In case you're wondering how things are going up in Vermont this week...
We're living in the winter of perfect conditions here in the Northeast. It's been snowing virtually every day. If you don't mind dressing warmly, life has been pretty good. Conditions then warmed up yesterday, and now, I think maybe we're into spring skiing for the rest of the season.
Which is fine, if I'm being honest.
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| Stowe Mountain as seen from a chairlift |
Our last two posts will be reversed this year. We usually write something like a Christmas letter in this space this week and then do a Top Posts entry in the days leading up to New Years Eve. I still want to do that, but I need to think a bit about the State of Casa Cabeza before trying to sit down to write about it. We lived through a chaotic end to this year with much, MUCH more chaos seemingly on the horizon. I'm not totally sure how to sum all that up just yet.
With that in mind, we'll do our Top Posts of 2024 this week, and if you're interested, you can look for my State of Casa Cabeza post at some point next week.
This is a little explainer: Who the Hell do I think I am?
I first published this when I initially joined the Bluesky social network. A lot has happened since then, so I'm re-upping it with an update as of November 2024.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, friends!
I started my social media hiatus on Friday, December 15th, which was about ten days ago. I drove up to the University of Vermont that day to pick up my eldest daughter Hannah, making it easy to leave Facebook and Twitter behind. I'd found myself getting a little too obsessed with seeing reaction to things I'd written, mostly for As For Football, over the previous months. I therefore wanted to break the habit of checking in with the world-at-large.
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| Merry Christmas from Casa Cabeza! |
It had gotten a little too easy to doom-scroll my way through the day, and with that had come a lot of unfiltered bullshit. Too much of what passes for opinion comes from miserable bastards looking to outsource their own unhappiness. I've missed interacting with AFF's Firstie Club, but the cold turkey approach seemed like the best thing for the moment, and here we are.
I've read quite a bit, I've listened to a few audiobooks from my local library, and I've watched a few movies. The beauty of all of this is that I've gotten to do it in the vacuum of my own space, allowing an easier place from which to form my own opinions.
I've been thinking a lot lately about my kids. I've got two girls, both elder teenagers, girls who'd already be married adults in another time and place. Here they are growing up in this crazy world that feels very much like it is losing its direction in some very basic ways. For example, why do I keep reading about women who don't like getting choked during sex?
No. Don't answer that.
I already know the answer.
My daughter Emma and I started watching The Last of Us late last week -- about the time the Giants were getting blown out by the Eagles in the NFC Divisional Round -- and I gotta say that although I am very much enjoying the show, man, it is pure nightmare fuel.
Like, I had a literal nightmare after that first episode.
Sally and I took the kids to St. Thomas for a quick family vacation last week. Needless to say, we took a LOT of pictures. This first set is from the area in and around Water Island.
The end of the year is a time for reflection and re-commitment, for thinking about what worked and what didn't, and how we can improve in the months ahead.
My sense is that 2021 was a lot better for most folks than was 2020, but as we head into yet another year amidst yet another surge of the coronavirus, we are again reminded that we are still a long way from normal. Whatever "normal" means in the year 2022.
Among other things, it seems like the nation's overall psychology has deteriorated. We've spent so much time physically isolated from one another that we've now become emotionally isolated as well. This has not been good for anyone. Somewhere there's an inflection point between physical health and mental health, and as a nation, I feel like we're already teetering.
I know what this means for my family and my career. It's less clear what it means for my writing and/or As For Football.
I've done year-end wrap-ups like this before, but this is the first time that I've ever tried to integrate my writing for AFF with either my social media footprint and/or with my personal blog. It's been a somewhat fraught experience, introducing even more subjectivity into the process than normal. It's never been the case that the "best" posts of the year were necessarily the most widely read, but when we add in the effects of social media influence, we exacerbate the weird, giving potentially widespread voice to some truly random thoughts.
Making this list was therefore something of a balance. Some of it spoke to me. Some of it spoke to you. Some of it was randomly retweeted by the rich and much-more-famous. What can you do? My all-time favorite post on any platform has had just 387 readers since July 2016. I don't know what that means other than that what speaks to me doesn't always speak to all of you.
Anyway. The Top 15 Posts of 2021 are after the jump.
I took Emma to Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday to see AEW Dynamite in person. It's her 16th birthday, and she's been asking to go forever, so we finally went. We had a lot of fun. I finally got a chance to got through and edit some of the pics from the trip on the plane this afternoon, and here we are.
Sally, the girls, and I just got back from a few days in Vermont. I went up with my buddy Josh early Thursday morning, leaving the house at about 5:30 am and driving straight to Okemo Mountain, Vermont. We skied Okemo Thursday under flat, sometimes foggy conditions but had a really good time. The snow was decent if a little sparse in spots, and anyway, there wasn't much ice, so I can't complain. I feel like I rode pretty well. We packed in some 20 runs over the course of an uncrowded Thursday, getting in just under 19,700 vertical feet.
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| Me and Josh at Okemo Mountain |
That absolutely rocked.
Good morning and Merry Christmas, everyone.
As I write this, it's Christmas morning. I'm sitting in a ski lodge just down the road from Mount Snow's Carinthia base listening to the rain. Sally and the girls are asleep in their rooms just a few feet away. We skied Okemo yesterday, finding good snow but lousy visibility in the morning before high-altitude winds hit as the forefront of the current storm. Those blew away the low-lying fog, allowing us to at least see, but they also shut down the lifts running all the way to Okemo’s summit. We had a really good day on the lower half of the mountain, but at age 47, I've reached that stage where it can take quite a few runs to get fully warmed up.
Our tenth and last run was by far my best. Go figure.
We went to Maine last week. I don't think that's a secret. While we were there, Sally and I trekked to the top of Cadillac Mountain to watch the sun rise. Given that this was at 4:00 am on Wednesday, we decided to drive.
We weren't the only ones.
These are my pics. Enjoy!
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| Frenchman's Bay and the Porcupine Islands at first light |
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| Mount Frissell Trail, via AllTrails.Com |
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| From Friday. This is our daily happy hour ritual. |
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| Overlooking the lower part of the mountain from the top of the Little Pico Triple Chair. |
