Didn't we just leave this party?

It's another powder day all over Colorado. And where am I? Back in St. Louis. My brothers don't get home till Friday and my sister has mono, so things are a little boring here at my parents' house. But at least we'll all be enjoying Mt. Warner in one week's time.

I fought the law
Kudos to these students for fighting the good fight, but unfortunately the law is probably not on their side. My newspaper students were thinking of suing our principal and school district after similar prior review/restraint problems last year. Colorado gives my students more legal standing than these kids out in Seattle. Still, I'm glad it didn't have to come to this. Ugh.

Ho ho ho.

Not the same as a powder day
Fifteen shopping days till Christmas. Time to buckle down (knuckle under?) and hit the stores. That's where I'm headed in mere moments. But really, last Saturday was much better. I made it up to Winter Park for my first turns of the year, and frankly I'll be shocked if I ever have a better first day the rest of my life. The resort had reported 13" of fresh in the previous 24 hours. Al and I stuck to the Mary Jane trees to skier's/rider's right of the Sunshine lift nearly all day, which is shocking for early December. I was regularly in the soft stuff up to my knees, with no bottom to hit. Once I was up to my hips. I only hit two rocks all day, which would normally be remarkable on groomed runs this time of year. It was fan-fucking-tastic. So my body will be driving circles in parking lots today while my mind is up around 9,000 ft.

Sags are cool
Speaking of the Headmaster, it's his birthday today. And there are only four shopping days left until my own. Don't just sit there!

Pandora's box

I've so far managed to avoid making this blog too geeky. Well, make that techno-geeky — we've had plenty of music-geeky and edu-geeky. And while it hasn't been terribly gear-geeky yet, that's more of an accident, really.

Anyway, I have a new friend online. Meet Pandora.

In a nutshell, it's a fully custom and "smart" (well, more on that later) online radio station. You start off by picking a band or song you like. I picked U2 for my first station. After the first song, it uses some sort of logic to pick songs it thinks are similar to your tastes. As the songs play, you can give them TiVo-esque thumbs-up and down ratings. Thumbs up tells the system to play more like it. Thumbs down immediately stops the song, apologizes for sullying your computer speakers with such tripe, and promises to never play that song again. Why this isn't already built into iTunes, I have no idea.

So far, it's been an interesting experience. We started off with 80s-era U2 (probably by random), traversed through some British pub-rock, and then somehow it went all hair band on me. The Scorpions and Humble Pie back to back?? Suspect. It might have all gone differently if it started with a newer U2 song, and I imagine as I listen more it'll get better at guessing. Maybe. Regardless, with a free account you can set up 100 stations and switch between them at will, all with different criteria. Maybe we should all start a holiday playlist with "Grandma Got Run-over by a Reindeer?"