The sun is finally shining for a morning, which means it’s not snaining for the first time in what feels like all year. The last couple of weeks have been rather relentless and wet, and there’s more of that in our predicted future, but for one shining moment, we have blue sky and sun.
And I have done nothing about blogging this morning, which is not quite true. I started another entry, but when one starts looking at the word count and despairing that one is not even to 200 words, it clearly is not going smoothly. And if it’s not going smoothly at this end, that is a sure call for tedium at the output end.
So I had a brief internal dilemma: postpone the post, take Oz for a walk and see if that clears some cobwebs? Or complain here about the cobwebs? (Guess which route I’ve chosen.)
I have more things to do than time to do them this weekend. Monday is going to be a big day: Audrie is coming to take pictures of the house ahead of our official listing on Thursday, and while Lynn has met our goal of one load per day to the storage shed, I have managed not much at all. I wonder a lot about my time management, and no matter how much I wonder, I do a very incomplete job of accounting for it.
Not that I want to, but I keep waking up at 5 and finding it difficult to go back to sleep. I am supposed to be to work at 10 (and rarely make it on time). That is five hours of awake time — what am I doing with it?
This week I have been using some portion of it to read about Greeks (Hellenes) and Romans and their battle formations, as well as about the modern-day author, who keeps inserting himself in his narrative, even though that’s over 2,000 years old. And when you feel the need to explain that Hannukah is a Jewish holiday, but not to redefine a Greek term last used 100 pages prior, your editors have let you down.
But I’ve been slogging along like a good Hoplite (yeah, I still haven’t figured it out fully either — some sort of Greek foot soldier that perhaps predated the use of the phalanx), trying to reach the end of the book before Big Day Monday. I don’t think I’m going to make it, but I’m somewhere before the fifth of the six battles he has promised to cover. This one will involve Hannibal (of elephant fame, although I’m gathering lots of other generals used these animals as well), which must make our author happy, because every time he has mentioned Hannibal, he does it thusly: “the great general Hannibal Barca.” Every time. He is great, great enough that we must mention him by full name. In case you get him confused with all the other Hannibals and their elephants.
And I am still planning to go to book group, even though Big Day Monday will now feature a visit from my sister Tia. Lynn is very excited about this; I mean, she likes Tia and all, but she’s more excited to see Tia’s accommodations.
I may have mentioned, once before, that Lynn and I are building a house at Riverwalk Estates. This makes us “members” of Riverwalk, with so-far access to some trails that are I think in the process of being legally defined as accessible, since the plat was not as clear as it could have been. (No!) It also allows us, depending on availability, to house guests in the communal guest cabin for a fee that is probably lower than any hotel room in town — now that Cattlemen’s Inn is long burned down, taking with it the $15/night rooms.
I’m not sure the amenities in this guest cabin are much better than the Cattlemen’s old rooms, which could be most charitably referred to as “serviceable.” Every time I go to an HOA board meeting, the board president suggests supplying wi-fi to the guest cabins and one other board member opposes it. Everyone else agrees it’s a good idea, but then no follow-through appears to take place. So, no television or internet access readily available for guests. Serviceable. And more than $15 per night.
This does not seem to stop use of the cabins, and I gathered from the woman I called to reserve it that I was lucky to find the schedule so available for Monday. Tia had her choice of sides: ‘A’ comes with a bar and a cloth couch that converts to a sleeper bed, while ‘B’ offers a table and a leather couch. I didn’t care; Tia got assigned to ‘A.’
The first day we toured Riverwalk with the real estate agent, Lynn wanted to see the cabins, but the agent didn’t have the key. So we have not yet seen the cabin interiors, which is why Lynn is very excited that Tia is coming. Assuming the avalanches that are blocking highway after highway all across Colorado are going to give it a rest.
Lynn reported that at least two local roads are (or were) also shut down due to avalanche danger. So if you winter up at Taylor Reservoir, you might currently be stuck at home. And anyone with back-country plans should just shelve those right now.
Did you know that, according to the Crested Butte paper, the thing that has everyone in CB seething about right now is the “Pow Cam”? Somewhere along the way, when I wasn’t looking, we started referring to powder snow as “pow.” If you’re real cool, you ski “the pow.” And the ski resort, recently purchased by Vail, has a camera that all locals appear to rely on to see how much “pow” has appeared overnight. I guess you use this as your barometer: go to work as scheduled, or ski the pow. It seems either is an acceptable option. (I did once have a young employee ask me if we offered “powder days,” and he was very disappointed to learn that he was expected to come to work no matter how much “pow” there was.)
Vail apparently has opted to wipe the pow cam clean every morning at 5 a.m. rather than 4 p.m. when the resort closes. So if you get up at 7 and immediately turn to the “pow cam,” (and why would you not?), it will look like hardly any snow fell overnight. Because you probably could not gauge by how much snow is on your car or sidewalk. And then you might be tricked into going to work when you could be skiing.
According to the CB News, this is major conversational fodder all over town. Everywhere the editor goes. Everywhere the editor thinks, because he is in the “what a horrible, stupid idea, Vail really sucks” camp.
I would like to point out, it is not just me who is resistant to change. Pow!
Somehow I have veered badly from my discussion of time management or lack thereof, but today is freefall stream of consciousness, get the blog out of the way in order to move on to the rest of a very lengthy list. And now I have reached a respectable 1,200 words, every last one of them precious and sure to be treasured by you all. And the sun is still shining, although wisps of clouds are approaching, so Oz and I should be on our way. We have a busy weekend ahead of us.
Photo: gratuitous picture of the start of Lynn’s kitchen island. Note the insets for the kitchen lighting in what will be the ceiling.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 