Ach, it's come down to this -- blogging on Christmas Eve. I got hit with some bug this week, and I'm still getting over it. Usually everyone in Santa Fe worships fire on Christmas Eve (as we do at select other times of the year as well), but since I'm still recovering I'm staying in.

Dave, for a belated answer to your question about authors of this blog skiing, Santa Fe is at least in part a ski town. We can't compete with the biggest resorts in the country, but we get our share of visitors for our modest mountain (which is far superior to anything east of the Mississippi, to be sure). The elementary schools here have ski programs, where kids can ski at reduced rates one school day per week during the winter. It's quite popular, especially because it means you only go to school four days out of the week for a few months. It's a great deal for the ski resorts (every other ski town in the country that I know of has a similar program) because they hook young skiers for life and put these kids on the slopes during the week, when it's normally slow.

The last time I went skiing was at Taos (which is the best ski resort in the state and can hold its own with the big resorts in other states) last year, the day that the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated. It was interesting the way the news spread -- all the new skiers who descended the mountain were treated to the news, and then when they went back up they spread it to the people they came across.