it just keeps dumping

folks, i've lived in ski towns before. a year in crested butte at the tender age of 20 (booze, bonfires and 80 days that season), a year in aspen after i finished my undergrad (3 smelly boys in a shitty 1 BR basement apartment that has since been condemned to make room for more ridiculous hollywood homes), a year in jackson after i finished grad school (a great library and jackson's worst snow year in a decade)...

but i'm here to tell you that i have never seen this much snow.

ever.

some stats and anecdotes to give you an idea of the magnitude:

-the ski area measures its snow in inches at its midmountain gondola station. as of today, we have received 298 inches. that's almost 25 feet of snow.

-to put that in perspective, the mountain's season average is 377 inches. the season runs through the second week of april. we have already received almost 80 percent of our snowfall total and it's still january. traditionally, the heaviest snow months in colorado's high country are march and april.

-i've been snowboarding 12 days this year. 9 of them have been powder days. 3 of those powder days have been incredible - 24 inches, 18 inches, and 12 inches respectively.

-there's almost 5 feet of compacted snow in our condo's front yard. the pile in front of our door that has resulted from shoveling our porch and walkways is over 7 feet tall.

-monthly snow totals: 15" in october, 83" in november, 105" in december, 95" in january.

-snowpack for the yampa and white river basins is 124% of average.

-the town is running out of places to put plowed snow. seriously. they're trucking it out of city limits in dump trucks and putting it in open fields.

-guess what folks? it's snowing again. 3 inches overnight. 4-7 more inches by midday.

i've worn my garmont backpacking boots every day since november except for a few here and there. i've cleared so much snow off of the cars this winter that i have developed a system for doing it (thank you OCD). the river remains frozen over in all but a few places. marley and sadie have developed packed game trails through the yard, and can only poop when they're on a trail. they don't even bother getting into the yard for peeing, but instead just go on the snowpacked sidewalk or parking lot.

truly, this is pretty incredible.

link o' the day:

geno sent me this link.
it most certainly does not stink.
it helps you find rhymes
when you have some spare time.
and you might really like it i think.

been awhile

hey folks. it's been almost 2 weeks since i last blogged. here's what's happening...

band practice continues to evolve. we're practicing at bob the bassist's house. he has a moog. it loops on itself in a way similar to "teenage wasteland" by the who, but with more low-end (becuase it's a moog). we had lots of fun with it last week, going off on some serious improvisational tangents. if we can muster the cajones to do that stuff live, it might be pretty freakin' cool.

started taking my flytying class last week. so far, i've learned to tie this, this, this, this and this (with different coloring). those last two are really difficult, and i'm not sure how good a flytier i'm going to be right off the bat. i think what will happen the first year or two is that i'll get really good at a few basic patterns, and tie a ton of them until i get sick of them, then start to experiment with other stuff.

jeff tweedy is doing a solo show at the gothic theater in denver on thursday, february 16. i love this man - he is my personal musical hero. jenn and mary (jamie's roommate) and i are going, and snookum and frak from denver are meeting us there. i am very, very excited.

wendell gee is in town, running a conference. she's been ripping it up daily, and i plan on riding with her on friday.

link o' the day:

a greater feat than wilt's 100? i don't know. i certainly have no love for kobe (narcissistic, philandering, whiny, dimwitted man-child), but his 81 points on sunday was absolutely ridiculous.

willis out!

are we in concept album territory?

i'm not sure. but it was fun writing the following song about a man bent on the fiery destruction of a city he hates. and, i'm happy to say, this song is worked out and in the (insert band name here) rotation.

the arsonist

take the number 12 bus straight downtown
remember them and remember me
there are tunnels buried underground
secret rivers running to the sea

an avenue of awkward strangers
empty driver seats and all red lights
the city is empty but full of danger
out of mind and out of sight

a dollar here and a dollar there
counterfeit bills, phonies and fakes
movie soundtracks hanging in the air
a road to pave and lines to paint

pressure builds and buildings burn down
gospel choirs sing from every door
hit the freeway take it out of town
headed nowhere i haven’t been before

see the skyline from a different view
rooftops flicker in the haze
no one here ever tried to be true
no one here ever held my gaze

link o' the day:

where my sweetie works.

apologies and a headache the size of a mushroom cloud

folks, i'm sorry for not posting much over the past two weeks. between holidays and traveling and a stomach flu that made me feel like a nest of angry fire ants was living in my gullet, well, i haven't had much time to post.

in fact, i don't really want to be posting right now, since i have a headache the size of a mushroom cloud, but i thought i'd dash off a quick one before i head down to instruct new adjunct faculty on article database usage and the absurd intricacies of fair use copyright law in the classroom.

fun.

y'know what was fun, though? seeing timmy and robbie over the new year in arizona. even though at least one of us was puking or pooping our brains out because of this tummy bug the whole time we were there, we did manage to get some fun in. like frisbee in a backyard in tempe on new year's eve, and perfectly mixed yummy extra spicies, and hikes in the white tank mountains, and fishing for stocked trout (in arizona!!!) on the verde river up north. my friends (and myself, for that matter) are crude, obsessive, silly men who try our damnedest to crack each other up in new and creative ways whenever we're together.

good times.

link o' the day:

cool, weird music, and probably the coolest band name i've ever heard.

update...

i am indeed the dumb ass. i somehow forgot to pay our yearly renewal to ebsco for our print subscriptions. oops.

but ebsco still sucks.

tummy flu, bowl games, and ebsco sucks

hey all.

well, i managed to get very sick while down here in arizona. physically, i had one of the worst nights of my life 2 nights ago, and spent all of yesterday recovering. i made it 31 years without having viral gastroenteritis (stomach flu), but my luck ran out. and to top it all off, i got geno sick too. i felt awful, but today i'm feeling a heck of a lot better. i'm hoping this has run its course, because i'd like to enjoy the rest of my time down here.

last night's orange bowl between penn state and florida state was ridiculously good. 3 overtimes, kickers missing field goals left and right, tired and banged up players being taken off the field after every other down, and a crowd that just seemed to exhaust itself by the end of the game. i'm not a huge college football fan, but last night was truly one of the great games i've seen.

ebsco, our magazine subscription vendor at the library, says that we didn't pay our renewal fees last fall. but we did. we did! (and if we didn't, then i'm the dumb ass). ebsco sucks.

happy new year everybody!