Yesterday had a theme. And that theme was narrowly escaping death. Most of the death-escaping was on the slopes of the Canaan Valley ski resort in West Virginia (new state to add to my list, woo-hoo!), where I went for my first-ever skiing experience with Geoffrey and Megan and David, the latter two being good friends from Furman who live here now. Those two have skiied a lot, so they taught Geoffrey and me the craft. And excellent teachers they truly were, very patient, lots of good tips. But man, I'm pretty bad at skiing. I fell. A lot. Which was OK, really. The snow was relatively soft, and I never hurt myself too much in any of my many spectacular falls. But the getting up was tough, thought I was going to rip my arms out of their sockets pushing up so hard. The near-death theme comes in because many of the falls were self-induced as I was careening toward trees or steep drop-offs. Also thought I was going to slam into the lodge when we stopped for lunch, but I managed to stop without tumbling that time. Which is good since, you know, the lodge has windows. What I learned from skiing is that I don't like propelling my body through space at high speeds if I'm not shielded by car, or plane, or train, or whatever. Which kind of defeats the purpose of skiing, yes. So it might be the end of my skiing career, but I had fun anyway and am very glad I gave it a try.

The other aspect of the narrowly escaping death theme is the Great I-66 Spinout of 2003. It started to snow as we were returning from our trip last night, and David was driving. David is a wonderful person, dear friend. But he drives like an idiot. Preceding the GI66S'03, he'd been careening down curvy mountain roads at, say, 65 mph with nary a slowdown for, you know, curves. So already I'm nervous to the point of getting the shakes. Then, on 66, we hit a patch of ice going 60 (the speed limit, yes, but probably not an appropriate speed whilst one is driving in almost blinding snow). We fishtail a little, and then just completely lose all control of the car and careen all over the place, finally coming to a stop on the shoulder, conveniently turned completely around and facing oncoming traffic. How we didn't (a) flip over, given we were in an SUV, (b) fall over the guard rail and into a ravine, or (c) get vivisected by an 18-wheeler, I'll never know. But oh, it was scary. Seemed to last forever. Think I might have even gotten a little of that old time religion in that 3 seconds, if you know what I mean. But we lived, once more outwitting death. Shooooo.

Today's theme, on the other hand, is soreness. Pretty much every muscle. Yup, skiing takes it out of you. I've been lumbering around all day and gritting my teeth when I try to cross my legs. Or brush my teeth. Or type. Hopefully a nice hot bath and another good night's sleep (and much, much Advil) will fix me right up.

Terror alert level up to orange today, surreal. Especially when not backed up by substantive information. What should we be afraid of, exactly? Oh, everything, really? OK, good. Thanks for the governing, there, government. Anyway, be careful folks, be safe.

Shout-out to job-interviewing Marcus. Better find a place with a guest room in Charleston. Shout-out also to Will, who is an older, wiser man as of yesterday. Insert old-joke here. :) Shout-out to Rich, whose dabbling in stand-up comedy surprises no one. I know he'll be so great and I hope he will give me money when he's all rich and hangin' at the Grammies and stuff. And finally, shout-out to my plant, Killer, who I've had since senior year of college and who's starting to add to his massive girth again. AND, he has a spawn in a different pot who is also growing like, well, I'd say a weed but that'd be insulting. But go Killer, whatta plant.

LISTENING TO: SLOBBERBONE/Slippage. Wanted this CD a long time, finally a friend bought it and let me borrow. It's good stuff. Kinda Old 97s-ish but harder. Yes, indeed, a dozen tracks of quirky alt-country/rock goodness.