My mom sent this to me the other day. We have made three ski trips to Vail, so we’re familiar with the resort and this lift. When you set aside the danger this guy was in, and consider the fact that he was safely rescued, there is nothing left to do but laugh. This is hilarious. I am so embarrassed for him.
From The Smoking Gun:
Skier Suffers Exposure
Man left dangling upside down, pantsless after Vail lift mishap
JANUARY 6–In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado’s ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning.The January 1 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier, 48, and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail’s Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift’s fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding.
The Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair’s botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair. In a statement released this afternoon, Vail Resorts, which operates the ski area, reported that the skier was not injured after being “suspended for approximately seven minutes.” The press release did not explain how the mishap occurred, only that “the man was caught on the chair.”
OK, so there’s the story. Are you ready for the pictures? (YES, there are PICTURES!–snapped by fellow skiers.) This poor guy is probably cursing the invention of the digital camera and camera phones. And, well, the internet.
Can you first imagine this happening to you? Not only are you hanging upside down up high on a ski lift, being held up only by your ski and your pants, for SEVEN (possibly up to 15??) minutes… but you’re also giving everyone quite the show! And if that weren’t bad enough, you log onto the internet the next day and see these photos, and you know it’s YOUR ass everyone in the free world is now looking at. Poor guy, he’s probably traumatized.
Interestingly enough, it looks to me like it’s possible he was not wearing any actual undies (for better or worse, the photos are much larger on The Smoking Gun). It looks like thermal “underwear” or even just the lining of his ski pants. I’m guessing he’ll rethink that decision the next time he hits the slopes.
And in case you’re skeptical, this story is absolutely real. In addition to the initial story of this poor guy’s mishap, there is now a follow-up story circulating. One of the people who snapped some of these photos was a professional photographer for a company called Sharpshooters. The company hires photographers to take pics of people at ski resorts all over the country. This particular photographer (Marty Odom) was not on duty, and was simply enjoying a day off with his family. He snapped the pics with his own camera on his own time and yet Sharpshooters has told him he is “suspended indefinitely” because they feel that the photos are inappropriate. Amazing, huh?
A few years ago, I read Kristin Gore’s first novel, Sammy’s Hill. I don’t think it’s any secret I enjoy politics, and I can also appreciate chick lit. Those two “hobbies” are combined in Sammy’s Hill, and came together once again for Sammy’s House.
Since there was quite a bit of time between my reading the first and second books, I didn’t remember a lot about Sammy’s Hill when I decided to buy Sammy’s House. I just remembered that I enjoyed it. So I figured I read the first one, I’ll read the second one, too.
In the first book, we learn that Sammy is a twentysomething new-to-the-scene healthcare advisor for a up-and-coming United States Senator. Now, in the second book, she’s back, but as a junior level staffer in the White House, where she works as a healthcare advisor to the Vice President of the United States.
The two main stories of focus in this book are 1) her job, and 2) her relationship with her boyfriend, Charlie. Charlie is a Washington Post reporter whose beat is–you guessed it–politics. Their relationship changes, for better or worse, when Charlie is transferred to the New York City bureau, and they suddenly find themselves in a long-distance relationship. With all of that in her personal life, Sammy has a lot to juggle once a scandal begins unfolding in the White House. Stressful work + stressful personal life = trouble for Sammy, who is (as you quickly learn) quite quirky.
In terms of chick lit, beach reads–whatever you want to call them–I thought Sammy’s House had a plot that definitely kept me turning the pages. However, I did find myself annoyed with Gore’s writing style a couple of times. I didn’t remember this from the first book, but perhaps it was just so long ago that I had forgotten. Anyway, in Gore’s attempt to make Sammy lovably neurotic and paranoid, we are often subjected to the running, rambling dialogue in Sammy’s head (the book is written in first person from Sammy’s point of view).
And sometimes I would just think: OK, I get that Sammy is unique. You don’t have to beat me over the head with it. Sometimes, paragraphs and paragraphs of rambling thoughts really don’t add anything to the story. Also, I’d feel like Gore was repeating herself sometimes, trying to remind readers of things that were already discussed earlier in the book, but to the point of excess. OK, yes, I REMEMBERED THAT ALREADY. NO NEED TO GO INTO SO MUCH DETAIL. By the end, I started to wonder if these were things that were actually in the first book that I just happened to remember (hence the reason she was repeating them), but I really don’t think so.
Anyway, one of the best books I ever read? No way. Still an entertaining read? Yes.
As always, if you’ve read it, feel free to discuss in the comments.
I was first introduced to spaghetti squash when I was on Weight Watchers a few years ago. When striving for low-point meals, variety can be hard to come by when you’re a picky eater like I am. But spaghetti squash sounded like something I’d like, so we gave it a try.
After that, we made it pretty often. Since then, it has sort of fallen off our dinner radar a bit, and we went a long time without having it. Last week, when we were picking up the butternut squash to use for our butternut squash fries, we decided to pick up a couple spaghetti squash as well.
On New Year’s Eve, we decided to make it so we could have a light meal before going to our party (and I’m just now getting around to posting it). It occurred to me that there are probably a lot of people who aren’t familiar with spaghetti squash, so I figured I’d blog about it, even though it’s not really a recipe.
Spaghetti squash is extremely simple to make. All you have to do is cut it in half, and scoop out the guts and seeds in the middle. Then, place each half into a baking pan, cut side down. Bake on 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. You’ll know it’s done if you run a fork over the flesh and it very easily starts shredding into “spaghetti.”
The consistency, however, is a bit different than actual spaghetti. It’s supposed to have a little bit of a “bite” to it, so if it’s a little bit on the crunchy side, it doesn’t mean it’s undercooked.
It’s obvious how this squash got it’s name.
There are many different ways to serve spaghetti squash. Our favorite way is to treat it just like spaghetti noodles, and eat it with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese.
It’s actually also quite good on its own. A little parmesan cheese, maybe a little olive oil or butter/margarine… yum. I’m sure there are many other ways to eat it as well; ways that I am not even aware of!
So if you’ve never had it, I encourage you to give it a try. Add spaghetti squash to your healthy food menus!
Completely unrelated, but an update… OK, so that light I mentioned I was excited about getting to help improve my photos? It came today, and I’m not that impressed by it. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but it’s bigger and bulkier than I thought and I can’t imagine actually setting it up every time I want to take a picture of a meal or something. Not convenient. I’m about 99% sure I’m going to be sending it back. Boo, back to the drawing board. I’m looking for alternatives now. Hopefully I’ll be debuting much better looking nighttime photos very soon!
There are many simple pleasures in life. Tonight, we chose to take advantage of one of my very favorite simple pleasures: Breakfast for dinner.
I’ve been craving breakfast foods for a few days now. Cinnamon rolls, pancakes, hashbrowns, waffles. Images of sweet foods dancing around in my head, and teasing my tastebuds. And tonight, I gave in. The perfect recipe to indulge in? Pumpkin pancakes.
A couple of nights ago, Michael and I were watching an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on the Food Network. Guy Fieri was visiting a diner for breakfast. Consequently, I think this show is responsible for my breakfast food craving. But I digress. Anyway, one of the foods featured was a plate of pumpkin pancakes.
Truth be told, I’ve never made pumpkin pancakes before. In fact, I’ve never even had them before. I’m not sure how I’ve gone 26 years without them, since I love pumpkin so much, but somehow, I have.
Well, no more. I put an end to that tonight.
My first step was to find a recipe. When I’m looking for a recipe for something specific, I often turn to allrecipes.com. I like it because there are usually recipes that have been tried by many, many people, and most of the recipes have been reviewed. It’s nice to pick a recipe that you know is tried and true. Also, in their reviews, people often leave tips and advice, ways they altered the recipe, etc. It’s very convenient.
So anyway, it didn’t take me long to find a seemingly good pumpkin pancake recipe with a 4.5 star rating, and reviewed by 490 people. After reading several reviews, I felt this was a recipe that could be trusted. Perfect for my first experience with pumpkin pancakes.
Off to the kitchen I went to cook our meal. Of course, I didn’t dive in empty handed. No, sir… I brought along the camera with our cool new lens. You know, just for experimental purposes.
As it turned out, I liked the results. Of both the photography and the pancakes.
These pancakes pack a lot of pumpkin flavor, and the amount and combination of spices was perfect. Taking the advice of some of the reviews, I added an extra egg, a tablespoon of granulated sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. The pancakes were fluffy and cakey. They were actually good on their own, but I enjoyed them even more with a few drizzles of syrup. Yum.
Pumpkin Pancakes
(Source: Adapted from Allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
– 2 cups all-purpose flour
– 3 tbsp. brown sugar
– 1 tbsp. granulated sugar
– 2 tsp. baking powder
– 1 tsp. baking soda
– 1 tsp. ground allspice
– 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
– 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
– 1/2 tsp. salt
– 1 1/2 cups milk
– 1 cup pumpkin puree
– 2 eggs
– 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
– 2 tbsp. vinegar
– 1 tsp. vanilla extract
Directions:
1. In a small bowl, mix together the milk, pumpkin, eggs, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
2. In a separate, larger bowl, combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and spices.
3. Add pumpkin/milk mixture into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir just until combined.
4. Heat a lightly oiled (I use nonstick spray) griddle or skillet over medium high heat. Pour or scoop batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.
The original recipe says it makes 12 pancakes, but I got 18 out of it, plus a small silver-dollar-sized one for Tess. :) I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop the batter onto the skillet, so they were all consistent in size. I don’t know why it made so many more than it called for, but we weren’t complaining! 
Back to work tomorrow! Boo…
**Update: The leftovers were surprisingly good! (We usually throw out extra pancakes because leftovers don’t sound appealing.) These were too good to toss, so we put all leftovers into a ziploc sandwich bag and stuck them in the fridge. Today, I popped them in the toaster, and they are nearly as good as they were the other night.
We started making this pizza a couple of years ago. The first time we made it, we were completely impressed with ourselves, even though there is really no skill involved at all. :) It’s just such a good pizza! Sometimes, you’re just in the mood for an alternative to the regular ol’ Italian pizza.
Tonight, playoff football is on, so we wanted to make some “football food.” It’s been a while since we’ve had this pizza, so this was the perfect choice. It totally hit the spot.
You can obviously make this with pretty much any pizza crust. Homemade, store bought, refrigerated dough, or you can go the easiest route possible (we do): a pre-made and pre-cooked Boboli!
Taco Pizza
Ingredients:
– Boboli Whole Wheat Pizza Crust (or crust/dough of your choice)
– 1/2 lb. lean ground beef
– 1 packet taco seasoning
– shredded cheddar cheese
– chopped lettuce
– 1/2 tomato, diced
Other optional toppings: Sliced olives, jalapenos, onions, sour cream (obviously don’t add until after it comes out of the oven!), etc. Pretty much anything you like on your tacos.
Directions:
1. In skillet, brown ground beef. Add packet of taco seasoning with water (follow taco seasoning packet instructions).
Note: The back of the seasoning packet will tell you that the packet should be used with 1 lb. of ground beef, as opposed to the 1/2 lb. used in this recipe. Disregard this… by adding more taco seasoning/water than is called for with that amount of beef, you’ll be creating a bit of extra sauce that is necessary to cover the whole pizza.
2. While beef is simmering to thicken the sauce, preheat oven according to directions for your crust (for Bobolis, it is 450 degrees).
3. Once beef is done, spread it over the prepared crust. Top with cheese. Place pizza in oven to bake according to directions for your crust (Bobolis only take 8-10 minutes).
4. During the last 5 minutes of baking time, remove pizza from oven to add lettuce, tomato, and any additional toppings onto your pizza. Place pizza back into oven for remaining 5 minutes. When done, remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes before cutting.
Enjoy!
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
