skiing yesterday. wonderful, glorious, snowy ski day. i love skiing in the snow. as long as it's not too windy. which it wasn't, mostly. tahoe snow is nice and dry, fluffy and soft. i never understood that concept of wet snow/dry snow. then i skiied in oregon in very very wet snow. and at the end of the day i looked like i skiied in a monsoon, not a snowstorm. skiing in fresh powder is like skiing on seven-minute icing - the kind with egg whites that has almost a meringue-like texture, but a little thicker. you float over some of it, plow through some of it, and sometimes it eats your skis so that you are knee deep in it. when you are floating over it, an eerie whiteness around you, flakes flying at your goggles, it is quite a surreal experience. you lose some of your concepts of time and space...the tress are whooshing by, but you still feel like you are not really moving. such a wonderful feeling.

on the lifts, i took my goggles off at one point to clean them...thought i saw a star shaped crack on them - which was odd, considering i haden't taken any strange falls, ran into trees, or been hit with someone's flying skis. looking more closely, i discovered it was a snowflake. a perfect snowflake, the kind you cut out of triangles of white paper and tape to the windows in grade school. i couldn't stop looking at it. i don't remember seeing anything like that before. i understood that those white dots in the sky were really snowflakes, and that snowflakes had these symmetrical patterns and all of them were different. but to see one, so tiny, so detailed, so perfect, so amazing. nature is quite a miraculous thing. speaking of flakes, my current favorite flake. (y'all knew this was coming, didn't you?)

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sometimes, really, i wonder if i am really related to my family. they are wonderful, really, and i know my dad wants nothing else then to see his kids happy. but two things happened that made me wonder. mind you, i know better than to open my mouth and question my dad or sister. they make their choices, i make mine. and they are generally respectful of my decisions. however, my dad answered his cell phone during dinner and proceeded to have a conversation on it. while we were eating. i bit my lip. and my sister wants to sell both of her cars to buy a ford expidition. what? hello? i hate cell phones to start out with, but during dinner? damn. and, what, 14 mpg? crazy. i know my mother would've looked distainfully on one answering the phone during dinner....but, i suppose, everything will change. my family has changed. i am very fortunate to have one that cares so much about me. and loves me no matter what. contrary to what i have said here, i love them no matter what.

i do wish dad would leave the phone off during meals and my sister would want and EV-1 instead...'tis life...