Valentines Day 2009

As Patty will confirm, Jimmy really knows how to do Valentines Day right!

We skied for a couple of hours in the morning. Conditions were decent. Not too cold. The fresh man-made snow was a bit odd. Some spots a bit sticky, and others somewhat icy. It made for some challenging runs. Cameron only wiped me out once getting off a lift.

After feeding the kids early, we headed to the Cuckoo's nest. We've been meaning to stop in there for two years. Turns out it's a nice place. Not quite the character of the kinds of traditional Pennsylvania taverns I prefer, but very pleasant. The interior was fairly modern, recently renovated, no odd smells.

I think everyone in the bar (but us) knew each other. Shortly after we sat down at the bar, one of the lead locals walked down to the end of the bar and pulled twice on a chord hanging overhead. Pulling the chord blew a whistle that made a coo-coo sound. He did this to indicate that he was buying a round for the bar. Very nice guy. He and another local explained that they'd been partying all day on a local frozen lake. As it turns out, it was our lake, where our beach is. Apparently a bunch of locals gather there every year on the Saturday of President's Day weekend, to ice-fish, snow-mobile, ride four-wheelers, drink beer and the like. The news this year was that the lake was very icy. Yes, the frozen lake was icy. Who would have thought! Turns out what this means is that whereas a frozen lake is often snow-covered and therefore not especially slippery to walk on, this year it's a sheet of ice because there has been no snow since the recent warm weather and rain glazed it over. So slick that our new pal didn't even bring his snowmobile out, just his 4-wheelers.

Also of interest is what the folks needed to do to be able to walk on the slick ice -- they screw machine screws through the bottoms of their shoes!

We didn't talk too much about racing and the '500 after I made two mistakes: mentioned that we're Indy-Car fans and that I was from Indiana and hence something of a Jeff Gordon fan.

We had a nice quesadilla and a couple of drinks and then were on our way. We'll need to take the kids there to play pool and have lunch one of these days.

Next stop: the Summit, the restaurant at our ski lodge. At this point, I was not really hungry, Patty said I looked like I should switch from beer to diet coke. When we sat down, I didn't feel sick, and the Dite Coke tasted ok. But, when Patty suggested that we split a prime-rib-pesto pannini, something went badly wrong with my stomach.

Less than 3 minutes later, I was back from the restroom to report that I had been sick. Happy V-Day, Sweetie!


Anyhow, we went home; I went to bed, and Patty made herself Cup-O-Noodles for her Valentine's Day dinner.

I got plenty of sleep, and have felt fine ever since. Some sort of bug is clearly to blame, as JP strarted throwing up around 11:00. He's not been as lucky as I -- he's been sick about 8 times since.

If he's feeling better this afternoon, we may take the kids to the Cuckoo's Nest today to watch the '500.