Destiny Skywalker

So it was yesterday but I spent 6 hours on Easter doing our taxes. Gross. But I did manage to get our capital gains on the sale of our house significantly reduced. We still owed a good chunk of change, but not nearly as bad as it could've been. And after all that, we took a standard deduction instead of itemizing. FML.

Is your school K-6? I'm guessing you had to call the cops?

I have to take a work trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. IOWA. Why can't I do business travel to Hawaii or the Bahamas?

Got the new skis! Goodbye pink skis (ok, really just retiring for mogul days). I ended up with Head Kore 91 W. I paid under $600 for skis and bindings that should've cost $1k. It was these or the Atomic Maven 93s. The ski shop lady said she actually owns the Heads. She didn't want to bias me but I asked her what she liked and she said they are super easy to turn. She said the Atomics wouldn't let me leisure ski, you have to be on them all the time. When I read the reviews on them, they said they were for people who want to save their knees, which I definitely do. Those suckers go and I won't be able to run, ski, or play soccer. I was going to pick the Atomics until I heard that. I'm going to have to figure out how to get out this weekend.

They are supposed to get me wording to send to the parents. Haven't seen it yet. When I get it, I plan on asking council about it. Might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

Snoqualmie/Alpental and Crystal have started to make lots of blackout dates for Ikon passes because they almost over-ran the mountain like the Epic Pass. The local pass holders revolted and they actually listened and pushed them out as much as they could. I remember Presidents Day weekend in 2020 was actually better than a normal weekend because they blocked out all the Ikon pass holders. It was glorious. A lot of people did it because Crystal and Snoqualmie are so close to each other. One weekend Crystal was shut down because of a landslide across the only road in, and Snoqualmie was a zoo. Crystal has turned into a money grabbing shitshow. They announced they were building a new fancy resort area and then subsequently jacked pass prices 30% for next year. Even worse for Ikon pass holders. A single-day lift ticket is over $100. And they are going to charge $30 per day for parking next year. Honestly when my daughter hits middle school I think I am going to push for a long weekend at Whistler. The boys will protest but I will leave them at home if I have to. My goal for next year is to find a friend who has kids who ski so we can start planning trips.

Some sort of heart defect that was sort of well-known, but maybe not to the extent that most of us realized.

I just don't like how this sets me up to be the bad guy. Not the people making the rules, but me. I am the one who has to send the crying kid and pissed off parent home. Not the couple of women who think this should be a rule when it's not an actual rule. Also as an engineer, if something is not a requirement, then it's extra baggage that I don't need.

So our local Girl Scout council has dropped all requirements for masking, social distancing, gathering sizes, etc. We are going camping in June with all the other local troops at our local camp. Great. My entire troop is vaccinated. Also great. I missed a meeting tonight and someone was telling me that we should make our entire troop submit an at-home test prior to attending the camping trip. I am done. I am tired of enforcing rules. I have some hot mess parents who will forget and I will have to be the bad guy who sends someone home, or lose my mind with 500 reminders up until the day of. I know this is a silly thing to put my foot down about, but I'm not enforcing some requirement that isn't a real requirement, just someone making up a rule to add more CYA.

I hate it when old people insist on suffering in the name of tradition. I hope I am not a grouchy dinosaur when I get old. The hardest part of skiing shouldn't be getting up the hill unless you are willingly choosing to do backcountry. For the most part, the Twilight pass worked great. But I would like to get up midweek at least once by myself, and that means leaving around 8 AM and heading back around 2 or 3. It gives Q a touch more flexibility, too, we can go a little earlier on Sundays (if we can find parking). For the most part I don't find weekend morning/early afternoon skiing to be worth the crowds. And I think I just realized she could've gotten a free pass at Stevens next year because she will be a 5th grader (some sort of WA state perk), but they're so overrun by Vail Epic passes that I'm not sure I can go lest I pop a blood vessel. I haven't been since Q was 4 because it was a hot mess even then. I have friends who attempted to put their kid in lessons there and literally drove around for 3 hours looking for a parking spot, and missed every lesson for 5 or 6 weeks in a row. They were at Snoqualmie this year doing Friday night skiing too.

Honestly I think I waited too long so pickings will be slim. The K2s will be easier to find, for sure. I'm stopping in at a ski shop tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm just annoyed because places are trying to put me in what they have, not what I need. I don't want 106 powder skis. I want something under 90 width, probably. So I'm just going to have to go in and say what do you have and be prepared to walk out empty handed. I'm pretty sure even the guy online at Curated put me in what they have in stock. He was kind of a douche about my lovely west coast skiing (newsflash, its normally total shit conditions in the Pacific Northwest) when I told him I needed something that can handle crust and ice because he's from the east coast. I realized the mistake we made was going out of bounds between 2 mountains instead of between 2 runs. She literally almost skied off a cliff. Its safer doing the trees within bounds. And with it being spring, there's the potential for a lot of tree wells. Turns out the resort is no longer open midweek, so we didn't go. I'm debating whether my husband will squawk about us going on Easter... I said we should all go and I can teach Ethan, but then I got stink eyed because Malibu Ken hates the cold. But other than that we have too many lacrosse games at odd times and her skis are due back May 1st. I never thought we'd go this far into the season! Normally I am done at the beginning of March. I forked out an extra $150 for "limited" passes next year so we can go up in the mornings, too. I paid $100 for one midweek day ticket, so if I play hooky once its worth it. The only limitation is no Alpental (the supposedly fancy mountain with difficult terrain on weekends), but I would have to find parking anyway, which is nearly impossible unless you get there right at 9 AM. That local hill will be perfect for learning, especially with a magic carpet. I grew up on a tow rope, can't tell you how many gloves I shredded before my parents got me glove guards.

If someone wanted to gift me a tummy tuck I would take it. My abs are destroyed from 2 c-sections. And I'm pissed because I just went to the doctor and I've put on 5 lbs since I started running in November. Doc told me I was down 10 from the previous year but it doesn't feel like it. (He also told me it was water weight, but he also told me to cut my food intake by 1/3 and I about shoved his stethoscope up his ass.) I'm just tired of being the most active 40-year old I know and still 20-30 lbs overweight with fabulous blood work. At this point its all cosmetic.

We are having an epic spring weather cycle the last few days, so Q and I went up today. Today was a day that I could've used some powder skis. We tried going off trail and Q took a trail that I thought looked shady, sure enough, she almost went off a cliff and we had to turn back and take off our skis and walk most of the way back (which was not fun in powder). We stopped at least 2 more skiers from going back there. She was being a cocky little shit and I got really frustrated. She is overconfident and not being safe, so I nixed any more off trail runs. When she wanted to go down a black diamond marked caution (that is normally not marked that way), I nixed that too. I was a party pooper but the powder really wore me out. My legs are sore tonight. I said we might go back out tomorrow or Tuesday since she has 2 more days of spring break. I am trying to take more jumps because I think it will help me with moguls (I still hate them but I can't seem to avoid them). And I still need to see if I can find some new skis at spring prices.

Tami that's because you were blacking out.

I figured I missed it. I came home from volunteering at my kid's school and took a nap the moment I walked in the door.

You guys still doing this?

Strava is used more often by runners and cyclists. But it just uses GPS data. I originally started using it for running. I record an activity on my Garmin watch and it posts it to Strava. Night skiing is done for the season, but they just extended the twilight pass to start at 12pm instead of 2pm. Spring break is next week so the girls are going to hit the slopes. Sunday they are opening Summit East one last time for the season so we are planning on going then, and again midweek. I talked to someone on Curated and narrowed it down to 2 skis for me: K2 Minderbender Ti 88 (what I demoed, but in a shorter length) and Volkl Kenja 88. He confirmed I need a stiffer ski. I hear the Volkls are pretty stiff. I have a feeling I will end up with the K2s just because they are easier to find, and I'm not sure I will like the heavier weight of the Volkls. I am going to call around a few shops tomorrow and see if they have demos of those so I can pick them up Sunday or during the week next week. He confirmed the 163s were too long, he recommended 156 in both skis. No idea what the hell to do for bindings. I also need to pick up some shorter poles, the clinic coach said mine were about 4" too long.

They've been pretty open about the fact that they have an open marriage, so I can see how that joke didn't bother them, but the one about her medical condition did.

I know celebs probably aren't up on all the gossip rags, but I knew about her condition and I'm not exactly a big celebrity follower. He still won Best Actor. They couldn't suddenly switch to the runner up. They could have asked him to leave (and the time to do that would've been immediately following the incident) but he still deserved the award. Being an actor doesn't not require that one be morally perfect (and honestly, how many incidents has Will Smith had leading up to it?). Dude lost his shit, no doubt about that. But it doesn't negate his talent and that otherwise he's been pretty tame outside of his open marriage.

The memes today are great, though.

Good humor punches up. Punching down is bullying. Chris Rock was punching down (woman, illness). Can't they both be in the wrong?

This is happening a lot in our area. I need to get the garage organized so we can park inside.

Ugh our engineering culture is so so toxic. These old guys do everything they can to crush younger "competition" because that's how they see it. I just had a guy who is supposed to be a mentor claim he talked to me about something a few days ago in an attempt to make me look bad because he didn't follow through on what he said he would do. The reality is we discussed this less than 24 hours ago, and he is the one who still hasn't provided the data. If I don't get this next promotion, I'm retiring in place.

We had a PM conversation about ski gear and we thought it would be funny to talk about winter sports with all our friends who live in So Cal and Texas. Seriously, any of you do winter sports? My kid is keeping up with me, guys. I need to get better fast. Or put her back in lessons next year.

I feel like Cereese and I need a place to kvetch about kid stuff. The rest of you with kids or who like kids or just like us are welcome. So many of you may or may not know that we've been trying to figure out what on earth is going on with my youngest since, well, 2 days after he was born. The past year has been a pretty painful experience in going through the wringer trying to get answers. Finally, the last few weeks have felt like progress in getting my son help with medication, IEPs, etc. Today we went for our sleep study follow up and found out that he does indeed have mild sleep apnea, and they believe its something obstructive. I feel so bad! This could also impact his ADHD diagnosis (however, I'm pretty sure he does have it, but this is probably making it worse). I hate the idea that we are probably signing him up for another surgery, but I just want my little guy to be able to live his best life. The other thing I'm worried about is that it may just be reflux related, which brings us back full circle to when he was 2 days old and stopping breathing every time he spit up.