I don’t have a particularly good explanation for the slow pace of my journal updates lately. I’m more stressed and less satisfied than I used to be, but on balance life is still pretty good. I just don’t have the time, anymore, to sustain the kind of steady creative burn and extroverted social life I had when I was working from home at a job I had long since mastered. I just haven’t felt like much of a rockstar lately, and a lot of my inspiration to write here comes from thoughts about or progress made on creative projects.

Radian has become my primary creative outlet; working on it in my free time seems to provide enough programming-related stimulation to keep me from grinding to a halt at work. It is a big project, though, and I’m sure it will be at least another year before I have anything ready to call “finished”. The core design has been coming together well, so I am starting to feel more comfortable talking about it. Perhaps I will start digging into that project in more depth here.

The weekend started badly – getting home from work I spent an hour in backed-up traffic, on my motorcycle, in the rain – but after I got dried off and warmed up I ran a few errands and then met up with Ava, Adam, Doug, Michael, and eventually Jacqueline, and had fun banging around downtown. We talked and relaxed and unwound and drank a lot. It was good.

Next morning I started plowing through my to-do list. It felt good and I got a lot done. I eventually met up with Ava and we wrapped some Christmas presents. My family started doing a gift-exchange a couple of years ago – there are so many of us that all buying presents for each other is sort of ridiculous. Joel is still young enough to appreciate a heap of presents, though, so we’re each getting him something. It’s so much fun to shop for him; he’s interested in all the same things I was excited about when I was his age.

Saturday afternoon Cat organized a last-minute “let’s hang out in the basement and light a fire and drink wine” thing that turned into a really nice, happy, warm little party. Eventually she decided to call it an early birthday party, so we stuck candles into a plate of cookies and sang a round of “Happy Birthday.” Snow started falling around nine and continued for hours. We opened up all the curtains and watched the world turn white. Barry had plans to go skiing the next day, and planned to leave early – he ended up staying up til three with the rest of us, but along the way he talked me into joining him. So, a couple hours after going to bed, I bounced back out again, threw on all my gear, and headed for Crystal.

It was a terrific day: still early season, of course, with rocks and twigs peeking through here and there, but almost no ice, and after last night there was plenty of powder. Barry, Michael, and I showed up at the lift not long after they’d opened it, headed for the top, and started skiing. High winds made the peak unbearable – cold enough that Michael and Barry both developed some frostbite – so we spent the day on the mid slopes; stretching ourselves out and letting our muscles remember how it all works. We crossed paths with Chris and Colleen all afternoon, and eventually ran into Kevin, Elan, and Brady at the lodge, but mostly it was the three of us.

I am happy to report that I am no longer limited by my equipment. The new skis will go as fast and hard as I can push them, and they clearly have more to offer than I have skill to use. They go fast on the groomed runs, don’t bog down in the powder, carve easily, and don’t flop around on the rough stuff. This season it will be time to focus on proper technique. Maybe I should look into taking some lessons.

The air is painfully cold and the roads are icy, so I’ve been driving my Rover to work. I wonder how much of the winter will offer weather conducive to motorcycling?