Look at me keeping up with this...

So skiing is the best sport ever. I'm not too shabby either. I've been thrown down my share of black diamonds now in a couple feet of powder and I've held my own. No broken bones or mishaped limbs yet. However I'm taking good advice involving some groin icing.

One of the more interesting hobbies I've taken up in the past week or two is conversation with whatever random person I end up on a lift with. It's amazing how many people are my age, are from back East, and are taking a year off from school. I've met several different people from New Jersey, many of who live a few miles from my house. Unlike myself, most of these people were lucky enough to know someone already in this area. Housing and a social life came much more easily.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty proud of myself for what I've accomplished this year. Most of my major accomplishments in life have almost always involved academics. However, I have not done one academic thing since I've been out here (with the exception of "saying" I'm going to grad school next year). I decided not to live in New Jersey, decided that Colorado sounded cool, found a place to live, drove on out here, got a job, am currently holding a steady income, making lots of friends, experiencing new things, skiing almost every day, and I'm truly happy as a result. I feel very liberated. It's as though I've been given the realization that I have the power to steer my life in any direction I choose. It's pretty damn cool. Funny, because I could've done these things all along.


I remember thinking to myself this Summer, that if I pulled this off, I was damn good. Ha.

Thanksgiving Festivities

Today was my first Thanksgiving not spent with my family. Going into it, I was a bit bummed, knowing that I wouldn't be watching football with my Grandad, making gravy with my Grandmom, and fighting with my brothers. But I ended up having one of the best Thanksgivings I can remember. A bunch of my friends from the Brewery came over and we ate a ton of amazing food and boozed on mimosas the entire day. I haven't laughed that hard since, well, a long time.

I feel like I'm finally settling in and that I can call this place Vail my home. I have some great friends, a fun job, and I ski almost every day. What's not to like?

I won't be back to Jersey for Christmas either. Regardless of how many people grace the beer pong table that day, Christmas will be the hardest. It's my favorite holiday and to think about not spending it with my family kills me. What makes it worse is that I have to work double time in the couple weeks around it. Which means working all day Christmas Eve and New Years Eve (aka my birthday) and not skiing for a week due to blackout dates. I guess it's a small price to pay for my lifestyle this year though.

It looks like I'm finally getting a new roomate in a few days. I guess I can't walk around naked anymore.

Vivid Dreams

I'm not very creative, and I usually can't think of witty sayings or comebacks on the spot. I'm not inventive and I'm not a great problem solver. However, my dreams will surpass yours any day.

My dreams usually consist of very detailed traumtic events that I could never come up with if my subconcious wasn't running the show. I find I'll wake up and have to take a few minutes to make sure that the dream didn't actually happen. People have told me that I dream more when I'm stressed (they've also told me that I'm crazy). But here I am, in laid-back ski country, and they're just as wild as ever.

For instance, I used to have dreams while at Penn St about certain science professors (which shall remain nameless so I don't get arrested or something). I had dreams that these professors would actually be trying to kill me. There were characters (usually my friends), rising actions, exciting incidents, detailed plots, but usually no resolutions. I'd wake up in a sweat and dread the next few classes as a result. Sure, these could be contributed to stress. That makes absolute sense. What does not make sense is that I had another dream a couple nights ago that one of those professors was trying to kill me again. Only this time I was fighting back with snowballs (?????).

Could it be impending Grad/Medical School stress? Perhaps. I don't want to think about what my dreams will be like when I'm actually in Medical School. Someone's going to have to tie me down.

I sound like a crazed manic (ha ha ha), but not all of my dreams are horrible. They're all just incredibly intense. I'll have wonderful dreams about friends, family, skiing, and life in general. And they're just as detailed as the murderous rampage dreams.

It doesn't matter what I'm thinking about before I go to bed. All that matters is what's on the mind of my subconscious at the time (oxymoron?). Perhaps I should start a dream journal. Some are so detailed, I bet I could publish a book and make some actual money off these things. Who wouldn't want to read something about your physiology professor trying to poision you and your friends at the HUB?

And on a completely unrelated note now, I miss Panda Mondays and feeding the fish.

So much for being unique

So I've decided to give in to one of the Internet trends I swore I wouldn't. Online journalism. But it's not Facebook, so I'm still OK with it. Plus, I find it's a new procrastination to Grad School applications. (Why do you require 8 essays Drexel??)

I don't expect to keep up with this, nor do I expect any highly profound epiphanies to come of this. But it seemed like a good thing to start on a boring Monday night after a couple glasses of wine. I can only hope that it helps me put some of my own scattered thoughts together. That's what this year's for, right?

As for now, for those who are unaware of my situation, I am currently living in Avon, Colorado. A stone's throw away from one of the most renowned ski resorts in the country, Vail. I could not imagine a more beautiful place. After graduation from Penn State this past May, I realized that school was not an option for September. Besides the fact that I had not applied anywhere, and no where would really want me anyway, I couldn't bring myself to accept that I was ready for another 10 years of school (including Medical School, residencies, and all that jazz). So, seeing that I did not want to spend another year in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, I high-tailed it out in my brand new Mitsubishi Outlander (love you Dad) towards the colorful state. I had a best friend with me which made the drive all that more feasible, along with the stop in breathtaking Michigan. However, after dropping him off at Denver International Airport a few days later, I was on my own, in a really big state, where I knew no one except my 23 year old male roomate whom I had met on the Internet a couple months before I got out here. The first couple weeks were some of the loneliest in my life, and I don't think I've ever been quite as terrified as I was during that time. However, I'm still alive (no my roomate did not kill me) and I have a job (at a brewery no less). I left amazing lifelong friends and my entire family, but I still maintain I made the right decision with coming out here. Hell, what's 2000 miles, right?

I'll more than likely end up on the East Coast next year due to academic reasons. If I can't live in the mountains, I don't want to be in the Midwest. I'm coming to terms with that decision, and this is even before ski season has hit. I'll just have to wait until I'm 65 years old when I'm a rich doctor and the kids have left the house to buy a 20 million dollar home on the side of a mountain out here. It'll be worth it in the end.

It snowed a foot today and there's supposed to be more as the week goes on. Vail opens its lifts Friday and you can be sure I'll be one of the idiot locals buying a one day pass because my season one hasn't come in yet.

O, and I finally bought a snow shovel.