As is often the case when there’s a long gap between posts here, I’ve been on vacation. Last night I told the notify list that this particular trip was craptastic, but upon further reflection combined with almost a full night’s sleep–damn you, daylight saving time–in my own bed, I’m upgrading my rating to mostly good with scattered craptasticness.

The good:

I got to ski a lot, including a day at Deer Valley that was so great I didn’t even want to stop for lunch (so I didn’t, eating energy bars on the lift instead and inhaling a piece of lemon tart mid-afternoon when we went into a lodge for bathroom break).

I visited a resort I’d never skied before, Sundance, which is charmingly old school and low key.

Six of our group (we were eleven in all, but didn’t spend every day together) shared an amazing dinner at a steakhouse in Heber City, ending with the biggest pieces of chocolate cake I have ever seen. I swear one was as big as our friend Dan’s head.

I saw some ski dogs, including one running down a trail in front of his patroller looking like he was having the best time ever.

The bad:

My powder skis were destroyed at some point between checking them in with Northwest in Detroit and picking them up from Delta in Salt Lake City; the hard case they were in was run over or dragged or crushed or some combination thereof.

Because we were the last people to join the trip we got the short end of the sleeping arrangements stick. No bedroom for us; we slept in the not-at-all-private kitchenette/living room on one side of the unit, where the cabinets and drawers were so full of dishes and pots and pans and utensils that there was no place to put my stuff, and there wasn’t enough open space anywhere to just lay the suitcase flat and live out of it for the week (I ended up putting clothes in the refrigerator, reading material in the microwave, and toiletries in the dishwasher). The pullout sofa mattress was so small and saggy that sleeping on the floor on the camping pads our hosts had brought along was the best option we had. I hate to use my age as an excuse, but I really do think I’m too old to be sleeping on a tile floor after skiing all day, camping pad or no camping pad. But I managed. Sure, I banged my knees on the dishwasher a few times when I tried to roll over in “bed” and hit my head on the refrigerator once when I was rearranging my lumpy pillows and had to reach up and grab the edge of the sink to haul myself upright some mornings, but I survived.

More good:

Delta replaced my destroyed skis and bag with brand new ones, which really impressed me, as at best I expected them to pay me the fair market value for the old stuff. Mr. Karen’s powder skis somehow survived the case crushing, needing only minor repairs.

More bad:

One of our group came home on crutches after snapping a ligament in her knee on Friday.

Northwest lost my new ski bag on our trip home yesterday. That’d be the bag with my new powder skis in it and Mr. Karen’s beloved Volants which had so recently escaped destruction by baggage mishandling.

More good:

I actually lost weight on the trip (only a half a pound, but still).

Northwest found my ski bag and delivered it to me at the office this afternoon. It appears to be undamaged.

I took 195 pictures, but am only inflicting 30 of them on the internet.