Okay, maybe it WAS the last great sunny day

I'm not complaining, because I've got a serious skiing jones, but how is it possible to go from a high of 59 on Friday to snow, sleet and freezing rain on Saturday, all without gale-force winds or skies of death or anything other than that deep, charcoal gray sky of winter? It was appropriate that it started to snow and get slippery as we were driving to Schenectady to see our first Warren Miller ski movie. There was a great festival atmosphere there at Proctor's, everybody was having a good time and getting stoked about the season to come. This year's movie ("Storm") was really kick-ass, huge fun, scary thrills and scenes of physical accomplishment that are so close to perfection they can bring me almost to tears. Really. Sometimes I watch these movies, the Olympics, mountain-climbing, anything where tremendously gifted, highly trained people are really giving their all, and the sheer physical beauty of their effort just washes over me. Watching some of these skiers carving beautiful turns down nearly vertical faces does that for me. (And there are some days, in some conditions, when my skiing is going just right, when I can feel just a little bit of what they must feel -- and it feels good.) Then it was a long drive home on Route 20 in the snow . . . decided to skip the Thruway because I knew people would just be pinging off the road left and right. We saw several cars off the road right on 890, so it was only going to get worse. Took the local roads and things went slow but fine. Yesterday was a lazy day of work around the house while the girls went out in the very wet snow and got soaked to the skin. Today, a snow day, although the second storm of the day never materialized. Tomorrow, back to normal. Hopefully.