Thankgiving

For Thanksgiving, we had a small family dinner at the cabin. My mom flew in from California and my sister joined us as well. Both the drive there, and back, were unusually long due to weather and traffic. It's frustrating when a drive that takes 3:45 ends up taking 7:00 with substantial amounts of stress.


In any case we got some quiet time up there and made the usual turkey with trimmings. I used an organic turkey breast from Murray's which was good, but nothing extraordinary. Since I typically brine them before roasting it may not make that much of a difference. (The orange dish you can see in the foreground is rutmuus, a Swedish rutabaga casserole.) The last few weeks have been difficult, but sharing this holiday with loved ones helps.

Later that weekend we baked a platter of vegetarian enchiladas, which you can see on the right. We also went on a mountain bike ride on the other side of the Black river, and came back chilled and mud spattered, but at least we made sure that the new bike is working properly. It's the last ride of the year since it started snowing on our last day there.

In preparation for Christmas, we have lit our paper Swedish star in the front window, as well as the first candle for Advent.

Chimney all clean

We arranged for the fall ritual of having the chimney swept, by a new vendor -- the highly professional Vermont Master Chimney Sweep company. It took a while to get an appointment, as they said their backlog this fall has been 6-8 weeks, perhaps because they only make M-F appts. Clearly, this is something that can't be outsourced to China. We had a slight creosote buildup, but nothing too bad, and were advised to keep cleaning out the stove, while cold, prior to building it up each visit. In the picture below you can see a kind of reverse roto rooter being used to clean the bends in our stovepiping. When wood is a primary source of a heat, you have to do a little planning each season.

Flights reserved

I went prowling around on American Airlines web site today and reserved frequent flyer flights for J and I, into Eagle County. We would be arriving into Eagle on Jan 24 at 10:30am, departing on Jan 31 at 9:55am.

I was surprised that I could still do this so relatively late, and using only the 25k level of miles, and that so many other days and flight options were available. It would appear that bookings are down, at least at that carrier. You can see the geography above, although I know many of you are familiar with this after our various trips to this region over the years.

Also I noticed that some Citi / AA cards are running promos into Denver for 20k miles with a special code during December. I don't know if that will get renewed for January, but again that's also surprising to see low cost ff tix into ski country during the winter.

If you have miles, it's worth checking this out.

Ski Passes

We purchased our season passes for the Vail collection of resorts, and if you were planning on skiing more than one week out west this year, I would suggest you do so too. The passes are only on sale til this weekend. Season pass sales are running about 10% behind last years rate, and hotel bookings are running 20% behind, so clearly the slumping economy is hitting discretionary spending hard, especially luxuries like ski holidays.

At the time the deals were annouced last spring, I thought that this would lead to crowding at their collection of resorts, but it would seem that the whole industry is going to a have a rough time. The 'drive to' resorts in Vermont think they will be a little better off than the destination ones, but I'm not so sure about that.

I'll be dealing with flights later this month, and hope that some of you will start finalizing those, so we can begin the house hunt.

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Lena's ashes came home the other day, and have been lovingly stored in her old treat jar, along with a clay cast of her pawprint, a clinking tag filled collar, and a favorite scarf / drool rag. It's been a sad week, with the apartment eerily quiet when returning home, but things are getting back to normal now. We appreciate all the thoughtful notes people have sent us, and are particularly thankful for the remarkable medical care she recieved from both centers. The bulk of her chattels have now been donated to animal shelters in NYC and Vermont, where we know they will be put to good use.

Lena: 1995 - 2008

Lena passed away this morning at approximately 3:30 am EST. She woke us up to say goodbye and we went for a short walk outside. Upon returning, she collapsed and we carried her to the Animal Medical Center where she went into convulsions. She died as the doctor was preparing her, trying to find a vein to insert a catheter.

She lived 13 years, 7 months which is within the typical lifespan for Basset Hounds of 12-14 years. Lena lived 10 weeks after getting the diagnosis of terminal lymphoma, which beat the averages by a few weeks, although the last few weeks had been a struggle, even with a doubled dose of painkilling opiates.

Her last days were spent in Vermont -- snoozing in front of a warm fire, sniffing around the backyard, chomping on chicken trimmings, and enjoying the autumn sunshine. We had thought that we would end our journey together up there, but in the end we came home, and she relieved us of making that decision. She enjoyed a happy, good life and will be waiting patiently for us.

The house is so quiet without her.