my Christmas break

Looking back at my blog posts the past couple months I can see they’ve probably been even more boring than usual.  Back in November, there was a bunch of political/election stuff, and then there’s been a bunch of stuff related to my upcoming ear surgery.  But not much else.  So let me try to fix that.

At the moment, Beth and I are up in the Rocky Mountains not far from Marble, Colorado.  My parents retired to a log house up here several years ago, and we decided to spend Christmas with them this year.  We drove here from Broomfield on Wednesday through some fairly snowy conditions.  Thursday was Christmas, of course.  In the morning we exchanged gifts, and then some of Mom’s friends came over and we had a nice Christmas dinner of turkey, ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, green salad, rolls, etc.  They brought a Cranium game with them and we played that for a while and then spent the evening playing with all our new toys and stuff.

Friday the 26th, we braved the blizzard to go to Carbondale.  I needed to go to the post office to mail my old MacBook Pro that I sold on eBay.  And then we went to one of the few fancy restaurants in Carbondale.  It was pretty good food.  I was hoping to go hang out at the coffee shop while Beth and Mom went shopping.  But the sold coffee shop in the whole town closed at 1 PM.  So after the ladies hit one antiques store, we just went to the grocery store and then home.  That evening, my parents went to go pick up my aunt Carol and two of her grandkids, while Beth and I stayed warm and read.

This morning, after a breakfast of French toast, we went sledding in the driveway.  The snowdrifts up here are around 6 to 8 feet deep now, and the driveway’s pretty packed.  On each side of the driveway, there’s a berm of snow about 4 feet high.  So one of the first things I did was carve out the snow “cliff” near the bottom of the run into kind of an embankment.  So then the plastic disk type sleds would go up onto the bank and then be able to continue on, rather than just crashing and stopping there.  Once that started working pretty well, I carved a new trail off the side of the hill.  It was pretty much a 70 degree drop for about 20 feet onto the driveway.  Everyone thought I was crazy, but once I carved out the path, my cousins tried it and loved it.

Later today, there are a couple options.  Beth and Mom may go to Basalt to do some shopping.  And I want to take the rare opportunity of having Dad and his one sister, Carol, in the same place at the same time.  You see, I’m working on a documentary about their parents.  I’ve interviewed both of them separately, but never together.  And I think the conversation will be much more lively with both of them playing off each other.

Tomorrow, we pack up and then drive to Hot Sulphur Springs.  We’re going to check into the Riverside Hotel, and probably have supper there (if not there, then the Parshall Inn).  Then we get to go soak in the hot springs a while.  Monday morning, we’ll drive home by way of Grand Lake and hit our favorite breakfast place, the Fat Cat.  I figure the roads are going to be packed Sunday night with all the ski traffic plus Christmas traffic trying to get home to Denver.  But we’ll be going home Monday, and I’m hoping we’ll really miss most of the traffic.

Some of my Christmas gifts:

• “Warcraft III”
• a “mix tape” CD of my brother’s favorite songs
• “A Guide to Prehistoric Astronomy of the Southwest”
• a cool new wool cap which I wore today sledding
• candy
• “When We Left the Earth – The NASA Missions” on Blu-Ray