegal treatment you are receiving, the bureau of prisons will retaliate.

i do not know if john will get my next letters, and i do not know if i will hear from him again until he is released.

do not forget him. his name is john kiriakou. don't let him be swallowed whole. he is a national hero. he has a wife and kids. he is my friend.

help him if you can.

a day and a half of rain

we have temperatures in the high thirties and rain.

i hope i do not need to explain to you what this will do to my snohaus.

later on, it will be cold. not too long, i hope.

osmore pond 9 february

here's an entire day of geocaching by ski condensed into fifteen minutes of norwegian-style video.

(long-form real-time videos of river cruises and multi-day documentaries about firewood or knitting are very popular on norwegian television)

so it's REAL reality video, in which we go skiing and find some geocaches and don't find others and also we replace some that are missing.

we do not create drama like will they fall through the ice? will they get back to the road before they run out of water? and we do not fight or play pranks or do AMAZING things. we just spend a nice day outdoors. this video shows what it was like.

snohaus 2014

it has begun. there is FINALLY enough snow on the ground to begin construction of this year's snohaus. each day i move about 650 pounds of snow on this puppy. if you're looking at the photos, 650 pounds does not make a lot of difference.

the key is that at this stage i am building the base, which has to be huge to support both the raised portions and to make the domes safe. it's also very unglamorous at this size, because outside of the stairs, it's still too early to dig in or put on any of the nice architectural touches.

so it's planning and hauling the snow to where i'll need it later.

later on it will be cool.

right now it's just a snowpile.

you can watch its progress here.

snow and cold

last week i found myself in a brief conversation with someone who had moved to florida. aside from my pathological hatred of florida, i was annoyed because the tone of the conversation suggested that i ought to maybe feel jealous of someone in florida instead of where i live, which is right now blissfully cold and snowy.

i pretended i did not realize what this person was saying, and offered condolences that they'd had to allow a job to relocate them to such an unpleasant place.

"we love the snow", they said, "but we hate the cold".

whut?

that's like loving meals but hating food.

the cold is what makes the wonderful, glorious snow possible. the cold is what makes it possible to go out and play in the wonderful glorious snow.

maybe what they meant was "we love to look at snow through windows at christmas but that's about it."

there's a reason i'm nearly fifty years old and never gone to rio or cancun or miami. it's because i cannot imagine wanting to be in any of those places. they have horrid beastly weather in summer, and why on earth would anyone leave somewhere awesome like vermont or minnesota or norway in WINTER? if you leave in winter, you're missing the good part. you are missing the whole POINT.

the list of places i hope never to have to see before i die include australia, mexico, ecuador, morocco, and indonesia.

my list of places i might enjoy going include finland, norway, siberia, alaska, northern ontario, and antarctica.

see a pattern forming here?

meanwhile, i am working on my awesome snohaus. want to know what three tons of snow looks like all piled up? you should come to my yard.

cabbage eaters

around the world the words "cabbage eaters", "potato eaters" and "garlic eaters" have historically been used to identify poor peasanty people.

yeah? well, get bent. aside from how wrong it is to criticize, humiliate, or dehumanize people on the basis of how much money they do or don't have, those foods are awesome.

want to know what i had for lunch today?

let's back up a little. some days ago i made cabbage and dumplings. this is kind of like the soul food of my pasty slovak ancestors. on the second day, you can take the leftover dumplings and pan fry them until they're browned and then put the heated up cabbage and onions over them.

mmmm.

but if you planned right, you still have some tasty cabbage and onions leftover.

skip to a different thread: i also made hotdogs, mashed potatoes and cheese. and i have leftover mashed potatoes.

so this is an awesome thing to do: stick some of the mashed potatoes in a skillet and fry them without stirring them until they're brown on one side. then flip them over and toss a little salt on. while you're waiting for the other side to brown, put the cabbage and onions in the pan and heat it up.

then slide your mashed potato pancake onto a plate and put the cabbage and onions over it.

oh, my. it is GOOD.

i have no pictures for you, because no matter how good it is, it doesn't look so pretty.

you need this tool

in the second week of januray i saw what is maybe my favorite commercial for a thing ever.

it was clearly intended as an ad before christmas, but it was running afterward for whatever reason.

i only saw it the once, so while it's like to quote it for you, the best i can do is paraphrase:

if you don't have this tool, you should ask for it or buy it for yourself because it's a good tool and it's versatile and well made and you will enjoy using it on your projects. once you have this tool it will become a favorite of yours for years to come and you will find yourself using it more and more because it does a lot of things and is easy to use.

i'd like to say that the down-to-earth tone of it is not a flattening exaggeration on my part. that's really the way the script went.

and instead of showing problems that can only be solved with this tool or emotional needs that can only be met with this tool or how surely your friends would be impressed by it, the video simply showed people working on projects.

it was the most low-key commercial for anything i ever saw. it treated the viewer not as someone who can't manage to fry eggs or close a chip bag or change a lightbulb without special help, but as a competent person who just might want this tool.

this commercial was so effective i wanted to go right out and buy one of these tools, even though i already have one.

sore

i was going to wait to tell you about our fun and games in groton state forest until i had the video edited.

you know, because naturally you like norwegian-style documentary, which is to say slow-moving films of ordinary things.

but what the heck? if you're a frequent reader of this blog, you are interested in temporal distortions in terms of narrative flow.

yesterday i went up with my friend barb to the groton state forest to ski and look for some geocaches, and i want to tell you more about that, but right now i just want to go all whiny-ass on you and say that i am so sore that it was difficult for me to sleep last night.

typically if i have done some outside activity for eight hours i sleep like a stone.

but oh, no. last night i was so sore i kept waking up.

plus i had to get up in the night to go find food because STARVING.

today i think i will do a lot of sofa surfing.

uh, and oh. i still have to go out and find some geocaches.

and work on snohaus.

i will probably not work so hard on it that i move a half ton of snow or anything, but i gots to do SOME.

it's like a rule or something.

thermostat

i want to know if the body has a timed themostat.

usually when i wake up in the morning i have a little breakfast and do some exercises and get dressed to go out to play. by sunrise i am usually well outside, ten below zero or not.

yesterday morning, however, because of the storm i couldn't go out to play in the morning and by eight o'clock i was SWELTERING in shortsleeves and had to keep going outside to shovel and stuff without bothering to put on gloves or even PANTS just to keep from sweating uncomfortably.

really?

not amused.

snow day

well, every school in vermont is closed this morning, as well as a great number of schools in new york and new hampshire.

the thing about vermont school closings is that it's not at all like the georgia school closings we all heard about last week.

here in vermont for the most part people know how to drive on snow, but this morning's forecast has the greatest snowfall volume of the day falling between seven and nine this morning, which is kind of when you'd want to be running those busses.

in burlington the decision point for school cancellation is whether or not crew can clear the sidewalks, since so many of the burlington kids walk to school.

yesterday i went out to do my grocery shopping and find my caches of the day early, so i could be home before the storm started.

today i will simply wait until it;s mostly over to go out.

so far i am not impressed by this storm, but then again, i'm still five hours away from the best part of it. if i can still look out my front windows, i'm not impressed.

i may start my snohaus.

snohaus? you say.

well, last year i started building it and then january thaw destroyed it and we never again had the snow for it.

and the year before i built pretty good, but i didn't show you because there was a thing in which my life was kind of upside-down.


maybe i will get to those pictures.

today i will probably build some and i will sit tight and bake bread and maybe do laundry or clean the bathrooms or something.

medium size

i was in the dunkin' donuts in downtown barre yesterday where i encountered the idiocy of american marketing, plus just plain idiocy.

the woman asked me what size coffee i wanted.

"small", i said.
"we don't have small. we only have medium, large, and extra large"
"no, you still have small, medium, and large. you've just renamed them." "all right, then."
"well, which do you want?" she asked me with a predatory glee as if she were delighted to be playing against someone so stupid.
"obviously, since you have only three sizes and i asked for a small, you should give me the  smallest of those sizes, regardless of whether you have named your small size 'medium', 'huge', or 'gargantuan'" i'll have the medium, please."



...and then she want and put in my order for a large.

gender issues: identity

i was trying to think about how i would feel if i suddenly woke up male one morning.

i think i would be really interested to know what it feels like to have male genitalia and i have long regarded the point-and-shoot urinary capability of men with some jealousy, especially when it's ten below zero and i have to drop flaps to pee.

other than that, though, i mostly just wouldn't care.

...which leads me to realizing that there are kind of two parts to gender identity: how much you FEEL like one sex or the other, and how much you CARE.

if being a woman was terribly important to me, suddenly waking up male one day would be horrific.

this not caring very much, i think, helped me to regard people who want gender reassignment surgeries as sad sick people who can't cope with who they are and resort to tragic self-mutilation.

but i have talked with and listened to a lot of people and i've realized that some people care very much what sex they feel like, and there are people who feel very strongly their gender identity.

other people, not so much. some people feel gender ambiguous and care about that, and others feel gender ambiguous and don't give a wet slap about it.

it isn't hard for me to imagine the "wrong" feeling of not being properly matched to the body you happen to live in. i know a thing or two about being improperly matched. this is maybe more information than you want about me, but in terms of gender preference (not this chapter, i know) i am likely to be sexually attracted to men but form emotional attachments to women.

that is an inconvenient mismatch.

i've been marginalized and ostracized by straight people for being too gay and by gay people for being too straight.

and i was thinking about writing this piece and this morning i suddenly recalled that time i was hauled in for a psych evaluation when i was in fourth grade and i suddenly understand all those questions they were asking about whether i liked being a girl or wished i was a boy.

it made me so angry today to finally understand what they were getting at: my failure to subscribe to gender rules must necessarily have signaled disorder. and my failure to care must have seemed wrong to them. i remember shrugging at the time and wondering why they had such stupid questions.

if you feel very strongly that you are a man but you were born into a female body, that is a kind of hell. you wake up every day in a body that feels wrong, you don't understand, and probably you feel ashamed of it for reasons that get drilled into you in a bazillion ways. doctors don't take you seriously.

i do not want to think about how craptacular that is.

now add to that pile the idea of people whose sex is indeterminate at birth and their parents guess which gender to assign them to in surgery.

guess wrong? whoops.

but there's this thing called gender identity disorder. here's an important thing: it's only a disorder if YOU care. it's not up to me or anyone else to call you disordered unless it helps you somehow. if you are fundamentally uncomfortable in your own skin, that's a disorder. i believe the best way for me to help you feel more comfortable is to take you however you are. if you need a reassignment surgery to feel normal, that's a thing only you know. if you would prefer to go genderless, that's up to you.

i am going to encourage other persons of privilege, persons who feel ok in their gender, people who match their bodies, people who are happily within the norms- i am going to encourage all of you to think less about putting people into small slots and when you're tempted to make gender based assumptions, ask yourself why.

ask yourself if you want to contribute to the discomfort and marginalization of a largely invisible yet decidedly present group of people.

but it isn't just about being nice to the "less fortunate". it's about creating an equality of gender, of gender identity, and about creating freedom for all people, including you.

over by the airport

i'd post pictures with it, but quite frankly it's too depressing.

i grew up near BTV, which is enough of a close match with the city in which it is almost located that people tend to use "btv" as a synonym for burlington. as in "i have to go into btv for a dentist appointment".

BTV is owned by the city of burlington, even though it is located wholly in the city of south burlington.

back in the 70's airport noise wasn't such a big deal and nice middle class or working class families lived in perfectly nice homes over near the airport.

but then the airport was upgraded and jets got bigger and whole big swaths of south burlington and winooski became pretty close to uninhabitable, but people still live in some of the homes because they;re too stubborn to move or too poor to afford somewhere else, but now the gubmint is bringing BTV the f-35 and i would mind it less if the f-35 was a project that wan't already obsolete, problem-plagued, and super expensive.

and there's an FAA buyback on some of those houses, but dozens and dozens of them just stand empty without so much as blinds on the windows. whole streets of abandoned houses are sad and creepy. whole streets of abandoned houses where your friends and schoolmates used to live even more so.

but it's about the money, you know?

not your money or my money, but the insane greedy profiteering of the defense contractors.