Ski Trip Update - Beaver Creek

I just wanted to put up a quick confirmation of the ski trip. The dates are still the last week of January 2009, Jan 24 - Jan 31. We are going to Beaver Creek, Colorado which is close to Vail and between the two resorts there should be plenty of skiing for the week. As noted before, they share a common lift pass, and one can buy a season pass before Nov 15 for approximately $600. If you were going to go skiing out West more than once this season, it would make sense to get that option, but you would have to act in the next few weeks.


So far the folks who have responded are Yuji, Sean (part of the week), and Rajiv. I am assuming Andy will probably join us as well. Note that spouses/SO's are welcome, and although I am planning on having J. join us, nothing is guaranteed. (I point that out just in case there are SO's who might want to join us but only if other women might be there)

So I guess the summary is

• The trip is on -- for Jan 24 to Jan 31, 2009
  
• We're going to Beaver Creek, Colorado


• Currently Yuji, Sean, Rajiv, me/Jenn?, Andy?

Action steps in the next two weeks would be to

• Line up vacation / time off


• Consider the season pass option, and prospectively purchase


• Determine if you are bringing anyone


• Investigate paid or frequent flyer flights - whether to Denver / Eagle


• Figure out housing (I will advise on this in November)

The economy is clearly slower this year than in the past, so flights/housing/passes are not as urgent as before...but I can't front the house as I have in the past. Sometime in November, once we get a final handle on attendees, and I start the house hunt, please keep some funds on hand for that expense.

Plant

PS: Our dear friend Holly, who we skiied with in Grand Targhee, has some happy and sad news, which you can find on her blog.

The Changing Seasons

As the mornings turn to frost, it's time to finish the last bits of preparation before snow season starts. This weekend I finished removing the air conditioner, replacing the storm windows, and arranged for the septic system to be pumped. If you have municipal water/sewer you probably have never dealt with it, but its part of the rural/mountain life for homes far off from the town service grid. Our prior septic pumping vendor, Bob, had retired to the good life of Florida, so we had to find a new person. Fortunately, a quick scan through our local paper found someone and he came by early Saturday. It tooks only 40 minutes and I felt better about having this squared away for the next few years.



Interestingly, this tradesman also raises deer, big 450 lb red deer, that are sold to the restaurant business. For the most part, game can not be hunted and then sold commercially, so when you see pheasant/deer on a menu somewhere it was raised in a farm like environment. We had some leftover lamb from a roast, so I made some pasties, although the first batch drooled a bit onto the baking sheet. The second attempt came out better since I used a Silpat sheet and cut a few steam holes to stop the crust from bursting. The dog has started spitting up blood so it looks like the growths have metastized into her lungs. But she still ate some beef this weekend and got her nails Dremeled down.

I went for a bike ride down into the village -- the foliage colors were stunning.

A visit from my sister

My sister visited us last night, and we enjoyed a quiet night at home with the pets and some Asian food ordered in. We don't do much take out, but I could see how with services like delivery.com or seamlessweb that people might never want to turn on their stove. A few nights ago I went out for dinner with some friends in my tasting group and they sent me home with tons of leftovers for the dog. Amazingly Lena didn't have much interest at first, but today she got more enthusiastic about the meat, after I had deboned the chop, cubed it, and microwaved it. Our theory is that her sense of smell is so diminished that unless food is hot, she can't smell what it is.

Some out of town friends visited us tonight and we met them at Bar Americain, where we popped open a few older California wines. The ambience and service were good, but the food was average. Maybe I'm getting a cold - nothing has really tasted right for a few days.

The Blessing of the Animals - St Francis Day

Sunday was St. Francis' Day (who was the patron saint of animals) so some churches offer a pre-service blessing for parishioner's' pets. It's not offered everywhere, but we were able to find St. Marks's in Springfield performing this. Given the short time left, it felt important to do this ritual, so early Sunday morning we rounded up the furry threesome to get them appropriately blessed. Lena and Zamfir were resigned to the auspicious event and put up no struggle, but Nikolai chose this time to declare his heresy. J. summoned the Spanish Inquisition and extracted him from behind the sofa, and into his holy cat carrying case. With varying measures of piety, we piled into the car for the pilgrimage. A surprisingly large crowd had showed up, accompanied by a veritable ark of of dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, birds and urns of ashes. It went smoothly except for one cat who rejected God, hissing at the priest. Somewhat unusually, they even allowed the animals inside and made them welcome for the main service. Some dogs even sat on the pews, distracted by each other, like gangly furry teenagers, although our own claimed the floor. This might have been the smallest, and most humble, church we've been in but the warmth was no less than our own Holy Trinity.

It was one of the most beautiful fall weekends I can recall in Vermont -- cool sweater weather days, cold nights somewhat north of freezing, a bright sun shining, and leaves that had begun their annual symphony of colors all under a dry sky. At the latitude and altitude we're at, the foliage tends to peak in the second week of October, convenient for the Columbus Day weekend acoming, but the forest looks brilliant right now. This is the weekend when we start the rituals of the fall: changing the cotton sheets to flannel, arranging for the chimney sweeps, switching the screens for the storm windows, and pulling all the vacuum packed bags of cold weather woolens out to be refilled with shorts, seer suckers and summery garb.

My in-laws are visiting next weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing them. I'm planning on stuffing a chateaubriand for one night, and roasting a mint wrapped leg of lamb another. The hound loves when this happens since there will be all kinds of trimmings from the roasts, as well as kindhearted visitors that she can deploy "Starving Skit #17" on. This meadow to the right is the one we usually take sledders to during the winter; it looks quite different now.

A link from Brigitte

Brigitte sent us this link, about old dogs. It's funny, and sad. We got the fireplace going this weekend for our sidekick, who then proceeded to make slow rotisserie roasted basset out of herself, rotating her body every 20 minutes so that every angle was suitably heated.