December 15, 2007

Time keeps passing along. Another year has nearly completed, but far more disturbing, I finished up a package of 500 coffee filters. I remember commenting when I bought them that it looked like a lifetime supply.

Last weekend was a full ski weekend. Saturday was a nice day with plenty of fresh snow giving the mountain a nice soft feeling. We used our wider skis and they were perfect for the conditions. We are finally able to ski to the bottom, but the coverage down low is limited and mostly man made.

Sunday brought no new snow. The wind crusted over the remaining softness. The groomed snow was fine, though, and that worked out perfectly. On our first ride up the chairlift, we got to the front of the line and one person from the singles line hopped on with us. It took a few seconds for us to realize that it was a close acquaintance of ours. It is hard to recognize people in ski gear and we never really thought of her as a skier so we were a little surprised. So we skied with her all day. My legs were pretty beat from Saturday and the conditions in the ungroomed snow weren’t very good so skiing with an intermediate skier on the groomed trails was a good break. Kris and I did ski some of the bumpy edges of the groomed runs.

Today was colder. The snow was pretty nice up high, but turned to lumpy concrete near midway. The visibility was not very good. I found many surprises in the soupy whiteness. We skied a couple of hours before getting chilled. It was about 10 degrees warmer down low so we skied a lap in the intermediate area to see if we could run into one of my coworkers.

I had to inspect a couple more oil platforms this week. I really lucked out on the weather. It was clear, calm, and unseasonably warm. The helicopter rides were fine, but the fact that a helicopter was missing less than a hundred miles away made it a little more real. A life flight went down in Prince William Sound near Whittier. They found a door and one body. The rest is probably on the floor in 600 feet of water, never to be found. My flights were more successful.

Meanwhile back in Anchorage, it snowed all day. It was nice to get back home to white. Now the temperatures have fallen. The four inches that fell should stick around for awhile. It has been an unusually warm winter so far. We were beginning to think that there was a chance that we wouldn’t have a white Christmas.

We went to a union meeting on Wednesday. Well, Kris didn’t participate since she is no longer a union member, but she sat there while I voted. A friend of mine was elected president of the Anchorage chapter. Another friend was elected to the executive board. We effectively pulled off a coup. The disappointment is that my friend was elected to his position in a several thousand member chapter with only 27 votes. Admittedly, it was the first union meeting that I attended. It was quite amusing.

We had restaurant food 4 nights this week. We went out for Mexican, had carryout Chinese, had a nice birthday dinner for Kris, and had carryout pizza. Finally last night I cooked some halibut. I think we are getting lazy.