Will he fly high like a bird up in the sky?" - Billy Preston

It's been almost two weeks since I last posted to this blog.

When I haven't been working, I've been with family - and you don't do blog posts while the Uglee Babee is running around the house. And I've been working a lot (which is of course verbal shorthand; it really means I've been coding a lot, and then testing, and then uncoding/recoding a lot, and then testing, and uncoding/recoding a lot, and then testing....)

But today the boss said "finish that and then go ski" - hadn't skiied since the weekend, even though I have a commitment to ski 100 days this season, so I didn't take much convincing.

I was a little rusty, as I haven't been doing much in the way of "vigorous" skiing in a few weeks anyway, as I've been cautioned to not exacerbate this MCL injury. However, I saw the orthodoc yesterday, and he told me to go ahead and do anything that doesn't make it hurt; even told me that I should be good to go for the Jackson Hole Steep And Deep Camp next month. (If he thinks that this knee can stand up for the drop into Corbett's Couloir, then he must figure that it's all right).

So this morning I did a pre-dawn two mile run - the first one in almost a month - and around lunchtime Ethel and I headed over to the ski hill. I skiied some bumps - not well, but vigorously : ) - and she tracked me from the top of the hill where I'm just a little Puckett-shaped dot all the wayout into the flat where I did some skirouettes (although you really can't seem this at this resolution : )

        

Now I'm back at work, but feeling much refreshed. I'm even going to a couple of meetings tonight, just like people : )

(editor's note - a friend said that I should post, as he needed a laugh. Sorry, Bruce - this isn't funny at all. But it's a post)

Well, it's official - the Pucketts are not broke enough.

I know that we must not be broke enough, because Ethel is buying another condo.

Now, wait - don't get confused. Ethel has only actually bought one condo so far.

OFFICIAL ETHEL CONDOLOGY:

1) 2007ish - Ethel made an offer on a condo in Pinetop/Lakeside - a very nice place, got a good price. But while we were going through the deal, something occurred at work which reminded me just how a job can be, and I took that as a Sign that we shouldn't buy it. So we didn't. (worked out better in the long run, too - that condo was 30ish miles from the ski hill, and that ski hill isn't open nearly as long as Purgatory).

2) 2010  Bought the current condo in Cascade Village, near Purgatory Ski Hill (what the marketing types call "Durango Mountain Resort") in January, after spending the first part of the winter at Pinetop.

(This was occasioned in part by having become rather up-fed w/the services at Sunrise. "Is there snowmaking on this lift?" "Idunno". "Is the lodge open at the top?" "Idunno". "Do they have hot dogs in the restaurant?" "I dunno". "Do you know if you know anything?" "Idunno")

We actually decided to go ahead and make the offer as we were driving out of town; it just happened to be my birthday, so we called it my birthday present. <GOLUM_MODE> It came to me on me birthday, precious, and we wants it, we does! </GOLUM_MODE>

3) Aug 2011  Had an accepted offer on a nice place in San Jose del Cabo, as a summer home; found ourselves jumping through so many hoops (buying property in Mexico is not for the faint of heart) that we said "nah"....


.... and then realized that, for the summer season (since we ski in winter) we can do long-term rentals on the beach for about what the owners are paying in HOAs and utlities. Gee - if I bought one of those places, I'd be paying HOA and utilities *all year long*, plus paying for the condo.


This sort of realization is called "The Great Duh".


4) Dec 2011 - found what has been the absolute best deal on a larger unit at Cascade Village since we've been there. Ethel decided that she really liked Cascade Village - we're right at the ski hill, except we're around the big turn so we get better views, and this little hairpin in the mountain gets more snow than the ski hill itself. It's really a lovely place to drive up to and call home.


The village looks like this from the road:

                               


Now, when they talk about villages being nestled into the mountains - well, that's about as "nestled" as nestled gets. It's probably at its loveliest when approached at night.

The new condo is actually directly across the parking lot from our current condo - it's the one in the middle:





So the two balconies and the fireplace in the middle are the backside of the new place.  The front of the condo is in the back, and the back door is underneath, in covered parking.

Those two long windows on each side of the chimney provide very striking views of the Needles Mountains and Potato Hill, but for some reason the listing agent didn't include pix from there. Here's the view from out on the deck, looking north:




That peak is Engineer Mountain, which is my favorite.

Ethel, however, prefers the Needles, and that is what you see looking east - this is pretty much what you see through the windows on the lower floor, but I think that this was taken from out on the deck:





Interestingly enough, our current one-bedroom is downstairs, behind the tallest pine - so we can really see each condo from the other. I think I might spend a few days just running back and forth between the condos. (I'm just a poor boy from Flat Red Clay, Alabama - I have no business having one ski condo. I certainly have no business having two of them : ) That big chunk of rock on the left is Potato Hill (lovingly referred to as "Spud" by the locals - hey, that's us!)

We can actually see more of the Needles - for some reason, they split it up into two pix. Here's the one looking further south:



We're not showing the inside because there's really nothing to look at - it needs a little updating, and was furnished during the Eisenhower administration. But it's very livable - we just won't have granite or leather for a little while.

Ethel really wanted us both to have our own permanent working spaces, and she wanted a view of the Needles. I like the views myself, but I'm the sort of schmuck who will sit there and look at the mountains while computing, in my head, how much more per day I'm paying to look at said mountains - I'll wind up with a spreadsheet amortizing the 20 minutes/day mountain-looking , showing how the relative ROI of moutain-gazing is affected by property taxes, increase HOAs, and the relative costs/square foot of the two residences. And I'll have to take into account cloudy days when we can't see the mountains, of course.

But Ethel wants it. So here we go.

Film at eleven.

Forgive me, whatever blog readers are out there, for I have sinned.

It's been seventeen days since my last post.

And that ain't all; I've only run once in the last ten days. And I've made fewer meetings in the last month than any month I've been alive.

Most of that is just work.

I've been working till late bedtimes and then waking up three hours later worried about work, so I'd crank up the computer. I've worked longer hours on weekends than I used to work on weekdays.

As a result, if I were to paint a self-portrait right now, it would look like this:



Now, long term readers (both of you) might recall this pic of a Tennessee fan during the Alabama game of 2010: these two HAVE to be related. Or maybe it's one of those time-travel things.

(N.B. the above pic is from a romantic comedy titled "Morning Glory" - Ethel's been force-feeding me romantic comedies lately. I'm so tired and moody that it just makes sense to watch them - obviously, my job has cost me my manhood. Gimme two more weeks and I'll be watching "Beaches" while crying in my chocolate)

I say that this is the result of "work". However (as I stated on FB) you can't really call it work, since anybody with freshman physics can tell you

W=fd

i.e., "work equals the force expended times the distance of movement" - which means that, no matter how much force you expend, if there's no forward progress, there is no work. Only fatigue and frustration. You don't get credit for fatigue and frustration; you just get credit for work.

We're back in Arizona now for the holidays. Those of you who know Ethel know that being anywhere for any length of time means that she has to buy a condo there (it's a federal law; it's not just a state thing). And so she has - she has got an offer made and accepted on a much larger unit at Cascade Village across the parking lot from us - but "across the parking lot" means majestic views of the Needles Mountains rather than our current pleasant view up the ridgeline to Cascade Divide.

But I'm not sold on buying; my work is so discombobulated that I have no idea if I'm going to have a job four months from now. Thus, buying a place in the mountains - when I might not be able to telecommute anymore, because I'll be working at Joe's Software Emporium, and Joe's probably won't pay enough for me to pay for my Arizona home and a Colorado home too.

So I got up this morning and was working before 7 (which is a late start for me - but I was working late last night - no, wait. I wasn't. Ethel made me watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes of the Big Brains of the San Francisco Bay) and I have no end in sight tonight (I'm still in my pajamas). And, lately, when I have stopped working, then I've started studying.

I do not understand this, in truth. I have never had this much trouble catching up; I've never had this much trouble fitting in. I feel like I've become a ball and chain to the other team members; as though they don't want to hear from me. For a guy like me, that's tough. But let's face it - not everybody is going to like me.¹

Okay, so far, I've failed. But I'm still trying. There's no virtue in that; I simply do not know how to stop trying. I've tweaked my MCL in a pretty spectacular ski fall, which means that I've stopped running and have only been doing limited skiing; that all translates to more time for work. I'll wander away from my desk, and then think "wait a minute - maybe that would work this way" and back I go to mouse and keyboard.

So now I feel like that guy in that picture above looks. And I don't think either of us are happy about it : )


¹that's not a reflexive statement; the quite honest truth is that I like everybody. I realized some years ago that I really do like everybody; when I start to think that I don't like somebody, then I will find out that I've begun to suspect that they don't like me, and thus I have to go ahead and dislike them to prove them wrong, pre-emptively. It's not easy being me, and I wish somebody else would take the job.

Here's what it looked like yesterday, from across Cascade Village towards the Needles:



It's been warm and sunny here for days, with yesterday being the first day with any snow - just a dusting - but this picture, taken at midday, shows that perhaps the storm arriving today will truly give us a dump.

The building to the right of the van is where we have our little condo, with (fortunately) underground parking. (the 'underground' here is just on three sides - if you park in the east row, you basically see this same view without any condos or vans : )

Today, it doesn't look like this. You can't see the Needles Mountains. You can't even see the top of the hill behind our condo (looking the other direction).  We're under a Winter Storm Warning, which is sort of another way of saying "Happiness Alert!!" : )

I love it up here. It bothers me that this change of circumstance - from pretty much anywhere up to 9000 feet at the ski village - makes me happy. That is contrary to all of my spiritual beliefs and practices.

But it's true - as we are climbing up from Phoenix to hear, I get happier with every elevation gain.

Today's Patron Saint of FCD is Fred Tuttle:

                                                                 

He's our patron saint today because of his "No Time For The Details" monologue - I've searched, and I can't find it,so I'll do the best I can from memory:

"I'm a Man with a Plan, and it's a good plan, but it doesn't have any details, because my daddy says that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and we ain't got time for the details!"

Today I ran at 9000 feet, and worked, and skiied a little, and worked, and now I'm going to a 5:30 meeting and then grocery shopping et.al. and then an 8:00 meeting and then back up the mountain and home.

So this is all I can post, cause we ain't got time for the details!

(meanwhile, over on 100 Days, Ethel is chronicling our attempt to get in 100 days of skiing. She has time for the details).

Mojo to eat when playing Auburn:



The Frosted Flakes because of Tony the Tiger (and look at that box and tell me those aren't Auburn's colors :) - the Cheez-Its because of Gene Cheezik (and that's Auburn's orange, as well).

It worked.

(rest of this post deleted because of its argumentative nature).

You know the only thing scarier than a new golfer with a credit card?

A new golfer with MY credit card : )



Here is Ethel at Van's Golf Shop in North Scott$dale. (Why, no - we couldn't got to a golf shop in Glendale or Guadalupe. Why do you ask?) She had just completed her last introductory lesson, and we were looking around for some good used clubs, when we ran across this deal on some Adams Tight Lies ladies' clubs - a hundred bucks less than we'd seen the same set anywhere online.

So we bought 'em.

While we were there, it turned out that they had the men's Adams Tight Lies set - with one fewer woods, and one more iron - for a good bit less than that. So we bought them, too.

Now we have Christmas already taken care of, except for buying for everybody else, and decorating, and cooking, and everything else. But we both have new golf clubs.

My clubs are far better than anything that I had ever bought for myself - my Daddy used to say, when folks asked him why he didn't get new clubs, "I'm not as good as the clubs that I already have". I've always felt the same - but, during last ski season, I bought some new Dynastar Legend Sultan 80 skis, and they changed my skiing dramatically and quickly.

Getting new skis changed my skiing. Would getting new, better golf clubs change my game?

After looking at some new clubs the other day, I got in my car - a ten-year-old BMW Z3 roadster - and pulled onto the freeway. While accelerating into the turn, I realized what a good car that is - and that buying a BMW really makes a difference. And so I started thinking about getting new clubs even more.

So now I've got some. And, after I've played with them a few weeks, I can take 'em back in and have them custom fit to my body, no extra charge. So we'll see.

Meanwhile, Ethel is a new golfer, with some very, very good clubs. And she wants to play golf. So I'm accommodating her as much as possible : )

In them meantime, I'm looking at taking tomorrow off and jumping - they got the Caravan in, and that would mean that I'd be able to do many more jumps in a day....as I typed that, I got scared. I'm sorta planning to finish out this Advanced Free Fall class, but I wonder if somebody who is as ADD as I am has any business jumping out of airplanes as a hobby : )

Those of you who actually read this may remember our fiasco with trying to buy Rosetta Stone off of Ebay a couple of months back.

After dithering and dickering, we finally decided to pay full price to Rosetta Stone itself, in order to get full service and a money-back guaranty if it doesn't work. That's actually kind of hard to beat; I get to learn conversational Spanish inside of six months, or they pay me back my money. (They can't pay me back my time, but there must be SOME learning that will be happening.)

It came in yesterday -



Since I don't have enough going on (with the new job, my regular extra-curricular activities and responsibilities, plus finishing my skydiving certification and getting ready to spend the winter at Purgatory)  I think that adding another 30min-1hr a day of studying Spanish makes plenty of sense.

Speaking of the winter in Purgatory - Ethel is staring a blog, 100Days.fatcharliesdiary.com, to chronicle our attempt to ski 100 days this winter. While working, my training for a half marathon, regular meetings, and coming back for a couple of weeks for Christmas.

And I wonder why I go to bed with my eyes twitching...Meanwhile, Ethel has found our condo for next summer in Cabo. It's on the beach - but not just any beach; it's on Hombre Viejo Playa, "Old Man's Beach" - where old men surf : ) it would be a simple matter of walking out the door and paddling out to the break and then smashing my soft, pointy skull on the hard, pointy rocks laying just beneath the surface...okay, enough about that : )

I just got back my Moonstone ski pants from the seamstress - these are cool bibs that have an up-down zipper, which comes in very handy in the woods; however, this last ski season, the zipper broke. I took them in to have them fixed as soon as we got back at the first of April; it took four months or so to find out that the place that we took them too hadn't fixed them, and hadn't called us to tell us that they hadn't fixed 'em - I found out by deciding to go by there and say "Where are my ski pants?"

So I then took them to a place that this place recommended - the nice lady there said that she should be done in a couple of weeks, and she would call us......weeks went by. Months went by. Finally, last week, I went by there and said "Hello! Where are my ski pants?"

She said "Oh, I didn't know that you were coming back for them. I'll get them done now."

(If that one makes your eyes cross and causes your larynx into an involuntary "hunnnnnhhhh??" type sound, then we are alike, you and I)

Today I got a text and they were done. So now I've got three functional pairs of ski pants - which is important, if you're going to ski 100 days.

I generally like to stay in my time frame. Today is today is today, and there isn't anything else.

There never really was any other time, either - there's only now. I've sorta figured out that Now goes through the movie, rather than the movie playing. I'm always in the Now, and the Now is moving (or maybe it's just the illusion of movement - there are schools of though that teach that, if I learn to see through the veil, I'll see the real world, which is always Now).

But let's just say that I'm looking forward to when Now is nine days further along:




That's today's pic from the webcam at the top of Hades and Styx, on the front side of Purgatory. Those mountains you see are Potato Hill (aka "Spud") and the West Needle range. You can see those from our condo development, as well.

In nine days, we start our quest for 100 days of skiing. That's while working full time, and maintaining our full-time residence in Phoenix. There aren't a lot of Phoenecians who will ski a hundred days this winter.  But then, truth be told, not that many people in Phoenix WANT to ski a hundred days - many folks in Phoenix are in Phoenix to avoid winter altogether.

 Last night, after finishing up another grueling workday, I lay back on the couch and clicked on "Warren Miller: Impact". This was from the early 2000s, and even that is late enough that Warren isn't doing all - or even most - of the narration. I did hear Warren say something new, right after saying something old.

He said "And if you don't do it this year, you'll just be one year older when you do." -- okay, that's a mandatory statement in every Warren Miller movie.

But a little later, when somebody who perhaps should not have been doing a back flip on alpine gear in the backcountry was doing a back flip on alpine gear in the backcountry, Warren said "If you do this this year, you probably won't be a year older next year" : )

It's a weird time to be me. I'm living with the effects of being ancient and feeble, while taking skydiving lessons and setting up to huck off cliffs and down couloirs at Jackson Hole in February. I reckon this is my midlife crisis. It's cheaper than a Ferrari and a floozy named Doris, and - come to think of it - probably safer.

Nine more days - in the Army, when you were finishing up a given assignment or a tour of duty at a given location, you came down with "short-timers' syndrome", which meant that you stopped caring about what was going on around you; you said that you were "Short!" if anybody asked how you were. "Short" was always assumed to be a good thing, since the two best duty stations in the Army are: your last one, and your next one.

When you got down to less than ten days to go, you referred to yourself as a "two-digit midget".

I don't have "short-timers' syndrome", since everything that I am currently responsible for is following me to Purgatory - job, bills, home in New RIver, etc. So I'm not losing any responsibilities, I'm simply going on an extended working vacation. Nothing will really change, except for my location, the reduction in commute time, and the addition of 1.5-2 hours of vigorous skiing every weekday.

But this is a gentle reminder that someday I will have short-timers' syndrome again. I think. If I ever get to retire, it'll be like that, I suppose - a vigorous tossing off of old responsibilities, and an assumption of new (and, one hopes) lighter ones.

But all I know right now is that I've got nine more days until I am actually, physically on a pair of skis, sliding down a beautiful snow-covered slope in the Rockies...ahhhh.....

No, don't worry. This is not another blog post about how awful the Penn State situation is. I can promise that much. I'm simply tired of hearing about it.

This is a post about how tired I am of hearing about it.

Now we've got college football bloggers posting links to Saturday Night Live videos about how the Devil thinks that it is awful to show how awful we all think it is.



The name of this blog is "Fat Charlie's Diary". That name is a reference to a Paul Simon song about "Fat Charlie the Archangel" - the reason that Fat Charlie has been my nom de net for the last twenty years is because, at my best, I - like Fat Charlie the Archangel - "have no opinion about this, have no opinion about that".

So why I'm going to say now will sound like an opinion. But I don't think it is - it is, rather than an opinion:

a) a statement of "fact" internal to Christian dogma or practice, as well as
b) a matter of taste, or tact, or preference.

I'm not going to decry what happened in Penn State. Sorry - I ain't playing. That - as I understand it - is not my job. There's Somebody Else who's supposed to do that, if that is what He wants to do. And I'm not going to pretend that I know what He wants to do - His actions are His own.

I am pretty sure what I'm supposed to do, though - Judge not, lest I also be judged.

The only thing that I'm supposed to judge is judgement itself, and find my own lacking, and leave the judging to the One who's supposed to do that.

There are reasons for that, as I understand it, and at least one of them works this way - the same judgement will be meted out to me, "heaped up, pressed down, and running over".

We can say all we want about how awful the Penn State situation is. And, Lord knows, folks are.

But I see the whole thing as distasteful. It's a witch hunt. I don't believe (and that that point, I reckon, we've moved into "opinion". So be it) that it's really outrage at all.

It's guilt. Plain, old fashioned guilt, that wants the other guy to be guiltier.

Every one of us has sinned and come short of the glory of God. Every one of us has harmed an innocent; every one of us has covered something up. Every one of us has lied, every one of us has lusted inappropriately, and every one of us has thought that we've escaped detection.

But at least we can all pat ourselves on our collective backs and purse our lips and nod our heads and say "Well, at least we're not as bad as THAT guy." And then we can get angry to show how righteous we are. See how outraged I am? That shows that I'd never act like that. And you and I can agree that that other SOB there is the one who's going to the "special hell".

If there's one way in which I might be a little different from most, it might be that I have done enough inventory work (to save myself from my own excesses, not as the result of any virtue) that I know that I'm the same as everybody else.

Our ACTIONS my differ. But our motives are, always, the same - Charlie Manson to Mother Theresa, Bernie Maddoff to Milton Berle, Hitler to His Holiness - regardless of how much we give way to particular impulses, or to what extent we are successful in bringing the Almighty in line with our efforts to diminish our excesses, the underlying evil of selfishness is the same.

And, of course, I do not except myself - I know it of myself, most of all.

And I'm even sharing in this particular sin - the sin of claiming somebody else's sin is worse than my own, by being righteously indignant at the righteous indignation that I see around me.

Oh, well. I'm confessing it. What ain't detected can't be corrected : ) That's the best that I can do.

And this post is not pointed at those who are currently toting their torch and pitchforks - they have no desire to hear anything like this sort of missive.

This is intended to help others who, like me, found themselves just a bit queasy about the situation - not what happened in State College, which no doubt happens every day in cities all across the nation - but at our own responses, and the responses we see about us.

It may be that you, too, are aware of your own sins, and might find the idea of picking up some stones to throw a bit....distasteful, if nothing else.