nerd’s eye view

Administrivia: Auf Wiedersehen

March 1, 2005 – 11:27 pm | by nerd's eye view

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Schneebericht
We went on our last ski of the season yesterday. It was bitter, the high was indeed -9C as predicted, but anywhere there was a breeze the cold took giant bites out of us. We started out in to the wind and less than 1k in to the ski, I thought my ears were going to snap right off. Luckily when we cleared the ridge, the wind was totally blocked and because of the bright sun reflecting on the flawless snow, it was like standing on a mirror on a summer day. This phenomenon of winter has never ceased to amaze me. No matter how cold it is, if you can find a location out of the wind and in the sun, you get the feeling you could strip down to your t-shirt and still be too warm.

Winter is predicted to last another month here, at minimum; some are saying there will still be snow on the ground at Easter. It’s hard to leave the skiing behind when it is so ideal. In the many years I’ve been spending the winters here I’ve acquired a vast vocabulary to descibe the quality of the snow and I find myself at a shortage of words to describe the sheer perfection of the conditions this season. (I know this comes as an agonizing bit of news to my Pacific Northwest snow-loving friends who have been looking at bare ground for over a month now.)

Chores
Today I have nothing but chores to do, boring stuff like make backups of my photos and freelance projects, pack, get that package shipped off… yawn. We’re going to have lunch with the family - semmelknoedl with eierschwarrmelsauce (bread dumplings in chantrelles and cream) - one of my favorite Austrian dishes. We have to leave at a ridiculous time in the morning to get to the airport in time for my 6am flight out of Salzburg, so it’s going to be an early night. It’s getting light early, though, and if the weather holds another day, the views from the plane should be spectacular. There are worse ways to close your winter out than to take a sunrise flight over the Austrian alps.

The blogosphere
I’m going to park this thing right here. If you’ve linked directly to this blog, I encourage you to change that link to my home page at www.nerdseyeview.com - that way the link has a better chance of not going stale.

What’s going to happen this spring? Your guess is as good as mine. Possibilities include a camping trip in the American Southwest, extensive sewer repairs to the Seattle homestead, a contract at Microsoft, building raised garden beds for the lettuces, playing the uke at Folklife, and things not yet thought of. If you want to see how things play out, you’ll be able to read about it here.

Auf Wiedersehen!
As always, thanks for reading. Thanks for the links and the comments and the emails. Don’t be a stranger, okay?