1. Fear and crashing correlate positively: the scareder you are, the more you crash.
2. It is possible to fall on your back hard enough to see stars.
3. My father-in-law is nearly 70 and skis like a god. He says only scaredy-cats fall onto their backs.
4. Likewise, the less scared you are, the less you crash. If you grit your teeth and go for it, it helps.
5. It is possible to go from hating skiing to loving it in just three days.
6. The food they serve in the lodge tastes good but makes you fart.
7. If you do enough skiing, you can eat all you want, and drink all the beer and schnapps you want, and not gain weight.
8. No matter how good you think you are, as soon as you congratulate yourself, a 5-year old Austrian child zips past.

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The Black Commentator on Dean.

(An update to this.)
Keeping the United States safe from piano teachers.
This is such a sad thing. Was she in the wrong? It looks that way. Should they let her stay? I think so.
Is it right to seperate her from her husband and child? If only she picked grapes instead.

School vacation next week. In Austria that means you have to go skiing. I got fancy carving skis for Christmas so there’s no escape. Maybe it will be fun, who knows. I will not be blogging during that time. I’ve uploaded a bunch of old Bug comix and hopefully will remember to activate them before I leave. I will be back on the seventh or the eighth of February if all goes well.

I’m the age my father-in-law was when I first met him. I mentioned this to Alpha, and she was all like, “and?”

I met him in the hospital. Alpha had her appendix out. We’d been out for a walk, you see, and she had stomach pains and I took her to the hospital and the doctor said, “you’re pregnant,” and she said, “no, I’m not,” and the doctor said, “then you have appendicitis,” and they operated on her.

I was so bored back then I visited her daily for hours. And her parents dropped by and her father regarded me with suspicion. I sometimes wonder what I’ll do when Beta brings a boy home. I think I’ll show him my knife collection, and then show him where I chop wood in the cellar. “This is my axe,” I’ll say. “It’s nice and sharp,” and I’ll smile like Jack Nicholson.

Then I remember, she’s already brought a boy home and I went upstairs and logged on to the Internet until he left.