is it Friday yet?

This has been a long week.

It’s only Tuesday.

I’m currently in Pittsburgh on a week-long business trip. I flew up here Sunday night with two co-workers, and we met another co-worker from our West Coast office at the airport. We all piled into the white limo ("What…" Joe laughed, "are we going to prom?") for a hot and steamy ride to the Westin. No, not that kind of hot and steamy. The temperature was set way too high and we were all dressed for the cold.

Anyway, it’s been a long week. I actually worked out last night. Hey, I had nothing else to do. I got on the treadmill for 45 minutes and was pleased that I was able to run/walk without aggravating my knee. I also did some dumbbell routines for my biceps and shoulders.

Today I am sore.

Snowboarding over the New Years holiday was a lot of fun! We went to Solitude our first day out, which was great and very uncrowded, but their chairlift exits are just evil. All of the chairlifts end with really scary drop-offs that pretty much launched me into the snow every time I got off.

The next day, we tried Park City, which I LOVED back in March. However, on this day (Friday), the wind was blowing, like, 40 miles an hour and the snow had formed into these tiny little cat litter-like pellets. So as I sat on the lift, I was getting severe windburn and repeatedly shot with snow on any exposed part of skin. We didn’t even make it to the lift we wanted to go to, because the winds were too strong and the conditions were so bad you couldn’t see ten feet in front of you. The wind kept catching me and nearly blowing me over…it was so annoying! At one point, I fell flat on my butt and just started crying…not because it hurt, but because I was so freaking irritated and over the experience. I tried to wave at Guy to go on, I would meet him at the bottom, but of course he kept yelling at me to come on, we need to get down, because he was worried about me getting really bad windburn.

I realize that I’m making that day sound like total hell, and it was for a little while. After lunch, things got a lot better. Guy had scouted out another part of the mountain which we all tried in the afternoon. He also bought me a new face mask and balaclava to keep the wind out. The weather calmed down a lot and we ended up having a lot of fun! Guy makes me sick though…this was only his second snowboarding trip and he’s already doing a superb job of linking his turns…and he’s even doing jumps and landing!

So, for any of you who were wondering, we decided not to go to Vegas for NYE. We knew we couldn’t hang out in our hotel room like we had originally planned to (before we knew the rooms were barely big enough for the bed, let alone luggage, snowboarding gear, and four adults). There wasn’t much going on in Salt Lake City, and it was hard to find out if there was anything worth driving to Park City for either. So Wendy and I spent a few hours calling around to all the hotels in town trying to find a suitable suite to rent for the evening. Of course, they were all either booked or not worth the money we would spend. Wendy did try to work her magic and get us an $880-per-night suite at a discounted rate, but no luck…by the time we got there, the room had been rented.

Suckers.

Guy and I ended up upgrading our hotel room to a suite in the same hotel. We moved all our stuff over and Howard and Wendy came over that night to hang out. I was pissed when I realized that I had missed East Coast’s midnight because I’d gotten so used to Mountain Time. The highlight of the evening was probably lighting the monster sparklers I had bought earlier and holding them outside the window, only to realize that they were the longest-lasting, heaviest smoke-producing sparklers that could possibly be legal. The room started to fill with smoke and we had a few moments of "oh crap! open another window!" and "the fire alarm is going to go off!"

It was funny.

Saturday we hung out and rested all day. We went to the Gateway, this massive outdoor mall in downtown Salt Lake, and shopped and had smoothies. Sunday, we had to check out of the hotel, and we headed to Snowbird. Howard and Wendy’s flight left before ours, so they were going to do a half-day and then head straight to the airport. Once we got to Snowbird, we waited in line for the tram to the top for around 30 minutes. I was not feeling very well, and standing up in that crammed tram, with the increasing heat and the swaying motion back and forth as we crawled up the mountain, made me feel like puking. I was glad to finally exit the tram at the top, but — and I should have learned my lesson by now (can you say Whistler??) — going down from the top on a snowboard was NOT fun. Some of better trails were closed due to the wind and snow. The blues we ended up on were not very wide, too flat, and the zig-zagged a lot, which is not good when it’s snowing so much that you can’t tell the difference between air and snow. As in, if you don’t make a hard turn when you’re supposed to, you could find yourself tumbling down a double black diamond and not even know what hit you.

Once we finally made it to mid-mountain, we had a ton of fun. The weather down there was perfect and we got a few runs in before Howard and Wendy had to leave. Guy and I hung around for a bit and tried to take more cool action photos. On our last pass through the terrain park, I tried another jump…one much smaller than the one I totally busted on in Park City in March. (The one I had to see a doctor about to get my tailbone x-rayed when the pain wouldn’t go away months later!)

Well, I SUCK at jumps. I realized that I really have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing in terms of technique and form. I landed flat on my ass, and it was such a baby jump too! Oh well…I want to get some good instructions on doing a jump (and landing it), so maybe I’ll take an intermediate lesson or something the next time I go.

I feel for Brad and Jen.

I know what’s it like to be part of a relationship that everyone looks up to and holds up as the "ideal" relationship, and to have that relationship end to everyone’s shock and dismay.

I just hate it that they have to go through the situation in such a public way. I really hope they are able to take time for themselves and get some peace.

I used to think that marriage was "forever." As in, the real deal forever. But you know, that’s just not always the case. Sometimes marriages take a pause or even end. That’s no news to any of you, I’m sure. We hear about divorces all the time. It doesn’t mean the two people never loved each other, or they didn’t respect their marriage, or that they are bad people. When it happens to people we are close to, it’s often very saddening and disturbing. It can sometimes freak people out about their own seemingly healthy relationships. "If so-and-so and so-and-so can’t make it work, who can?! We’re doomed!" The truth is, when it happens to your own relationship, trust me…you are more saddened and disturbed than anyone on the outside could ever be.

Two of Guy’s friends have gotten engaged recently. It seems like the holidays are a popular time to get engaged, since I got an e-mail from a local restaurant group asking me "Just got engaged?" They wanted me to rent out their restaurants for a rehearsal dinner or reception. There are huge bridal shows at this time of year. There’s a wedding magazine as the only periodical in my hotel room. Why?? It seems like I have been bombarded with wedding and engagement stuff lately. I even had a dream that Jason and Lisa were getting married, and they wanted me to be in the wedding. Weird!

I have found myself asking the type of questions you ask yourself when you’ve been with someone a while and you see the relationship lasting a long time…as in, "forever." Could we be married? Could we have kids? I guess the answer is always we could, but the better question is will we want someday want to? Like, really, really want to, not feel like we’re supposed to because we’ve been dating for x number of days and living together for x number of days and it’s just about that time and our parents are ready for grandbabies.

Sadly, I think that’s what a lot of people end up doing. They get married, buy a house in the burbs, have a kid or two, because they think it’s what they really want to do! But at some point, they get a wake-up call in some form or another, and they realize that maybe they didn’t really want to trade their fulfilling career to be a stay at home mom, or maybe that cute girl you fell in love with has grown into a woman you’re not meant to spend the rest of your life with after all.

Sheesh, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I need to go to bed and rest my weary self. I guess I just feel really thankful that I’m a lot more aware of what I want out of my life these days, rather than just going through the happy motions of a twentysomething living in 21st century USA. It’s very empowering when you realize that you have a choice in just about everything that happens in your life. Seriously, almost everything in life is up to you and you alone. Sure, sometimes you are naive or ignorant or just plain stupid and you aren’t capable of making the right choices, but you learn from that.

Aaagh…I’m soooo rambling and sleepy now. What has gotten into me? I was honestly thinking all these sappy miss-you thoughts about Guy, and I somehow ended up in divorce and dismay?!

I guess this is a sign that I need to write in my blog more often, lest I wander off info the neverending post that just won’t ever end because I can’t seem to shut myself up and what am I saying here anyway? and….