Winter Vacation

I have been attempting to craft some witty and concise recounting of our family's sojourn to the North Country of New Hamster for almost a week. I am now admitting defeat in that endeavor. What you're going to get is a random list of stuff relating to that week. Here it is ⇓ Deal with it.

♦ One of the really nice presents I got for Christmas was a new hand-held video recorder that records to a memory card or directly to a DVD disk. It also takes phenomenal still photos. In the rush to leave home for the airport, I left it sitting on the kitchen counter. All our pictures were taken either on my cell phone or on disposable cameras. I also forgot my sunglasses, although I really didn't need them until we got back home.

♦ As I'm the only one in our family with any real experience driving in snowy/icy conditions, I got to do all the driving. And there were a LOT of snowy/icy conditions. Pretty much ALL. THE. TIME. What fun! On a positive note, however, when we reached our destination, there was a shuttle van - driven by someone other than me! - that ran between hotels and ski areas and bars other facilities.

♦ I'm glad to see that my faith in humanity has not been in vain: Grandma Stitters drives in New Hamster, too. You know, the person who drives WAY TOO SLOW just because the driving conditions aren't perfect. Here it's the bozo who gets in the left lane on the interstate in a rainstorm and then goes 30 mph. Up there it was the same, except it was 15 mph in a snowstorm.

♦ The scenery was gorgeous, and the views of the sky were sometimes breathtaking as the weather rapidly changed. (below) It was dark, 26° and snowing when we left Bretton Woods ski area in New Hamster. It was a sunny 75° when we arrived home 9 hours later. That's called "climate whiplash". Also, the kids never did get used to the fact that sunrise was so late and sunset came so early.

♦ My kids learned how to snowboard, although I will admit that Pink Guy did a lot better than Fireball (below), given his experience with skateboarding and skating that she lacks. I had actually decided to take a lesson and try out snowboarding myself, given my own experience with surfing and skating and falling down. But thankfully unfortunately a really big snowstorm blew through on the day I was going to do it and then other things prevented me from going. Next year, though. We did all go sledding and tubing. And since the place we stayed had an indoor pool, the kids spent some time in that other typical wintertime activity: swimming.

♦ New Year's Eve was awesome! We all went to a big formal dinner/dance/drink celebration with fireworks afterward. I had never seen a large-scale fireworks display that close before, and I've never seen fireworks over the snow. Have I mentioned that it was awesome? Well, it was. (The pictures below don't come close to doing it justice.) While we were standing outside in the crowd watching the 20-minute(!) display, I overheard the young woman standing next to me ask the young man with her, "Can I stand on your feet? I left my shoes inside." I looked down and yes, she was barefoot. And she didn't even seem to be all that drunk.

♦ The food was terrific (not least because none of us had to prepare it) and I put on a few pounds, despite my best efforts to prevent that from happening. All right - that last part is a lie. They're gone now, though.

♦ I didn't get nearly as much reading and nap time in as I wanted. It's tough when there are two kids and two adults in a single room, regardless of the size of the room.

♦ New Hamster is a very monochromatic state: white snow and white people. Not much in the way of color up there.

♦ We watched the New England Patriots beat the New York Giants on Saturday Night Football because I believe it was a law that every television set in the entirety of New England HAD to be tuned exclusively to that game.

♦ One day, after dropping the kids off to go snowboarding, I was hanging out in the ski lodge trying to do a little reading when someone came through and put flyers on all the tables to notify everyone that RUDY! (that was the flyer's headline) was coming to the lodge that afternoon. I made a note to get the kids over to the sledding hill before then. Shortly thereafter, I found a number of the flyers had been "edited" by someone to add "Ghouliani" after the RUDY! headline and insert "Exploiting 9/11 since 9/12" to the page, also. (No, it wasn't me but I would have volunteered to help had I known the editing session was going to take place.) We never saw RUDY! and all the resort employees I talked to were happy to see him go. Hopefully, that's an indication of how well he's going to do.

♦ When I got back to work, I had forgotten my computer login name. (NO, it isn't the same as my actual name!) I remembered my account password, though.

Lessons learned for next time:

• Bring more money.
• Get two rooms.
• Bring more money.
• Bring real camera.
• Bring more money.
• Fly in to airport closer to final destination.
• Bring more money!