Living on the Edge (of my skis, that is)

So. I am officially A Skier. One who has a season pass and obsessively checks the Weather Channel snow report and gets up at 5 o'clock on a Sunday morning to drive up to Tahoe for the day.

I'm a little upset at all the lying involved in skiing, though. I was totally unprepared for that. First, the Weather Channel lied to me all week, promising snow for the weekend and then failing to deliver. And then my brain lies to me constantly, telling me certain sections of the run are too challenging, but I go out there and DO IT, so you can just SHUT UP ALREADY, BRAIN.

In all, it was a good day. I bit it a couple of times, but the greatest injury was sustained by my elbow in a rather abrupt interaction between it and the back of a metal chair lift. Of course, this was the run on which I was riding the chair lift with an 11-year old member of the ski team who was about to do a timed run down a black diamond course marked with pins, just like downhill skiing at the Olympics. Awesome. My entire elbow was black and blue before dinner last night. Doubly awesome.

For my troubles yesterday, I was rewarded today with the discovery that I am sick. I woke up with a Jersey-girl-who-smokes-three-packs-
a-day voice -- and not the sexy kind, but the "Dude, what is up with your voice?" kind. (Lucky for you, I can talk as much here as I want and it doesn't hurt or sound funny.)

I thought the voice might be the extent of it, and my steady diet of white bread today should have clued me in, but I finally got the memo when getting up off the couch nearly brought me to tears. Apparently all those aches and pains I've been blaming on the skiing (and which, incidentally, have been getting worse as the day progressed, not better) are really my body fighting off infection. And thank goodness, because I was really wondering how I managed to injure my underarms. Even I am not that uncoordinated. Hello, lymph nodes! So nice to see you working hard again! The upshot is that this little disease will peak in a couple of days -- conveniently on the same day that I/we/work is hosting a conference. Triply awesome.

And with this dose of optimistic oversharing, I shall take my leave. Bed calls.