Ski Trip
Chris and I just got back from our annual ski trip. Every year, we get together with friends from college and some family to go skiing/snowboarding. So far, we’ve kept it to the poconos since most of our friends live near there. We’ve thought of branching out to Vermont or Colorado, but I think it would be more expensive for everyone and I’m a bit nervous it would be a lot harder than what I’m used to (bunny hills there being like blue squares here or something). Anyway, this was our biggest group yet, with 9 of us going to Elk Mountain near Scranton, PA.
It was a lot of fun, despite the non-ideal weather. We typically go for a noon to close ticket (though I’m not sure we’ve ever stayed the full time) and most of us ski, except for Chris and Trapper, who snowboard. I’ve tried snowboarding and I just can’t quite get the hang of it. I can make it down a bunny hill, but not much else. I just feel very unstable with both of my feet locked into one board. The weather was warm (duh, it’s March, I guess) and it rained part of the time, but it didn’t seem to be too much of a hassle. My neck got kinda wet and cold, but otherwise I was pretty hot in my ski attire, depite wearing fewer layers than usual. My hair also looked like crap pretty soon after getting there and I forgot my hair ties. I did find one at the bottom of my purse, but it was all stretched out, so I had to keep fixing my ponytail. The weather also lead to pretty slushy conditions, with a few fairly deep puddles here and there. Surprisingy, under some of the slush was a good amount of ice, too, so that was a bit difficult to deal with. Mostly, though, we had a lot of fun. I took some pictures on my phone (sorry for the quality, I wasn’t about to bring my camera, since I knew there was a good chance I’d fall – which I did. Dropping my phone in the snow during one fall. It’s ok.) :
So, you may notice that this picture looks a bit odd. I couldn't get everyone into the one shot, so I had to resort to some copying and pasting. They really all were there though! Joe G was elsewhere at the time this was taken, so he's the only one missing.
Me after I fell trying to get everyone into that first picture. For the record, I fell 2 other times that day, once standing at the bottom of the mountain (just lost my balance) and the other was pretty spectacular, with me sliding and spinning around down the mountain for a good distance.
Chris getting ready to go down the hill. Notice the huge slushy area behind him.
The view from the mountain. Not the top, but still a nice view. I didn't dare take a shot from the top (we all see what trying to get a better shot did for me with that group shot - with my luck I would have ended up falling down a black diamond)
Anyway, we headed back to the hotel once it got dark and, after everyone showered, we headed off to Coopers, a seafood restaurant in Scranton with a large beer selection. I had a Paulaner Hefe-Weizen, which was pretty good, along with my seafood crepes, which were really tasty, but super-rich, so I only got through about half of it. After dinner, we were all thoroughly pooped, so instead of our typical stay-up-and-chat for hours, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep immediately. We finished out the weekend with breakfast together at Waffle House on Sunday. It was a fun time. A few of us are thinking of possibly adding/substituting a different sort of trip next year, maybe a beach trip or an amusement park trip, but we’ll see.
Next trip is in 2 days! This is a busy month!
Snow
Ok, I’ve officially had it with snow. According to people who have lived in this area for a long time, it has never snowed here in March. And yet, we got a few inches over the weekend. At first it was kind of pretty, but around 8 pm, our power went out. And stayed out until around noon the next day, at which point we noticed that our bedroom had gotten down to a chilly 49 degrees. Which we had to sleep in the night before. Ugh, it was awful. Falling asleep wasn’t too bad, but I woke up around 5 am, I think, freezing. We both had on our warmest clothes (I think Chris also slept in his slippers) and the two of us, plus Buffy, huddled close all night. Also, Chris and I had been running a dungeon in World of Warcraft when the power went out, which was kind of annoying to have been interrupted (it was reset the next day when we got back on, with the two of us deposited at the entrance).
But that’s not all! The roads aren’t salted or cleared here, presumably because the state of South Carolina probably owns one snowplow, so despite some guy driving back and forth on our street Sunday night in an effort to clear out the snow, the roads were really icy on Monday, so Chris decided to stay home. He later found out quite a lot of people from his work did the same. By Tuesday, the roads were fine, since the temperatures were back up, and on my way out to go grocery shopping, I noticed the state of our front garden. <sigh> It was bad. We had a few flowers coming up prior to the storm, which are now dead, but the worst was the big bushes. We have 4 large bushes in our front garden which are pretty much the only consistent growth up there (we have some things that grow and have to be cut back seasonally also) and the only things that make it look like we are purposely trying to grow anything up there. Only one was completely undamaged. The two largest hedges in the back row were nearly flattened with the weight of the snow and the more fragile bush between the two hedges had a sizeable back branch crack. I brushed off the snow and today the hedges look slightly better, so maybe they just need a few days to regain their shape (I hope), but I think I still need to cut off any broken branches, which may make them look holey or sparse. Does anyone have any tips on how to tend to them? I’ve read mixed things ranging from waiting to see if it fixes itself to completely pruning branches back (but only certain hedges and bushes can have this done because some won’t grow back at all if you prune them back too much apparently. And I don’t know what we have. All I know is that the bush that isn’t damaged is an azalea, which doesn’t help.). As a side note, should evergreen hedges be brownish on the inside layers or is that a sign of something wrong with them?
Snow in the South
Well, it snowed. If you can call it that. Yesterday, I visited the dentist to inquire about something they sent me in the mail and the receptionist informed me that we were expecting 1-4 inches of snow and asked me if I was looking forward to it. She said she was excited and that she had to go to the grocery store for bread and milk (Really? People really do this?? Especially for 1-4 inches of snow??). I said no, that I had moved from New Jersey and was happy to be in a place that doesn’t normally get snow, but that I found last year’s “snow” funny because of how everyone overreacted. (Now, as an aside, I do enjoy seeing snow, like, once a year. It is pretty when it’s not slushy and brown on the side of the road. But my car doesn’t handle it well and I hate how cold snow is.) I heard a chuckle behind me, and the other guy in the waiting room said that he was from Michigan and that he also found it funny that places here completely shut down for a dusting.
As I was watching Craig Ferguson last night, I saw lots of school closing messages, even though it wasn’t until the end of the show that I finally saw that it was snowing outside (I had been checking occasionally up to then, seeing nothing). I grumbled. When I woke up this morning, this is what I found on our front lawn:
"Snow"
I did see the kids on our street heading to the bus stop, so it seems at least my area didn’t cancel school for this “snow”. Chris did mention that he saw an accident on the way to work because someone went too fast over an icy bridge. That’s actually kind of the opposite kind of inappropriate snow driving than I observed last year. Last year, everyone drove about 10 miles an hour because “OMG! Snow is scary!!” Anyway, it’s pretty much gone already and I’m hoping there will be no more to come! I will see my yearly snow in March on our annual ski trip and that will be enough.
