New Skis and Chocolate Fondue

I spent the first bit of last week feeling a little under the weather. But it wasn't until Thursday that the cold kicked in full force. So I had the somewhat surreal experience of being in the middle of a no-limit hold 'em tournament, with a pretty large stack of chips in front of me, when my nose started bleeding and the pressure in my sinuses mounted to the point that all I could think was "please let me bust out soon so I can go sleep on the couch". Of course, once you think that, the game's over.. I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.

But it turns out that maybe it wasn't a cold after all. A few days later, when Andrew was at his conference and I was cleaning the house so I could cook (long story, but once I get to cleaning it's gotta be the whole house or nothing, and the kitchen has to have some clean surface before I can cook), I unearthed another possible explanation. See, the ferrets have a little cage they sleep in when we have guests over and don't want them (the ferrets) underfoot. And in that cage is a bowl of the ferrets' favorite food: kitten kibble. The ferrets love the kitten kibble because it has a really high fat content. The cat also likes the kitten kibble, probably for the same reason. But if the cat gets into the kitten kibble, he'll eat too much of it in one sitting and will get sick, so we normally keep the ferrets' cage door closed even if the ferrets aren't in it. Anyway, a few days ago, the cage door happened to be open, and the cat had apparently snuck into the cage (bear in mind that this requires significant motivation on the part of the cat, because of the relative sizes of said cat and cage) and eaten the whole bowl of kibble. He had then crawled a little ways away before puking in a hidden corner. So by the time I found it, the mess was pretty foul, and there was mold growing on it.. so maybe the little mold spores had something to do with my "cold".

Anyway, by Monday I was feeling tons better, and the house was pretty darn clean. It is, like, absolutely mold-free. Too bad I had to spend Monday night by myself because of Andrew's conference... anyway, I picked up some champagne and chocolate in anticipation of celebrating Valentine's Day a little bit late. But when Andrew got home on Tuesday, he had come down with a cold too. So our plans were foiled yet again. We finally had time tonight, though, so I made chocolate fondue. (The ratio is 4 oz chocolate (a mix of different kinds of chips) to 1/2 cup milk, melted slowly; then you dip marshmallows or strawberries or kit-kats in it and enjoy.)

Hopefully Andrew will be fully recovered by Friday, because we're going skiing again. This will be the inagural run of our new skis. Ski shopping is way more work than I remember it being. (I mean, I haven't ever been the actual purchaser of skis - there were so many sets in my parents' house I just assumed there was a ski fairy.) First we went to the REI near our house, because they were having a winter clearance sale. We found skis for Andrew no problem (Omni 4.5s), but they had no skis short enough for me, except for little kid skis. Then we went on a whirlwind tour of other bay area REIs and ski shops, but it seemed as if there were no skis shorter than 167 to be found. (Seriously, do only people taller than 5'7" ski?) Finally, we stopped at the ski shop in San Mateo, which had a huge selection. Not only did they have the model/size I thought I was looking for (k2 burnin' luv in 153) but had something way cooler - Atomic M11's in a 152, seriously on sale. These promise to be amazingly fast and versatile skis, and I am sooo psyched up to try them out.