Fat Charlie's Diary

Drinking Is Like Fur

2010-03-12T16:34:00Z

Maia the Malamutt is enjoying her stay here in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

After five years in Phoenix, I suppose that she should be enjoying the cold and snow. We had her fur thinned before we came up - it's not really "cold" here at 9000 feet; it might get below 20 as a low - so she's quite comfortable laying with her belly exposed to the snow, yet she's not overheating inside the condo.

Decidedly not overheating. In fact, she's been laying up against the baseboard heater.

This has happened twice this week - we'll be sitting here working, and all of a sudden the place smells like an old-style hair salon; the smell of burnt hair fills the room. Suddenly we realize that Maia is laying up against the baseboard, and the heater is burning her fur off.

And Maia is completely clueless about it.

Why? Because her fur is such an efficient insulator that she can't feel the heat of the heater, even while it's burning her fur - she doesn't feel it until after it buns off the fur, and starts on her skin - and it's a surprise to her when this happens.

Man, that's just like my drinking days!

Once upon a time, I did a good bit of drinking. Drinking insulated me from the discomfort of the world - it did it very well. In fact, my drinking insulated me so well that I was able to get into all sorts of trouble that caused more discomfort, and yet I never really noticed the discomfort, because I was liberally applying 151 rum and German beer as more insulation.

This would keep going until my troubles got to be enough such that society would intervene and take me away from the booze - by locking me up or otherwise restricting my access to liquor. Then suddenly I'd become aware of the actual pain that the booze was insulating me from, and I'd straighten up and fly right.

Eventually, though, the drinking stopped working - I'd managed to build up so much pain inside, and so many troubles outside, that it was just like when Maia's fur burns off - suddenly, the stuff I'd gotten myself into was huge, and I'd used up the ability of the booze to insulate me from it.

That was 4 May, 1985 : )

Booze isn't a bad thing - just like Maia's fur, I suppose. But, like Maia's fur, when it is used to insulate us from something that we should be paying attention to, it becomes a liability rather than an asset. When we've got so much of it that we wind up blundering into - and laying down next to! - things that can hurt is, it is a disaster.

Maia's laying over near the pantry closet as we speak, because this time the heater burned all the way through the fur - now she's licking that spot on her haunch where it hurts. Unfortunately, I was never able to cure the problems that my drinking caused me by licking them : )

He's Raised The Bar

2010-03-11T17:20:00Z

Once upon a time, it was enough for me to be a faithful husband, earning a good living, being kind and loving with my wife, raising our son, doing chores around the house and staying sane and sober.

But now the Old Spice Man has raised the bar.

Not only am I supposed to do all of those things, but now I'm supposed to be a tall black man with a perfect body and perfect teeth - and hair! I might could manage the first three (We Pucketts have some Afro in our lineage) but I'll never pull off the hair part.

I haven't actually seen the ad itself - since college football is over, the only TV I see is what's on the monitors at the gym - but I have, indeed, seen the ad being shown over and over again on various morning shows (and it's being shown as a news item - now I know that the media is in cahoots : ) so I've just about memorized the whole thing (no, I don't HEAR the ad, but the monitors are CC enabled, and I can read : )

You can say "no, Jim, you're not supposed to be just like him" but the guy makes the comparison, and makes it plain - "Ladies, look at your man - now look at me - now look at your man - now look at me....". I don't know what happens at YOUR house, but, based on what I see when I look in the mirror, my wife would never even make it to the second "now look at your man".(I'm making that as an assumption based on no data - I won't include in my calculations the fact that my wife keeps watching that ad, over and over, on YouTube. And I won't mention that, when she's watching that ad, and he says "Look at me" she looks at him - when he says "Now look at your man" she ignores that instruction : )

No reason for her to look at her man, really - I'm just a feeble, 51 year old bald white dude.

I say that - "I'm just a feeble, 51 year old bald white dude" - but I don't really BELIEVE it. I'm still surprised, every time I see a mirror - where did THAT guy come from? In my dreams, I never see myself as 51 years old - the person that I am in my dreams is probably right around 30 or so. And - even though I've been shaving my head for the last five years - the guy in my dreams has hair.

Dreams are funny that way - in some ways, I think, dreams are completely irrational, but in others, they show us what we really believe; our (forgive the term) unconscious assumptions about the world that we live in. I've never convinced my unconscious side that my father is dead - in my dreams, Dad is still quite alive, and is still full of funny opinions and advice.

As I've pointed out before in these pages, I'm a recovered alky and compulsive overeater, and I'm also an ex-smoker. And since I've worked the Twelve Steps on two of those things (I quit smoking cold turkey, no meetings or anything) my unconscious understands that I'm recovered from the drinking and overeating. Those problems simply don't exist anymore for me.

So, in my dreams, whenever I'm overeating or drinking, I'm able to say to myself "whups - I've recovered from this. This isn't really happening - therefore, this must be a dream. I think I'll change dreams" and that takes care of it.

But when I am smoking in my dreams, not only am I "really" smoking, but I'm also CERTAIN that I've been smoking for the past 19 years, and that nobody has caught me; in my DREAMS, I still smoke. And I'm still 30 years old, with hair.

I wonder if this is some form of arrested development?

At any rate - when folks have asked me in the gym "why do you work out so hard?" I tell 'em "I'm trying to attract a mate". When they say "But you're already married", I say "Yeah - that's the mate that I'm trying to attract".

Well, now, I can see that, if I wanna keep Ethel's attention, not only will my fitness work have to increase exponentially, I'm also gonna have to do some serious tanning. And join the Hair Club for Men. And get a Scottsdale cosmetic dentist.

Or maybe I'll just buy some Old Spice.

A Boy And His Dog

2010-03-10T19:05:00Z

Now that we're got a place up here at 9000 feet, it was time to bring Maia the Malamutt up into the snow.

For the first two days here, Maia oscillated between ecstatic jumping around and laying down and breathing - it takes a while to get used to this elevation. But, after a few days Ethel decided that it was time to take Maia snowshoeing (well, we'd wear the snowshoes - Maia doesn't really need them, although she did do a bit of postholing).

This is one happy dog : ) This is what she was born for - bounding around in deep snow. True, she was also built for pulling heavy things through deep snow - but let's not remind her about that, as the only "heavy thing" that she might be pulling through deep snow these days would be Pucketts, and we'd rather pull ourselves along, thankyouverymuch.

Maia will go out in front of the condo and just lay down in the snow, maximizing the contact between her minimally-fur-coated belly area and the frozen ground. This leaves me wondering if Malamutes are actually native to this planet, or if the immigrated from Pluto. If so, then they were the dominant life form on that planet, because This. Is. One. Smart. Dog. (except for her choice of family, that is - if she had known that we were going to leave Park City for Phoenix, then she would never had nuzzled up to me that day in the Salt Lake animal shelter; but, then, had I known that I was going to leave PC for Arizona, I wouldn't have).

Silas is coming up on Friday - next week is GCC's Spring Break - so we should have a condo full of Pucketts for a while. I'm not sure that this place is big enough for that many folks - so if it gets too crowded, I'll just send Silas out to walk Maia. Silas takes ten or twelve walks a day anyway - at this elevation, it'll take a lot longer to walk anywhere at all.

It's taking me a long time to do my runs - this week, I'm "supposed" to be back up to 40 miles/week, and I'm on track for that, but I am very tired. Last night, I was tired in my dreams - when I woke up this morning, I was still tired. 40 miles at 9000 feet, plus a few days of lifting, and skiing every day (today was day 37 out of a planned 50) is not easy to do when you're 51 years old.

Come to think of it, it wasn't easy to do when I was 45 years old, living in PC, and that was at 7000 feet elevation (the difference between oxygen levels at 7000 feet and at 9000 feet is much sharper than the difference between sea level and 2000 feet - in the same way that the difference between "bad" and "worse" is much sharper than the difference between "good" and "better" (reference? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?)

Speaking of that last reference - Hey Silas! When you come up on Friday, please bring "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"; you've read it, and so has your mother, but I haven't gotten to reread it yet. Oh, and bring up the boxed set of Warren Miller DVDs, too, please. Oh, and a couple of bags of the Starbucks coffee in the pantry. Oh, and bring the mail - real mail, not Albertson's flyers. And the new voltmeter, too - I need to change out these thermostats.

Electric Light, Almost

2010-03-09T14:02:00Z

We're back up at the condo, at Cascade Village, at Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort.

(that's a lot of stuff to say to say where we are. From now on, I'll say "Purgatory" to mean the ski hill, "Cascade" to mean the condo, and "Durango" to mean the town)

There are a lot of things about the condo that we just love, but - as always - it's the things that you don't like that get your attention.

Here's something that I don't like.

A long time ago, a fellow named Edison spent a lot of time in his laboratory finding a filament that would produce light when you pushed an electric current through it. He called this invention the "Electric Light Bulb" and it changed the world.

Now, technology has produced a new breakthrough - we now have filaments that will produce light when you push an electric current through them - after five minutes or so!!! Yes, we've improved upon Mr. Edison's invention by creating light bulbs that not only produce electric light, they also cause the growth of the virtue of patience in the user!

You turn these lights on, and they sorta glow dimly for a few minutes, and then, after a while, they actually turn on.
We've got a condo with WiFi, internet phone, we watch Buffy in DVD surround sound on a 40" LCD screen, but we don't actually have Edison-level technology in electric lighting. We have to turn the lights on and wait for them to warm up.

There's a reason that these lights don't come on - it's because they are (supposedly) eco-friendly. Somehow or other, having lights that wait to turn on is more energy-efficient than having lights that come on immediately. (I'm not even going to address the chemical makeup of these non-light bulbs, which I understand is supposed to be hazardous to living things on the same level as toxic waste or old nuclear-reactor core rods). We turn on the lights and wait for them to come on because we are thus being "friendly to the planet".

Of course, there's an easy fix for this - replace these new, eco-friendly non-lights with actual light bulbs. And I intend to do that, just as soon as I've run 40 miles this week and skiied every day and made five meetings.

What I mean is, that I've overextended my schedule. So, when I walk into a dark room at 6 AM and need to grab my stuff to load up my gym bag, and I turn on the light, and the lights don't actually come on bright enough to see what I'm doing, then I get a lot less eco-friendly.

And the end result is that I actually turn on the lights, leave the room, go do something else in some other room while the lights are coming on - and, of course, this distracts me from my original task, so now the lights are on for a half an hour or so, before I walk back into the room and do what takes thirty seconds to do. This is called "saving electricity" - of course, it gets me yelled at by my Precious Soulmate for "leaving the lights on" - at which time, I have to say "No, I didn't leave the LIGHTS on - I left the DARKS on".

That's it - after a century of light, we've achieved Electric Dark.

Clunky, Chunky Furniture

2010-03-04T21:46:00Z

I once heard an alcoholic addict compulsive overeater refer to himself as a "chunky drunky junky".

Our new Mexican furniture is chunky and clunky - and we LIKE it that way.

It's "new" Mexican furniture, not New Mexican furniture. It's also NEW because it is "new", but it doesn't LOOK new - like our new fence (that we're still waiting on) that is coming pre-rusted, this "new" furniture is coming pre-faded and "distressed". Sort of like buying jeans pre-faded and torn, and Vermonters buying their Subarus pre-dented and rusted.

(When I told Floyd that we were getting this Mexican furniture because "I like things that are old and clunky and rusted", he said "just like Ethel Puckett, huh?" Floyd hasn't been seen since.)

Here's the dresser -

(that picture on top - that looks like a smiling baby Buddha - is Silas in his baptismal gown : )

This is the armoire - although that's a French word, so is it still an armoire, or is there a Mexican word for this?

....and the coffee table (I'm pretty sure that clunky Mexicans drink coffee)

That's all for now - we have to run out the door and jump in the car and drive to Purgatory. More later.

The Hills Are Alive

2010-03-03T17:34:00Z

March is a beautiful month in Arizona, especially when we get a lot of spring rains.

This is the Circle Mountain neighborhood, as seen from one of the nearby hills.

I stopped off yesterday to take this picture, on the way home from a noon meeting. I'm not at a noon meeting now, because Silas has Ethel's car (taking Maia to the groomer to get a haircut) so Ethel has my car, and when I tried to crank up the motorcycle, the battery was dead.

That's not entirely true - when I first cranked up the motorcycle, it cranked, but it was running cold, and when I tried to rev up the engine, it died - and then it wouldn't crank again; not enough battery.

So I'm not at a noon meeting, on this gorgeous spring day - I'm sitting here working through lunch. That's not entirely a bad thing - there's plenty of work that I can do. And it's not like I'm needed at that noon meeting. I'm starting to get the idea that I am SUCH a dinosaur that even the dinosaurs don't understand me.

Yesterday an oldtimer explained that he doesn't pray for patience, because he finds that uncomfortable circumstances happen when he does that. I pointed out that the Big Book does, indeed, say that we are to ask in our morning meditation that our Creator shows us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.

He spoke again (not normal in this meeting) to point out that he'd been sober for 35 years, and that the people who told him to do it that way are still sober (back in New York, I believe) and that's the way that he does it. The fact that the Big Book says that we ARE to ask for patience doesn't matter to him - he has his own way of doing things.

I'm not a newbie by any means; but I reckon that I'm one of those guys who is busy trying to find his way to a better way - closer to the Big Book's instructions - than I am currently; this guy obviously thinks "that's what they told me when I got here, I'm sticking with that".

There's a definition question: Does that make me more liberal than he is (since I will toss out what folks told me when I got here in favor of what I later learned in the Big Book), or more conservative than he is (since the Big Book existed before I got here, and before the folks whom I listened to got here)? The idea that I might be less conservative than somebody else - about anything at all - bothers me. I'm an emotional conservative.

But the sun is still shining out there, and I'm not riding on my motorcycle. We were planning on heading back up to Purgatory tonight, but now it looks like that will have to wait until tomorrow, as there's just too much to get done right now.

There's also still a hole in the backyard - unchanged since December - and still no fence around the yard - unchanged since creation. Permits are holding up the fencing and pool construction. Progress has ground to a halt. I actually had the first half of a solar-powered pool heater installed back in December so that, when the pool got built, we would be able to warm up the water fast enough to start swimming in March. However, it turns out that we won't be able to start swimming in March unless we can warm it up faster than the speed of light, causing time to flow backwards.

A Tale of Two Babies

2010-03-02T23:38:00Z

Here are my two grandsons -

Sam, who lives in Alabama, and is the son of my middle son, Andrew:

...and this is the Ugly Baby himself, Jackson, son of my eldest, Floyd/David:

Sam is a year and two months older - and, as you can tell, much better groomed.

I've never seen Sam in person - we went home two years ago for his birth, but Sam refused to cooperate, and stayed put until about ten days after we left. I was there when Jackson popped out, and I've seen him his whole life.

If I didn't have kids - or grandkids - I might think that the difference in having spent time with them would mean something with respect to the way that I feel about the little fellers. But, since I have kids, it doesn't surprise me a bit that I have just as much investment - emotionally - in seeing Sam do well as I do in watching little Jackson.

I also have two granddaughters that I haven't seen in four or five years - and I have the same sets of feelings about them.

When I get well - really well - then I'll be able to feel the same way about you, or about the guy at the corner store, or about Osama Ben Ladin, as I do about Jackson or Sam. But, for now, I admit to being tied (somewhat) to the demands of my genome.

Dahlin, I Love You, But Gimme Park Avenue

2010-03-01T23:03:00Z

My father in law, Bud, was about as OCD as you can get when it comes to taking care of his automobiles.

He rode around Hartford City and environs in his Olds Silhouette van, but he kept this 1993 Park Avenue in his garage and only used it enough to keep it in shape:

This car is completely loaded - leather and wood interior, power EVERYTHING, plus such touches as a separate climate control for the passenger side and double visors I.

What your seeing is this car after it has been driven around in snow and slush for several days - it usually doesn't have any smudge or smear on that perfect pearl finish. But we were having it shipped to my mother in Alabama, and we were supposed to get it down to less than 1/4 tank of gas before putting it on the transport. Besides, driving this car is a pleasure!

...well, it was a pleasure for Ethel and I, but my mother -all 4'11" of her - is totally freaked out by this car. She says that it's way too big for her to drive; my brother, on the scene in Alabama, thinks that she may have an additional fear that she won't be able to get it into her garage.

Well, that's a fine how-do-you-do!...we shipped it down to her because her old car was giving her trouble. Now we're not sure what to do - wait and let her get used to driving it? wait until her old car dies and she HAS to drive it? Sell it and buy snowmobiles for the condo?...decisions, decisions.

It'd be a nice car to drive around in Phoenix, which is the Lady Of Old People Drivers - if I were ten years older, I'd keep this car for myself. It's a land yacht - you turn a corner, and then wait a while for the trunk to turn the corner too. The sort of car that old guys drive to say "Yep, I'm an old guy".

This morning, I was driving my BMW Z3, which is the kind of car that old guys drive to say "Nope,I'm not an old guy yet". It was almost sunrise, and I was driving along a country road between my house and the Carefree Highway (yes, the Carefree Highway that Gordon Lightfoot was singing about. I've been driving up and down that highway for five years now, and I have yet to meet the girl named Anne, although I wouldn't be able to recall her face anyway) and this guy in a pickup truck actually ran a stop sign to pull out onto the road that I was on, and then immediately slowed down.

Hmmm...okay. I didn't even get upset - I just started clicking my dimmer switch to tell him that I was going to pass him. He didn't seem to like this - he actually swerved over into the oncoming lane (the one that I was going to pass in) and then thought better of it, pulled back into his lane, and then made a hand gesture that indicated his displeasure.

I found myself laughing maniacally - what was he mad about? Did he want to pull out onto the road, drive slow, and NOT get passed? Did he not like it that I was signalling my intention to pass by blinking my lights? Was there something else going on with him, that both caused him to run the stop sign, and get mad at me about it?

Well, I found out that I was laughing too hard too long, which meant that I was upset about something...and I started listening to my thoughts. My brain was having a conversation with the guy in the truck, even though he was by this time quite a ways behind me, and he wasn't involved.

The conversation in my head (whenever I'm having a conversation in my head with somebody who isn't there, then the incident has turned into a resentment, and thus I called my sponsor to drop a 10th Step) started out with normal traffic blaming phrases that folks would always have with folks who aren't driving the way that they want them to drive (it's one of the curious facts of living in Phoenix that everybody will tell you that Phoenix is full of crazy drivers - but, if everybody thinks that, then who are the crazy drivers? Obviously, the crazy drivers are the ones who don't drive the way that the person speaking wishes that they would drive) - gee-why-did-you-pull-out-there-and-go-so-slow-you-should-have-waited-didn't-you-see-me-coming type of stuff.

But then I realized that, as the conversation in my head continued, it wasn't just who's-driving-which-way type comments - it was actualy more of a conversation about which of us was the better person; which of us deserved to have a spot on the planet. This left me wondering if maybe - just maybe - that's what most arguments are about, after all.

Of course, this would never have happened had I been driving the Park Avenue, since this guy was an older guy, and had he seen that Park Avenue coming down the street, he would have shielded his face and cringed behind his raised hands. I know I would have done so.

Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Any More

2010-02-26T15:51:00Z

So - you think you're patriotic with your "America - Love It Or Leave It" tattoo and your "These Colors Don't Run" bumper sticker?

Compared to the folks in central Indiana, you're a commie atheist pinko:

That's right - that's Miss Liberty out there on the front lawn of this home between Upland and Roll (that's "Roll" as in "rhymes with ball", not "Roll" as in "Roll Tide"), Indiana. Patriotism is alive and well in America's Heartland.

Row after row of frozen cornfields, day after day without sunshine, bitter biting winds and a lot of really nice corn-fed folks, and no HOAs to say "No, you can't have a Statue of Liberty in your front yard" - that's Indiana. I understand that they also play basketball.

We've met some new friends here - the kind that you want to take with you when you go. However, "go" is exactly what we're going to do - every time I step outside, I miss Arizona. I miss Colorado, as well - in Colorado, it snows, but it's not cold, and the winds don't blow like this. Here, it's been snowing every day for the last eight days, and it's stayed below freezing - but you see how the lawn doesn't have any snow on it? It's a freak of nature, I tell you...maybe it hasn't actually been snowing - maybe the snow fell a week ago, and it just blows around and hangs in the air...

Tomorrow morning, if all goes the way it is currently scheduled, we'll wake up in beautiful New River, AZ - it might be raining this weekend, but that's OK, because in New River, rain is enough of an oddity to be interesting. We'll turn on the fireplace and huddle up in the big leather chairs and pretend to be "cold" as a novelty, and then run around outside in shorts (it's been around 75F down there the whole time that we've been gone) and laugh and laugh and laugh.

(I say that - however, we're both really tired, Ethel much more so than I am. We might just sit inside our house and rest - I might watch some Buffies - and stay horizontal until life reasserts itself way down in our bones and causes us to stir about. I won't really know until I get up tomorrow)

The title of this post is also the name of a song by John Prine - he's a country singer. You can tell that because his last name actually has two syllables - it's pronounced "Pri-un" (I don't know how HE pronounces it - that's just the way that I heard it, growing up) I've been giving Ethel fits lately, as I woke up the other morning with "Sweet Revenge" by Prine in my head -

"I got kicked off of Noah's Ark
I turned my cheek to unkind remarks
There was two of everything, and one of me..."

...which is actually a description of the opening scene of Muppets From Space. I think I'll watch Muppets From Space when I get home.

(tap tap tap) - is this thing on?

2010-02-25T17:08:00Z

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned - it's been eight days since my last posting.

But I've been busy - we're here in Marion, IN, taking care of my father-in-laws effects and business affairs. He passed away last Thursday, and we've been dutiful children - jumped on a plane as soon as we could get one, been going through all of his stuff and situations as best we could, and now we've been through the funeral mass - the only thing left is the Interring of the Ashes, and that happens tomorrow afternoon in a cemetery in Greenfield, after which we'll jump on a plane for home.

I've also been trying to get my workouts done, at the YMCA in Hartford City, IN -

That empty dreadmill in the middle is mine - although, while I was taking this picture, a nice old lady tried to take it.

It's not often that I'm the youngest person in the cardio line. Nor am I normally the one in the best shape; but it's been that way at the YMCA. Even the young folks don't run as far or fast as I'm running....and it needs to be stated that I am not running very far, nor very fast.

In all honesty - no exaggeration - I'm in the worst shape that I have been in since I started keeping my running log in January of 1993. The combination - in series and in parallel - of the PF from last April, the hip dysfunction showing up this last summer, going back and forth to 9000 feet and skiing and then this trip - have left we with the lowest numbers in my log that I can recall seeing. And my speed is by far the slowest. I'm a mess.

And probably only half of the miles that I've logged here have been running miles - the other half would be elliptimiles. Just as vigorous, but not as much pounding. That's "good", in the sense that it doesn't bang me up as much, but "bad" in the sense that it doesn't prepare me for real running on the roads where I do get banged up.

But I'm still alive, and "where there's life, there's hope" - it's possible that I could get back into shape. I'm willing to try. Those folks in the picture above seem to be still trying, although maybe their definition of "back into shape" isn't the same as mine.

However, it should be said that being still alive is not an automatic asset; my father-in-law had lived two years longer than his wife, and he was in a hurry to join her. I think that I can understand that. Someday, assuming that Ethel continues her current policy of yeah-I'll-get-back-to-the-gym-later, it's possible that I'll live in a world without her, and that's not a world that I want to think about.

My legs are now tired and sore; I was going to go for a walk at lunchtime to loosen them up, but it's (yet again) 20F outside, windy and blowing snow. Not "snowing" like it does at the Love Grotto, but snowing the way it snows in Indiana - damp, chilling to the bone, never piling up much, blowing around like crazy. This is MISERABLE.

I am very, very ready to go home tomorrow.

Home For Another Week

2010-02-17T18:40:00Z

We're in Arizona, where I'm not running many miles uphill on this road towards Spud Mountain in the San Juans in Colorado:

Ever since I got back to the lowlands, I've been expecting some magic to happen such that I would be able to run again - say, the way that I was running a year ago, when I injured my heel while running repeats on the treadmill. But this hasn't happened - entropy never reverses itself. Once you're a pickle, you'll never again be a cucumber.

We're going to be staying in Arizona for another week, as KimPuckett¹ wants to visit her father back in Indiana. Bud is not well - he's definitely dealing with entropy in its worst form. He's 83 years old, and he's reached that point in his orbit where one thing isn't fixed by the time that something else goes wrong.

I'd like to put in my request here to NEVER be 83 years old.

I could have gone back to Durango without her - she could have flown out of Phoenix and into Durango for not much more money - but somehow the idea of being at the Love Grotto without her isn't very appealing. And I don't like the idea of driving up there without her, either.

Come to think of it, I'd like to put in my request here to NEVER be without Ethel for any extended period.

So I'll be at home with Silas and the dogs until Ethel gets back next Wednesday, at which point we'll head up to the Love Grotto at Purgatory (that'd be the LG@P : ) That's assuming that Bud is okay at that time - he's so sick now that we are pretty much putting everything on hold. I'm not even bringing Mom out from Alabama right now because we have no idea when we might have to suddenly drop everything and head to Indiana with a greater sense of urgency.

At least I'll get to run with my friends in Anthem - assuming that they are willing to run that slowly (I'm in the worst shape that I've been in since I started running - never have I been this much out of shape) And we're getting new bedroom furniture tomorrow, so I'll be able to get things organized in there.

But it also means that Silas and I will be in the house together, without Ethel as a buffer zone That's way too much testosterone in one place - it needs a blending of estrogen to keep it from being an explosive mixture. But, at the same time, I won't have Ethel around, so I might be more subdued that normal - for all I know, I won't even get off the couch. Silas might be able to run rampant through the house, making messes willy-nilly, and I may be unable to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, back at the motel - we've just found out that our "new" washer and dryer, that we bought still with the original wrapping and taping and documentation when we moved into the new house, actually DON'T HAVE SERIAL NUMBERS ON THEM, indicating that they might have been stolen; also, we found out that the short circuit, which resulted in a small fire in the wiring harness in the back of the dryer happened before, and was fixed with duct tape, which means that they weren't new, either.

So, while Ethel is gone, Silas and I might get to spend our quality time together, at the laundromat : )

¹Ethel's name is Ethel - but, in its native form, her name is KimPuckett- and, yes, that is one word, with two capitalized letters, like MacDonald or O'Henry.

It's All Gone

2010-02-16T21:49:00Z

On the way home from meeting today, I saw this burned-out mobile home on New River Road:

According to Ethel, this trailer was not burned yesterday.

Which means sometime - probably last night; it seems that fires happen a lot at night - these folks went from "warm, safe and happy in their home" to "standing outside in the cold looking at everything they own turn into smoke".

That's gotta be traumatic, indeed - going from "here I am, here's my couch, there's my books, there's my table, there's my Football Watching Device" to "oh, my God - it's on fire!" to "it's all gone...." - in just a few minutes.

Two nights ago, we had a "fire" in our house. It was the dryer - a small spot in the back of our (new - well, 1.5 year old) Whirlpool Cabrio dryer caught on fire. It freaked Ethel out - she tried to pick up the dryer and carry it outside. The only real result of this effort was that she messed up her knee, which she is supposed to be going easy on so that she can ski the bumps when we get back to Durango.

I put the fire out, and we're waiting to hear from an appliance guy who'll be looking at the dryer tomorrow. A friend who understands such things says that it may be a short....even if that fire had continued unabated, it would have burned out in a few minutes, and it would still have just cost us the trip to fix the dryer.

These folks lost everything in their home, and they lost their home. Now they are in some strange place, along with whatever possessions they managed to grab on their way out of the house.

I hope nobody was hurt. That's the sort of thing that situations like this make you realize - it's okay, if nobody got hurt. Stuff is really, really, just stuff. There are things that can be precious to us - until it's time to save a person, or save the thing.

Ethel and I have been gathering a lot of stuff lately - just buying the condo got us a lot of stuff. Suddenly, we have an entire household of extra stuff - suddenly, I have two kitchens, two living rooms, another bedroom and bathroom that just happen to be five hundred miles away.

I like my stuff. But I like Ethel and Silas more. And my dog. And even the other two dogs are more important than just stuff (okay, maybe Lucy the World's Dumbest Cocker Spaniel isn't worth, say, a good paperback novel - but the paperback novel won't be in pain if it burns, and Lucy would be, so I'd probably save her first).

And I'm grateful that I am not standing outside of my house, looking at it with a hole burned through the roof.

Back to Sea Level

2010-02-12T21:59:00Z

The snow in Durango has earned the degree of PhD - Piled Higher and Deeper.

Here's a pile about twelve feet high at the Peerless Tyre Store (and gas station) on main street.

On Sunday, we'll be leaving 9000 ft elevation at Purgatory, CO to return to New River, AZ.

We've been gone for three weeks this time - we're planning on staying in the Phoenix area for five days, then heading back up here for a few more weeks.

We've got a "goal" of 50 ski days for this year - currently we're at 30 days, so it looks like we're ahead of the curve. And now that we've got this little Love Grotto in the Sky, odds are good that we'll beat that.

But living at 9000 feet seems to be wearing me out - I have to take a little nap on the couch every day around noon. My resting heart rate has gone DOWN, though, since I was living down at 2300 ft elevation - that's not possible, of course. I suspect that it has more to do with my changed attitude at living in ski country than it has to do with the physiology of elevation.

My attitude has changed a lot since we got here. Instead of that feeling of "I'm missing it" that I was having in New River, now I'm quite content; the only real concern that I have now is that I have to live forever, so that I can keep skiing.

This morning Ethel rode up on the six-pack lift with a couple of skiiers; she's 83 and he's 86. They ski every day, from 9:00 till 11:00. I can see me doing that in thirty-five years. (They get to ski for free, too :)

But for now, I've got to get ready to head back down to New River.

Uni-Twice-ian

2010-02-11T20:24:00Z

Here's a view of Engineer Mountain from the parking lot here at the condo:

Engineer Mountain is sort of the closest way-up-above-treeline peak that can be seen from the base area around Purgatory - the Needles range and Spud Mountain are also visible on that side, but the Needles - while lovely - aren't nearly as tall, and Spud is a great looking mountain until you realize that it is named "Spud" and then it seems to lose some of its magnificence.

I said "view from the parking lot" because our condo is on the "cheap" side - our view is straight up a hillside of aspen and pine, which is called (in condo-rental parlance) the "no view" side. That is a downside to this condo - the corresponding upside is that this place is paid for : )

Most things have that sort of duality - a single attribute about something is good in one way, bad in another. Even bubonic plague is a good thing, if you're a plague baccillus.

Sometimes the words get turned around though, in ways such that the word no longer means what it originally meant.

Consider our locker room at the Durango Mountain Club - it's a very nice locker room. Nice cherry-wood lockers, clean fresh smell, what seems to be radiant heat coming up through the carpeted floors. It also has two changing rooms. That's the problem with the locker room - I can hang out with Ethel in the locker room, but I can't change in the locker room.

The reason that the locker room has changing rooms is because it is - okay? ready? - a unisex locker room. Thus, both men and women - indeed, whole families - use this locker room, and if folks need to change, they go into one of the changing rooms (which also have showers).

The problem here is that word - 'unisex'. It means "one sex" - like "unicycle" means "one wheel" and "united" means "as one" and "Unitarian" means "One Tarian".

But somehow, somewhere, "unisex" has come to mean "both sexes" - and there's no explanation, no acknowledgment of the obvious internal contradiction. The first usage I can think of was "unisex bathroom" - which again means "both sexes in one room".

So maybe the word should be "Unicameral locker room" - meaning ONE ROOM for both sexes, as opposed to "One sex". But that doesn't cover the fact that both sexes use the same room.

So maybe we should say "Bisexual locker room" - but that sounds like only those folks who are non-gender-specific in their affections would be allowed to use the locker room.

I would say "please suggest terms for the use of a locker room which allows both genders and in which nobody can change clothes" - but it wouldn't matter, as we've already put in place the use of a term which means the OPPOSITE that the words the term is made of mean.

Sort of like when folks say "I could care less...." - what they really mean is "I couldn't care less...." but they picked up the degenerate phrase somewhere along the way, and have no idea that what they are saying is the exact opposite of what they intend to say.

At this point, the loyal opposition would say "It doesn't matter what the words mean, so long as we all understand what they mean". This reminds me of the folks who studied Education at a certain Southern engineering school - I have a friend, very intelligent, who is a teacher who got her degree at that school, and she doesn't care about spelling or punctuation; as I understand it, that school subscribes to the old "if you can make yourself understood" lowest-common-denominator standard.

So the fact that the word "unisex" is being used to mean "anything but uni-sex" would just tickle those folks at that school.

But I must admit to a bit of literal intolerance - it bugs me every time I see it.

But I still use the locker room : )

Another Unutterably Gorgeous Day at Cascade Village

2010-02-10T21:39:00Z

This is the view from my slider this afternoon.

Me: It's snowing!
Ethel: Imagine that....

Just that quick, we can go from miraculous to moribund.

No, that's not fair - Ethel's not saying "Imagine that...." as in a sarcastic response to my amazement that it is snowing; it's more of an acknowledgment of the simple fact that, in February in the Rocky Mountains, it's just plain gonna snow. Pretty much at any time, it can snow.

It took a lot longer to go from moribund to miraculous; after four winters in Phoenix, it amazes me to look outside and see that it's snowing - and it won't even be on the news.

As we speak, I'm working (running a test) and Ethel's in downtown Durango - she tweaked her knee this last weekend, and I sent her to the doc. She'll be taking a couple of days off from skiing - ice, Ibu, cross-frictions massage.....I mean, she was at the doc. Now she's looking at furniture, because We Haven't Spent Enough Money This Year (two sets of season passes at Purgatory and Sunrise, a condo, skiing at Wolf Creek, travel - sheesh)

We've got a stew on the stove and a fire in the fireplace; I'm going to head over in a while and get into the hot tub.

And did I mention that it's snowing? :)

Imogene-ation

2010-02-09T20:50:00Z

This is a picture, garnered off the Web, of Imogene Pass:

It is obvious that I haven't taken that picture, as I got here to the San Juan Mountains two weeks ago, and everything above 6000 feet has been covered in snow the whole time; Imogene is at elevation 13,120 ft, which is called "up there" in Coloradan.

Imogene (pronounced "EYE-mo-gene", which apparently surprises nobody but me; I look at that word and say "IH-mo-gene") Pass is the summit of a 17.1 mile race that takes place in September called (to no one's surprise) the Imogene Pass Run; it starts in Ouray at 7810 feet and goes up and over the above-illustrated pass. That is a 4,310 foot elevation gain. It then goes down to Telluride, at 8820 feet.

Long-time readers of this blog (both of them) will remember that, back in August of Ought and Four, I did what I then considered to be the dumbest thing that I'd ever done; the Pikes Peak Ascent, which has a 7,810 foot gain in elevation. I can safely say that, since that time, I've done a lot of things that were a lot dumber than that.

Well, a few days ago, I was talking to a bartender at the DMC (Durango Mountain Club) and he mentioned having done the PP Ascent, and the Round Trip - that's going up the mountain, then coming back down - and then, while gasping for breath while doing 12 minute miles in the parking lots of Cascade Village here at 8830 feet outside of my condo, it has occurred to me - "maybe I should do the Imogene Pass run this year".

No, I don't have any explanation for this. It's a lot like some of my marriages - they just seemed like good ideas at the time.

I will probably be saved from my folly by the simple fact of numbers - there are a lot of other people who are in better shape than I am who will beat me to the punch in signing up for the race on June 1st. And there are also a lot of folks who are just as dumb as I am, but they don't have my early-to-bed habits, so they will stay up late on May 31st to sign up at midnight (assuming that that's when the race opens up).

So this is not a blogpost saying "I'm gonna run the Imogene Pass Run" - no, this is a blogpost saying "I'm dumb enough to consider running the Imogene Pass Run after two weeks at high elevation".

Run DMC

2010-02-08T19:32:00Z

Yesterday we joined the Durango Mountain Club, which is a nice place to sit when you're tool tired to ski. Here's Ethel, sitting by the fireplace with an original Paul Folwell over the fireplace -

-

Now, instead of loading up everything and taking it to the ski hill and parking and making our way to the chairlift, now we pull up Ethel's truck and the valet (with a nametag that says "Rudy Valet") parks it for us; we walk into the club and I run on the dreadmill and Ethel does whatever she does (I suspect that it'll be ellipticating and lifting, but Ethel doesn't have any sneakers here at the hill, so this morning she sat upstairs in the clubroom and logged in and worked for a while).

After working out, we go into the locker room and change, then pick up the skis from the ski valet - the boots have been on the warmer for a while, and the skis are freshly tuned. As we head upstairs (via the club elevator) to the chairlift level, we go through the clubroom and get the continental breakfast and fresh-brewed Starbucks.

Then we walk right out to the lift, ski up and ski on, and get in some runs; when we finish, we hop in the spa and let the bubbles take away the soreness while fresh snow falls on my bald spot.

...in 1993, after our first trip to Purgatory, and my first ever ski season (in addition to the nine days at Purg, I skiied about ten days in North Carolina and a couple of weekends at Snowshoe in West Virgina) I decided that I was going to go on a trip by myself, so that I wouldn't have to wait for anybody else - I could ski all that I wanted.

I drove up to West Virginia in Ethel's Dodge Sundance hatchback, with the backseats that laid down so that I could sleep in the back in a sleeping bag and eat bagels and cream cheese out of a cooler. This is not the same as a day at Durango Mountain Club.

When I got to Snowshoe,I spent the first night in the car; everything was fine. I ate bagels and cream cheese out of the cooler. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

I had a good day of skiing, and then, that night, a storm came up, and the car started rocking back and forth in the wind - it really, really started snowing hard. (for those of you playing along, this was the weekend of the Storm of the Century - and those folks in DC think that they just got some snow. Folks have no memories). I got out of the car and started looking for a hotel, but there wasn't anything available in my price range - so I spent much of the night wandering around in a blizzard, looking for lodging. My car got stuck in a snowdrift. This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

Eventually I saw another car that was stuck in a parking lot - I helped these guys move the car into a safe place. They asked me what I was doing out in that weather - I told 'em. They invited me to stay in their hotel room.

I spent the next three nights sleeping on the floor of a hotel room with five snowboarders, trying to read Hunt For Red October while they were watching a Beevis and Butthead marathon on MTV, and a female boarder (a "shred betty", in the parlance of the day) kept wondering why I would be reading that book - did I like the movie? Did I like Boat Movies? - and skiing during the day through stinging snow that was building up faster than they could groom it, and deeper than I could ski it.

This is not the same as a day at the Durango Mountain Club.

This morning, during breakfast, while sitting there eating my toasted bagel and looking up at the Needles Mountains from my breakfast table, I asked God to please not let me take this for granted.

More Troubles Than A Woodpecker With Chapped Lips

2010-02-04T22:19:00Z

The day really started out nice.

Got up just after 5, took some nice quiet time, got started working just after 6, got out of here around 9 and skied for an hour and a half - it was a beautiful day.

Here's Ethel, poised between Engineer Mountain on the right and That Mountain That Looks Sorta Like A Mirror Image Of Engineer Mountain, But Not Exactly, on the left:

It was a nice morning of skiing - we got back to the condo and got back to work.

And then - it happened.

Some folks showed up to help us get the router in our condo configured. There was a problem, since we have the SpeedStream modem, and the Linksys ATA router for the phone, and our Belkin wireless router - when we ran in a secure configuration, I couldn't get my VPN to work.

So they fixed that - got the phone to work, got the wireless protocol up, everything hunky-dory.

Except - my VPN wouldn't work.

And it still won't work. I've now tried it going through the air card, and I've even installed my VPN on another laptop to see if it would work - nothing doing.

I'm about to head down to Durango to see if it works there, at some wireless hot spot - if it does, then I'm gonna...I'm gonna...well, there's really nothing that I can do, is there? Except give up and admit that I going to have to

a) quit work, since I can't work remotely. This will mean that we'll lose the house in New River - well, since they haven't finished the pool, that's not big loss. Silas can move in with his brother or his cousins and finish school

OR

b) stop the purchase of the condo, since I can't work remotely.

I'm sure that there are other options - right now, though, I don't know what they are.

(UPDATE - thanks to a compentent useradmin at GoDaddy, I'm now back online via my VPN, so we can go ahead and buy the condo AND I can keep my job in Scottsdale. Thanks, Trudy!)

Lower Columbine

2010-02-03T22:15:00Z

Today was an overcast day at Purgatory - there's supposed to be snow moving in, and it certainly looks like it:

That yellow speck is Ethel, heading down to the bottom of the run to walk over to the parking lot. This part of the ski hill is called Columbine - when it was named, "Columbine" still meant "mountain flower", not "seminal high-school-killing-spree".

We're going ahead with the purchase of the Love Grotto (even though my friend Damon pointed out that it might not be entirely mature, rational and self-restraining - let's face it. Damon already has a house in ski country, so maybe - just maybe - he's not acting in my best interests. As Ahnald said in "Pumping Iron" - 'Everybody is asking me for advices, but maybe I don't give them the best advices'...) - at any rate, we're getting ready to buy this place. And so far today this has involved phone calls with

* the realtor - emptying out the contents of the Owner's Closet for the previous owners

* Internet dude - this condo complex is at 9000 feet, and so we don't get regular cable or DSL internet; it has three T1 lines dedicated to internet, but our portion isn't big enough for both of us to do everything that we want to do for work (we telecommute) so he's going to come out and help us repartition it - I told him "I need more cowbell!"

* Home theater installers - we want a big screen over the fireplace, and we want surround sound, and we'd like to get wired Cat5 all over the house - no matter how fast wireless is, wired is always faster.

* Custom furniture makers - we want Murphy Desks in the living and bedrooms so that we can each keep our telecommute stuff up and out of the way when other folks rent this place to ski (I wanted a Murphy Desk over the jacuzzi, but Ethel just looked at me that way when I mentioned it. She's so mean and selfish).

Now we get more work down, after which I've got to get ready to leave for the chiropractor's office again - she worked wonders on me yesterday, and now she hands me off to Doctor Frank (that sounds sorta ominous) so he can crack my back for a while. Then Ethel and I are going to a meeting in town....

...after she gets through looking at FireplaceMantels.com, that is - see, our fireplace doesn't have a mantel. We have to have a mantel to keep the heat off of the largescreen TV (there may be some other reason, but I have no idea what it is. I'm sure that it's not to put pictures of the Ugly Baby, especially since we don't have any recent ones, not that we're bitter).

Business Before Pleasure, or Soon Thereafter

2010-02-02T21:16:00Z

Here is the current situation on the dining table of the Love Grotto:

Ethel and I are sharing the table working, while supper is cooking on the stove.

We started working quite early this morning, and broke out at 9-10:30 to see how many runs we could get in on the front side of Purgatory, then went back to work. It was basically taking a long & early lunch, allowing us to get in a "day" of skiing while still getting in a full day at work.

As it happens, trying to ski as much as you can is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; however, trying to ski as many BUMP RUNS as you can, at an advanced age, might not be nearly so reasonable, which is why I'll be taking some time off this afternoon to go see a doctor.

I was in a field of moguls so large that each of them had their own zip code, and suddenly the world flew out from under me, I clicked out of both bindings, and my back and head hit the bump behind me so loud that I heard my neck crunching. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet - unfortunately, I wasn't wearing a neck brace.

But I might be wearing one tomorrow.

Now I've had a pain pill AND a muscle relaxant, and I am wandering around with an inappropriate sense of well-being (my sponsor told me not to sign any condo-buying papers whilst under the influence) - it's difficult to remember what I'm doing at any given moment, so I am continually writing notes to myself or my boss (sort of like Memento, but without the tatoos).

We've got plans to get actual desks in here instead of using this table; since it's a small condo, though, we may have those desk custom-made into wall units. Then we could just fold 'em up wiith the monitors & keyboards inside, and lock 'em up when we rent the condo out. Ethel has that action item - find out who can build us a desk unit.

I have the action item of "find out who can mount a 40" LCD TV over the fireplace (assuming that that won't hurt the TV) and install surround sound". If this were Phoenix, it wouldn't be an issue. Since this is 9000' high in the Rocky Mountains, the options get a bit thin. There is no Best Buy with a Geek Squad anywhere within shouting distance.

I reckon I gotta go now - Ethel must be planning on taking me to the doctor. She's even putting on shoes. That doesn't happen every day, you know.