Here’s a snippet of the living room shot from the condo:
Notice the view. See how Potato Hill* on the left fills up the window? Actually extends above the top of the window? And how the Needles fill up the window on the right side?
That’s the new view.
Here’s what it looks like without the framing:
You can’t see out the window on the left, aiming north, from this perspective – or the big picture window beside that, that they added when they remodeled. Trust me. Both show pictures of the ridgeline, going all the way up to Engineer Mountain.
My friend Mary, whom I knew in Huntsville, told me – after we moved out West – that a view just wasn’t something that came into consideration when buying a home back East. But, in the Rocky Mountains, yes – it matters.
We’ve got another month here in Whitefish, then a month in Panama, then we move to Purgatory. It’s starting to get real. I’ve offered Ethel 54 chances to back out gracefully, and she has taken none of them. So, unless something happens to either sale, we’ll be spending the Spring in the San Juan Mountains.
I’m open to something happening, though. I’m keeping my eye out for signs, portents or omens – even a fleece. Or any indication that Kim Puckett has decided that she doesn’t want to go after all. Currently she’s talking about how from every window of the house, one can see vast fields of aspen.
This might actually happen.
*Also known as Spud Mountain. I’ve seen it with different names on different maps.
Looks like either Mr Hanon, or his publisher, made a booboo in #12.
I’ve been playing this for months, and just now noticed it. The first measure stars with a 5th interval, and then the rest of them follow with a 6th. (see how the first measure starts in G, and drops to C on the second note – while the second measure starts on B, and then drops to D?) The rest of the exercise stays with the 6th.
And this book was written in 1900, and has been reprinted over and over again. So, how did this mistake get past the proofreaders?
So, of course, I went online to find out (bonjour*), because there’s no way that I’m the first to notice that. And, yes, there is a lot of brouhaha about it, and arguments over whether or not it was intentional, and why it might be.
You can always count on the Internet for that sort of thing 🙂
We’re home. We drove two days, and made it in at 4:00 yesterday afternoon. We’re pretty tired, indeed. It was a sunny day today, but we didn’t ski – I don’t know if it was because of the exhaustion, or the fact that they are telling us that it’s dust on crust up there today.
In addition, my calves hurt; I went in to run yesterday on the hotel mill in Idaho Falls, and it stopped after six minutes, so I attempted to do an hour workout on the elliptical at the same intensity that I do a Friday skin. And I was able to do it, but today both calves are really sore – sore enough that I don’t want to walk, and really am not enjoying walking downstairs. So, I’m giving it a day, at least.
But, of course, tomorrow won’t be sunny.
Two weeks go, I had what I thought was a pretty good run on a Friday when it was too darn icy to skin. So, I thought maybe that I was in better shape than I thought I was. So, I “decided” that I would go ahead and go to Haines to ski with SEABA. Now, I had decided back in December to do that trip, and then decided not to, because I don’t feel like I’m in the shape to make the most of it, and it’s really expensive.
But then two Fridays ago I get uppity and say “Yeah, I’ll go” and told the SEABA folks and asked for a new invoice and told my friend who’s going that I’d be going with him.
And then, I decided that I don’t want to go after all.
It just seems to me that before I spend that much money on something, I should really want to go do it – unequivocally want to go, flat-out really want to go. And I just can’t get excited about it. It seems like expense and bother and trouble and time, and I just don’t think I’ll get what I want to get out of it.
But KimPuckett is determined that I should go. And she’s a little….insistent, if you can imagine that.
We have a check written, in an envelope that’s stamped and addressed, but I keep telling her not to mail it. And she’s pointing out that, two weeks from today, I should be flying from Juneau to Haines, having flown to Juneau the day before. She even managed somehow to get first class tickets from Whitefish to Juneau and back (the hop from Juneau to Haines is on a puddle jumper).
So, just now, I signed the invoice. I don’t know why. It’s like a lot of things – I know that if I go, I’ll regret it. And, if I don’t go, I’ll regret it.**
Speaking of which – everything is full steam ahead on the move to Durango. For right now, it looks like we’ll spend March here in this house, then April in Panama while our friend Jerry house(dog) sits, and then meet the movers here around the second of May.
I’m concerned about that, as well – just concerned about making a mistake. I seem to be making a lot of them these days.
But my mistakes won’t be published in a book on becoming a piano virtuoso, and reprinted every near for the next 120 years. So, there’s that 🙂
The last entry that I show for this diary is from February 20th; I suspect that’s “the morning of”, before we left Pocatello.
Today, I skied at Purgatory.
That’s the trail sign for Dead Spike, my past favorite bump run at the Purg. Note the white spots on the trail sign. That’s falling snow. It dropped 33 inches in the 48 hours before I headed up the mountain; it never stopped dumping while I was there.
It. Just. Kept. Snowing 🙂
We saw the Pearl of Great Price – it was just what we thought it was. We met the owners and enjoyed their company. We were there for four hours. It was pretty intense. Looks like we’re moving there.
We were supposed to drive home today, but all the passes were closed – the only way that we could leave would be to head south to Albuquerque, and that’s not a very good way to drive to Montana. So we realized that we were stuck here, and Ethel told me to go ski.
Now, I had only brought my skinning gear; I had no regular ski clothes, and my skinning skis are short and skinny. But what the heck? I went ahead, after my darling had badgered me for a half hour or so. And I skied for four and a half hours, in waist deep powder on skinny skis with wet leather gloves and snow sneaking under my waistband ever time I took a spill.
It was great 🙂
We’ve been to meetings and seen old friends. And we’ve napped a lot – trying to recover from the drive down here. Now we rest up before heading home – hopefully tomorrow, assuming that the passes open up.
Things are happening at home – inspections and designer visits and such as the new owners of the Dog House get ready to move in in May. This is the longest escrow situation I’ve ever been through – purchase in February, possession in May. But that seems to be what works for everybody.
Now I’m laying in bed, trying to warm back up after skiing wet and cold. And I took a fall that was a cruncher – it’s probably going to hurt in the morning.
It’s the same hotel that we stayed in on the way back from Durango, when we did the drive down there to look at the house that we didn’t get.
Now we’re driving down there to look at the house that we did get, after selling the house that we already had.
On Friday, our home went live on MLS. It had the first showing at 2 PM. At 7:42, the house was sold, at full price, including an escalation clause in case anybody outbid them. And the response time was the next day, at 5 PM.
So our house sold for full price in one day.
So now we’re going down to check out the Durango condo. And we’re driving. Now, let’s be honest – yes, it was a very expensive ticket to go to Durango, and driving is more economical.
But we didn’t think too much about it, because we had already planned to be gone for at least a week after the house went on the market, to allow folks to view the home without dog hair or any need to schedule ahead.
I now realize that we could have gone ahead and flown and come right back, since there’s no need for us to be out of the house.
But, here we are. Might as well keep driving 🙂
We made a scandalous amount of money on the house. Were we not to buy another place, we could travel and live on that amount for a long, long time – until we were too old to travel 🙂
Kim even allowed as to how we could now afford a dog with two fully functional ears.
And we may wind up doing that “travel forever” thing; there were some problems that showed up in the inspection of the Purgatory condo, and we haven’t heard from the sellers if they want to cover those issues.
These days, I’m doing some overlapping prayers; yes, I ask for knowledge of His Will and the power to carry that out; but I’m also aware that I can be spiritually deaf, so I’m asking that, if I ain’t listening, that He go ahead and just steamroll His Will over mine 🙂
Those are my skinning skies, with the long poles that I use when skinning. I spend a lot of time looking down at the tips – just like when I’m doing a long climb on a bike, while on the aero bars. I’m looking down while going up.
That red arrow is pointing at Split Pine, which is a pine tree with two tips on top. That pine tree is about 1400 feet up, out of the 2100 feet of climb that I do on the front. The first time this year I skinned, it took me just over an hour to get to Split Pine, and I turned around then because I had a late start and the Patrol was doing sweeps 🙂 …on Monday, I hit Split Pine in 39:53. I was happy with that.
Today I skinned up the back – what they call the East Route – and set an 8 minute PR. So skinning is, at least, getting me in shape for skinning.
Last Friday, the snow was too icy to skin, so I ran for the 75 minutes that I would have been skinning, and kept my heart rate around the same level that it would have been on a Friday skin. And I had no problem running that long, even though it had been about six weeks since my last run – so the skinning seems to be helping that aspect, as well. The only problem was soreness from impact.
So, this has been working.
And now I have to stop 🙂
Next Monday, we leave for Durango, and Purgatory Ski Area does not yet have an uphill policy, so I won’t be HOLD THE LINE BACK UP WAIT A MINUTE…I can get an uphill pass as Hesperus Ski Area, west of town, so, yes, I can keep skinning. So, never mind that “I have to stop” 🙂
There are petitions circulated to get uphill skiing at Purg, and the same company owns both resorts, so I’m pretty sure that by next season, skinning will be allowed.
But, although I’m skinning, I’m not skinny. I think I’ve lost some weight, but I’m not checking. But I am getting fitter, somehow, in some way. So, at my age, anything that’s not increasing decrepitude is good 🙂
So today I went to the bank to wire the earnest money to Colorado for the Pearl of Great Price.
I’m hoping that this is “earnest money” as in “being serious about buying this place”, rather than “ernest money” as in “Ernest Goes to Camp“.*
We’ve started getting the house ready to list – it’s supposed to go live Thursday night. We’re patching tiny little pain holes and cleaning stuff up and moving things around.
This morning we rode hard, did day 7 of a 30 day yoga series by Adrienne, and started in on “selling the house stuff”. I’m keeping a close eye on Ethel, making sure that if she starts crying, I see it. This is essential – if she cries, all progress stops and we fall out of contract. That’s the rules.
I sometimes stop and feel a belly flop – we’re going back to Colorado. It hits me hard, in the gut. I look at the pictures of the condo, and I can smell it, and feel the air – or the lack of air, given the elevation – because I remember, way down deep, what it’s like there.
Right now, I’m looking up at a bookshelf in my office, and seeing a photo of Floyd and I standing on skis off of the Hermosa lift, with Grayrock Mountain behind us. The snow is bright white, the sky is Colorado blue, and the trees are those very skinny evergreens that one sees at high elevation. That’s Purgatory.
The next forty five days might not be a lot of fun, and then we spend thirty days in Panama. I’m hoping that while I’m in Panama, I’m able to enjoy Panama, rather than thinking about the move that we should be doing when we get home from there. Which means right now I’m worrying about whether or not I’ll be worrying later. I think that there’s a Step for that 🙂
The money is sent. We are in earnest.
*Know whut I mean, Vern? ….haven’t heard or thought of that phrase in something over thirty years.
Here’s this morning’s sunrise, courtesy of Kim Puckett – she took this picture as she was putting the bacon on the stove (this is the view from her cooktop):
Beautiful light sliding over the mountains overhanging this Christmas village of snow-covered rooftops – it’s a pretty nice view.
We sent off our offer for the condo at Cascade Village this morning. It’s a strong offer. We might get it, we might not. I’m okay either way – I know this because I have a piece of my mind that hopes we won’t get it, just so’s I can know that God’s Will is being done – or, at least, I can tell myself it must be His Will, cause it doesn’t seem to be mine 🙂
I’ve been sitting a lot with the affirmation that “God is with me”, per Emmet Fox’s recommendation. And it’s had me thinking about just what that might mean. Sometimes I think that my idea about who I am, in relation to Him, is just as upside down and inside-out as everything else I seem to think, or used to think.
We have this idea that God is deep down inside. In fact, the Big Book even says that – “Deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. He may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other He is there.”
So what I seem to think is this – that there’s this whole big Universe of stuff. And, way small and incidental in this big honkin’ Universe, there’s this little tiny speck on a speck that is my body. And, somewhere down inside of my body – usually I think it’s an inch or two behind my eyebrows – there’s my brain, which somehow contains my “mind”.
And my “mind” seems to be full of darkness and noise, but maybe, if I’m quiet enough and patient enough, somewhere past the darkness of guilt and fear, there is a tiny speck of light that maybe I can approach and be aware of, and that some mystics and saints can even enter into and live in. And I call that little bitty bit “God”.
But I suspect that I’m wrong, and inside out. Because that makes God the smallest thing in the Universe, not the biggest.
So maybe what I believe is that the real model looks more like this – there exists an infinite and eternal Light that looks a lot like the perfect white light that they use in movies to show Heaven. That infinite and eternal Light is the Father. It never changes, never dims, and is full of perfect music.
And somewhere small in that infinite and eternal Light, there’s a little ball of light, made out of the same Substance as the great Light, but lesser in some important ways – and that small ball of light is me.
And, somewhere in that small ball of Light is a tiny flaw of darkness; a smudge of guilt and shame and fear. And, hiding inside of that tiny smudge of guilt and shame and fear, there’s my actual conscious mind, terrified of the great beauty that might exist beyond its little harbor of darkness, while simultaneously desperately wishing to be a part of it, if it were really out there.
So I sit, and sometimes I try to maneuver around inside of my dark little ball, and sometimes I’m looking for the little bitty ball of God, and sometimes I’m thinking that if I could just go anywhere, in any direction, I could escape to Him.
In the meantime, I’m sitting in Montana, or, at least, I think I am 🙂
A place came on the market on Wednesday at Cascade Village – their largest unit, and it’s an end unit, with interior views of the Needles, Potato Hill, and Engineer Mountain.
It’s already been remodeled. The same family has owned it since it was built, in 1982. It’s beautiful. When we lived there, we saw one of these units that our friend Jeff was remodeling, and we really wished that one would come on the market. One didn’t.
One now has.
Yes, it’s slightly sacrilegious, but only slightly – Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a merchant, who, upon finding a pearl of great price, sold everything that he had, and bought it. Now, I’m not comparing this condo to the Kingdom of Heaven*, but remember that it was a parable – that Jesus was talking about someone finding something in this world for which he was willing to trade all of his worldly possessions.
Now, we’re not willing to trade all of our worldly possessions, but we’re willing to trade a whole bunch of ’em. We’ll be giving our realtor something close to carte blanche in order to get us into this home.
On Wednesday, I was skinning up the back route on the mountain. My phone is BlueTooth connected to my Garmin watch, so I see short blurbs of things that come into the phone on the watch face. I had already started the hard part of the climb when my watch vibrated, and when I looked at it, I saw this snippet:
“Kim, Unit 14 at C…”
That was all I saw. But I knew some of what it meant – I knew of no development that started with a Capital C other than Cascade Village. I knew that a unit with two digits was one of the larger townhomes up in the upper rows.
And I knew that the phone kept buzzing the watch, over and over again, which meant – even though I couldn’t see the later messages, because I hadn’t viewed that one on the phone – that Kim and the realtor were talking back and forth, a whole lot.
It was hard to keep my heart rate down 🙂
But when I got to the top, I called home, and found out that it was one of the big ones, end unit, with all of the big windows.
Now we craft the offer letter. It’s going to be a good offer, it’s going to be a cash offer, it’s going to let them have anything that they want regarding dates or conditions – and it’s going to have an escalation clause to let the realtor up the purchase price as much as she needs in order** to get us in without forcing Ethel to eat cat food after I’m dead.
It’s a pearl of great price. It’s a full-time home at 9000 feet in the San Juan Mountains, and she actually wants to buy it, so I am releasing all control.
*However, at just short of 9000 feet elevation, it’s not too far from there.
**There will be a maximum amount. But I’m going to let Kim Puckett set that number. I don’t trust myself in this context.
A video update – we restarted Bones last August, and finished it up a couple of months ago.
Then we watched Longmire. I can’t even talk about how good a job those folks did. And I won’t try. And I don’t recommend it for everybody, because it’s probably not for everybody. But I loved it. I would have turned around and watched it again immediately.
But it was a little too dark, too intense, for KimPuckett to rehash immediately. So we jumped back to Castle, which ain’t dark at all. We were enjoying the lightness – the Nathan Filian-ness – of it. But we were interspersing Castle with episodes of The Pacific, which we realized we hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and – well, that’s just not right. So that seemed to give us a balanced diet.
But then Reacher got released.
Now, when I saw the trailer for the series, I was not very happy about it. For one thing, this guy seemed a little too – cutesy, quippy, even smiley. And he has a perfect body – anybody who knows Reacher knows that the first thing anyone* notice when he takes his shirt off is the huge scar across his abdomen that looks, it has been said, like some kind of sea creature. And everything else is pretty scarred up, as well.
And I noticed that I couldn’t recognize any of the lines from the book in the trailer – and it was obvious that they were taking liberties with the story.
But I decided to watch it anyway. I reasoned that I had enjoyed the two Reacher movies, even though the stories were drastically changed.
So here’s what I’m seeing – first, it is very well done. And this Ritchson guy does, indeed, pull off Reacher, as long as I’m willing to excuse those one liners that seem to be tossed in to keep him from being as stoic as Reacher himself.
They are including flashbacks from Jack and Joe’s childhood that never actually happened in the novels – but, then, I have no way of knowing that they DIDN’T happen. So, I have to let that slide.
But the stories are different. It seems to me that here’s what they are doing – say there are 15 plot points that have to be exposed in order to solve the mystery. It seems that they are, indeed, exposing those plot points, but they are doing so using different mechanisms than the books. For instance, when Reacher realizes that he was the one wearing the glasses, it’s because of a comment Charlie made about her two daughters**, instead of noticing the difference between the two waitresses at the Margrave Diner.
So it’s the same mystery told in a different way. I reckon I can live with that.
We’re not following our pattern of waiting until the series is over to watch it, because our reasons for doing that came from what happened to Battlestar Galactica when it ended; we do not have to worry about the writing for this show giving a proper ending.
But, then, currently there are 25 Reacher books. If they do them all, once a year, then they won’t finish up until I’m 88 years old. So, there’s that.
Okay, time to get back to the piano.
*yes, even women
**yes, you read that right. In the series, Hubble has two daughters – I don’t know what happened to Ben, the son, but he’s as Kaiser Sose’d as Little Stevie.
This morning, before we rode on the bikes, we did the Sunrise Yoga with Adrienne again.
She introduces Benji as her assistant, but we never see Benji do anything at all. I don’t even think Benji knows any poses. But, then, my employers used to pay me a scandalous salary when I didn’t do that much more than Benji does. So, there’s that.
Then I got on the bike and did a 45 minute Sweet Spot workout, and then I stretched. This was after doing my morning arpeggios, scales and Hanons before the yoga.
Then I had breakfast, and then I fell asleep.
Then I got up, chopped firewood, took the dog out for her exercise, and now I’m back up in the office, working on Suzukis*, 100 Years and Sonatina.
Yesterday was another PR on the mountain, after setting some PRs on Monday. Tomorrow is another day of skinning up the front.
I’ve been consistently doing three days of skinning and three days of biking. My skinning has consistently gotten faster, with my heart rate actually going down with greater levels of effort.
This may be good news. Or it may simply show just how awful the shape I was in a few months ago was.
But – there’s nothing else for it. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – that’s what Arthur Ashe said, and that’s what I’m doing. Regardless of what else is or isn’t happening, I am at least getting in better shape for skinning up the mountain.
Remarkably, I can’t find any information at all on just how well skinning supports running or cycling. But it has to be getting me into better cardiovascular shape.
In the meantime, I keep making slow – but steady – progress on the piano -wery slow, and maybe not that steady. But it’s progress.
I’m making short-term progress. Now, at least physically, any long-term changes are going to be for the worse. But as long as I can see numbers improving, I’ll be able to keep fooling myself 🙂
*Here’s a thing – WordPress doesn’t like the word “Suzukis” and flags it as suspect, but “Suzuki” is just fine. Does that mean that it doesn’t believe that people can own more than one Japanese motorcycle?
Fat Charlie's Diary 