But you know what it can buy?

New skis.

And you know what new skis cause?

Extreme fucking happiness.

Back up.

As soon as Kyle and I realized that I wasn’t going to puss out on the whole learning to ski thing we started looking into buying me skis. Sure, it’s a pretty steep initial investment, but compared to dropping a fee on rentals every time it evens out pretty quickly. I ended up with a pair of Volkl Unlimiteds. Basic, functional, nothing fancy; pretty similar to the skis you see in rental shops. But at the time, while I was still learning, they were great. I was slow and cautious on the hill, content at cruising speeds and making mostly slow, arching turns. And my skis could handle that. They did everything that I needed, and nothing more.

But as I became more advanced, my Volkls became less and less adequate. I started pushing them to go faster and faster, and they couldn’t handle the speed. I strove for quicker and bouncier turns, and they were extremely difficult to pull into a turn before they were ready. If I really leaned into a turn, putting the majority of my weight on my outside leg, my skis would give out. So many of my struggles on the hill had less to do with my technique, and more to do with the fact that I was trying to ski beyond the capability of my equipment. If I was going to get any better, I needed new, more advanced skis.

After a lot of looking (and more than a few pushy salesmen) I decided on the skis I wanted to buy. K2 SuperFree’s in a 167 length. That part was pretty easy; they got great reviews, a lot of women seemed to really love them, and they had all the dimensions that I was looking for. Almost more importantly, K2 is one of the few brands of skis out there who actually make their women’s line of skis with a woman’s physiology in mind, as opposed to many other brands who still “shrink it and pink it.” (Referring to the practice of taking a men’s ski and making it shorter and painting it pink.) My Volkl’s had been men’s skis and I’m been able to ski on them just fine, but with my advancing technique and a more difficult ski I wanted something that was made for my body, not a dude’s. And the SuperFree’s looked like they fit the bill perfectly.

Then came the difficult part: actually finding a pair in my length and in my price range. Just finding them long enough was a challenge. See, for some reason, the skiing industry seems to think that only midget women ski, because despite the fact that I am only slightly taller than average for a woman, I ski on the longest skis available. Most of the shops don’t stock anything close enough to long enough for me, and finding them online (where they don’t cost as much as a month’s rent) is even harder.

But after some serious searching, we found them. They were ordered and on their way, and before long they were on our doorstep.

 

PS, mad respect for our USP guy, who hauled an 8′ long box up the stairs to our 2nd floor apartment. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a man who takes his package delivery seriously.

I ripped them out of the box as soon as I got them inside, and guys?

They were just beautiful.

Sadly for me, it was three very long days between when I got my skis and when I got to try them out, during which it snowed 6″. The wait was torture, but finally my day came.

We stepped out of the gondola at the top of Gore Mountain, I stepped into my SuperFree’s, and pushed off down the first run.

The difference between my old and new skis is the difference between a warm, flat bottle of Bud Light Lime and an icy-cold draught Shock Top after skiing.

My first run down I felt like I was floating. I didn’t feel all the crud and ice beneath my skis, they cut through it all so easily. Where I used to spend my day watching Kyle wait for me at the bottom of the mountain, now I was racing him down runs and only his apparent desire to die on skis kept me from kicking his ass. On steeper runs I powered through turns, and instead of giving out my skis pushed back and popped me into my next turn. Everything I threw at my SuperFree’s they took and handled with ease. I’ve got three days on my SuperFree’s now, and I can’t wait to hit the mountain again and again and see how far I can go on my skis.

In short, they kick a lot of ass.

So yeah, money can’t buy happiness.

But it buys skis, and so far they’re making me pretty fucking giddy.

 

 

It was 6:43 pm.

I had just dropped Kyle off at his rehearsal on the way home from a very long day of work. I’d tried to stop by the UPS store, only to discover that they’d closed 13 minutes before, but not before I lugged 6 huge (and rather heavy) packages out of the car and up to the shop in the freezing ass cold. I was tired, freezing, and now pissed off. I threw the boxes back in the car and slammed the door. On a whim, I decided to pop by the liquor store in the same strip mall and see if they had my Swedish Fish-flavored vodka. (Because I don’t know if I told you guys or not, but that shit is the SHIT!) After all I’d been through, I felt like I deserved a treat.

As I scurried into the liquor store, I thought I caught a shadow in the corner of my eye, but I kept walking. I was delighted to find my desired bottle of happiness on the shelves, and before long I was shivering my way back to the car, brown paper bag in hand. Hurrying across the parking lot, I focused my eyes more purposefully on the shadows and realized that my eyes hadn’t deceived me after all.

Huddled in the darkness of the alley was a homeless man, leaning on a shopping cart full of stuff. It was hard to tell, what with the dark and the thick bundle of coats that he was wearing, but it might have been the homeless guy who hangs out on the same bench on Broadway everyday. But like I said, in the dark, it could have been anyone.

As I struggled with my key in the lock, I felt the cold wind biting my skin, and I knew that he was feeling the same wind. It’s 11 degrees outside right now, with a windchill of -2. Guys, it’s bitter outside, the kind of cold that actually physically hurts. I got in the car and sat there, trying to think of ways that I could help him. I had some cash in my purse, of course. I could drive across the parking lot to the Wendy’s and buy him a gigantic coffee and a burger. I could offer him the blanket that I keep in the car for when Kyle insists on turning the heat off and my feet are cold.

But I did none of those things. Instead, I started the car and drove him, heat blasting all the way.

The thing is, as much as I ached for him and as badly as I wanted to do something to warm him a little, more than that was I afraid of him.

That’s not fair, I know. But I’ve had enough interactions with homeless people to know that they can be mentally unstable, tweaked out on drugs, or both. And while there’s a really good chance that he’s a very nice man who would be extremely touched by a moment of kindness, there’s also a chance that he could be dangerous to me. Even though I’m on the tall side for a woman, ever since I was mugged in college I’ve been extremely cautious about where and when I go alone. Ever since that night, being outside by myself at night makes me uncomfortable, whether I’m going for a run or walking a few blocks to my car. And at that moment, I was extra on edge because it felt like a man in a car had watched me walk back to my car from the UPS store and followed me to the liquor store. He drove away as I walked inside the store, but it left a shiver in my spine and had me pretty squirreled up. As much as I wanted to help that homeless man, I just couldn’t see a way to do it that didn’t involve walking down that alley through the dark, and I was too terrified to make myself do it.

So I went home.

Except that now that I’m home, I feel awful. All I’ve wanted all day as I shivered at work was to come home, pour myself a drink, curl up on the couch, and eat dinner. And I finally got to do all that. I’ve got a pile of blankets and a cat curled up on my lap. I have a delicious cocktail of Swedish Fish vodka and sparkling peach water. And I have a giant bowl of creamy cauliflower and potato soup topped with Sriracha that’s so warm and spicy and hearty that it’s warmed me all the way to my toes.

But instead of relaxing and enjoying the warmth after a hard day of work, I just feel like shit. Like a sack of guilty shit. All I can think of are ways that I should have helped that man. I should have given him money. I should have bought him food. I should have gone back into the liquor store and asked the employees if they knew him, and if he was safe to approach alone. I should have offered to drive him to a shelter. I should have taken him into my home and piled him with blankets and given him a giant bowl of soup. Of course I know logically that doing any of those things would have been foolish at best, dangerous at worst, ridiculous somewhere in the middle . I know that I did the right thing by just going home and not putting myself at risk. But none of that makes me feel better. None of it eases the guilt.

Because at the end of the day, I’m still in my warm apartment with a full stomach and he’s still outside fighting  frostbite in the subzero wind.

So I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to wait until 9:30 pm, when I’ve picked Kyle up from rehearsal, and we’re going to go back by the liquor store and see if he’s still there. If he is, then together we’ll do something, either give him some money or buy him something to eat or something. Because with Kyle by my side, I don’t feel like there’s so much danger; there will be two of us and Kyle’s a man, a brawny man no less. There’s a chance that he will have moved on by then; if it’s the guy who hangs out on Broadway, he moves locations every few hours during the day, and it’s likely that he does the same at night. So there’s a chance that he won’t be there when we go back. But I hope he is.

Because…guys? It’s really cold outside.

Epilogue

It’s exactly 10:01 pm.

I just got home from picking Kyle up from rehearsal, and on the way we stopped back at the liquor store to check on the homeless man. And just as I’d feared, he was gone. But then Kyle pointed out that we were literally two blocks from a large shelter that opens up at 7:00 pm, and that the homeless man was probably hanging out there waiting for the shelter to open. And then I felt better. He probably still would have appreciated a kind gesture in the form of a hot cup of coffee, but at least I feel peace knowing that at this moment he’s curled up under a warm blanket, just like me. Maybe not with chocolate peanut butter ice cream and a purring cat, but at least he’s warm.

Because it’s really cold outside.

I haven’t been around much. I know.

I’ve been busy.

Doing what, you ask? You guess probably watching Criminal Minds and eating bologna out of the package?

Not a bad guess, but sadly, no. Mostly this:

 

With some of this:

 

And mooooore of this:

 

With as much of this as we can cram in:

(But mostly working.)

So that’s the most of it. Exciting, huh? Okay, maybe there was more to it than that. Here’s some of the more interesting shit you might have missed. Or didn’t miss. Either way.

 

Christmas was great.

Both fake Christmas with my family over Thanksgiving,

and Christmas Day with Kyle’s family.

 

And not in a, “Better say something nice, my mom and mother-in-law read this thing,” kind of way, in a, “I’m super serial right now!” way. We don’t get to spend much time with family, living 600 and 1,000 miles away from either of our parents, so the time we do get to spend is precious to us. Also, made off with some seriously kick-ass gifts. Highlights include several fantastic purses, lots of jewelry (including some stupidly hardcore steampunk pieces,) beautiful makeup bag and brushes, and BRIGHT FUCKING YELLOW DOC MARTINS.

(Because everyone know’s there are some occasions when floral Doc’s are highly inappropriate.)

Also, this happened:

 

That’s right. That’s my Grandma holding a kitten. It’s so adorable that I can’t look at it straight on without going, “Awwwww!”

 

My show found vindication in the Bronx.

Remember the show from hell? The one where I took a fucking amazing show into a joke of a space, lit it like a fucking boss, and then in the last two minutes of the show the venue’s board crashed and ruined the show? Well, we took the show to a venue down in the Bronx and remounted the production. In a big boy space. With a real rig. And a real crew.

It was the show it should have been the first time.

 

Was it perfect? No. I had to change the way that I lit the show in order to work within the space’s rig and I missed some of the grittiness that it had in the shit space. There was the matter of the embarrassingly unmaintenanced main rag curtain, that squealed horribly whenever it moved. (Seriously, it was bad.) And there was a cue or two that I didn’t call exactly right, either a touch early or a touch late. (Usually early.) Was it perfect? No. But you couldn’t tell it from the audience, and that’s all that matters.

Kyle got stitches.

Yeah, for true. He was drilling out a flag base backstage and the drill bit broke. The broken end of the bit went right into his wrist, tearing it up something good. Luckily it missed his artery, or things could have been really bad. Five stitches and he was good to go.

I took this picture in the room at Urgent Care while we were waiting for the Dr to stitch him up:

 

The best part of the night was when I posted the picture to Facebook and his mom pointed out that the picture looks like it’s taken of his ass. And then I peed myself.

 

Skiapalooza 2013

Okay, to be fair, most of the new year has been one big Skiapolooza. We’ve managed to cram eight days of skiing so far in this season, after all. But what I’m referring to was last week: three days straight of skiing on two different mountains. First two days were at our home mountain, Gore. Great snow, not too cold, and some new (to this season) terrain opening up.

Kick ass.

At the end of the second day, we loaded our skis in the car and drove to Lake Placid to the quaintest and most adorable mountain inn that ever happened to the world. Seriously, this was the sitting room:

All that was missing was a sleeping dog on the rug and some hot cocoa and I’m pretty sure I would have suffered an adorable mountain seizure. As a preventive measure, we made sure to combat the cuteness by white-trashing the place up a little.

 

Awesome.

But I digress. Back to the important part of the story.

The reason that we drove to Lake Placid was so that the next morning we could be up early to spend the day skiing Whiteface. We’d never been, but Ski NY was offering $10 lift tickets to any NY ski mountain, and seriously, who can turn down a $10 lift ticket?

Unfortunately, our Whiteface experience was not everything we’d hoped. Strong winds kept any of the lifts from opening until 9:30am, (as opposed to 8:30am when they were supposed to open up and when we were ready to go,) and it was almost noon before there was more than one running. And even once we really got to explore the mountain a little, we found that the conditions were shit, absolute shit. At best, it was hard pack with a scattering of light powder, but the majority of it was straight-up ice. It was frustrating, because the runs and the terrain looked like fun, but the ice made it near impossible to ski without fear of wiping out. There were a few moments of unadulterated, “FUCK YEAH, LET’S GO!” but they were severely outnumbered by the moments of, “HOLY SHIT, I’M GOING TO DIIIIIE!”

Over the years, Whiteface has earned the nickname Iceface among skiers. Indeed.

But despite the shit conditions of Whiteface, I had fun on our little Skiapolooza. It was the closest thing to a vacation that we’ve had in a long time, and it was lovely to spend some non-working time with Kyle.

 

So that’s about all you’ve missed. Not much, right?

I told you I’ve been mostly working.