Surreal Seurat Pokey-RR-in-the-snow pix...

Yesterday, in the midst of our newest snowstorm, I ran outside on the front porch as the Pocahontas passed the Elkhorn Inn and snapped pix thoughtout the day... even in the dusk... When I downloaded them, the "dusk" ones were totally black- you couldn't see a THING! The flash on our pokey (forgive the railfan pun...) little Wally-World Kodak digital doesn't carry more than 2 feet... So I got "Creative". I opened them in Picasa and began to lighten them and lighten them... and play with the colors... and all of a sudden I got something Very cool and rather "Seurat pointellist"! Enjoy!

Below is what it looks like in "real life"...  I rather prefer the "Pink Pokey"!

Happy New Decade!

New year, new snow! As I write this, the Pocahontas RR is chugging by the Elkhorn Inn- again! It's been a fab few days for railfans since New Year's, with almost non-stop trains and pushers going by! It's also been Wicked Cold here lately- at the moment it's a "brisk" 16 degrees in the mountains of southern West Virginia! Every time I run out on our porch to snap a few train pix, my fingers freeze, nose runs, and eyes tear- yes, it really is THAT cold! Dan & I rang out the old decade at the New Ramsey School club in Bluefield, WV, after a(nother) really fine sushi-saki fest at Kimono in Princeton, WV, and had a very nice time saying goodbye-and-good-riddance to the old year, while hoping/praying for a wonderful (safe, healthy, prosperous, joyful) new one...

Dan spent all day yesterday tweaking our three lines of plumbing, after McDowell Co. PSD inexplicably let the water pressure drop again (and, of course, denied doing so, as is their want) and our pipes almost froze (actually one did freeze...). Fortunately (miraculously), Dan was able to "tweak" everything, and we have water- and HOT water, at that! Living out here "in the country" makes you truly appreciate so-called "basic" things things like running water- and running HOT water- and the people who can make it run & make it hot! As I've written before, I have a Totally Useless set of skills for living in Rural America, & in 7 years they haven't gotten any better: basically what I can do is write and illustrate. So if the pipes freeze or the boiler's little insides stop boiling, I can... uh... write a press release on it & draw a picture. Swell. That and 10 cents won't even get you a cup of coffee out here if there's no power to run the freakin' Mr. Coffee! Dan, however, can not only un-freeze/repair/replace pipes, he can repair/replace the doohicky in the boiler so it lives to boil another day, rewire the countless electric things that forever need rewiring, and (daily) tweak the gazillion thingamajiggies in all our watchamacallits to make them all work again. I am ever in awe of his 1,000,001 technical skills- for we are talking a skill-set WAY beyond the "handy-andy" level and profoundly in the serious realm of professional electrical engineering, industrial plumbing, vehicle mechanics, and architectural restoration. And the truth is that if you Don't have those skills you really have No Business living out here in the boonies! For there seriously isn't anyone to call out here if the doohickey stops working in the whatchamacallit!

On a happy note, I started off the New Year with a fabulous contest win: a gorgeous (and extremely practical) sterling silver wine collar from Aspinal of London from the Seattle, WA food and wine critic, Ronald Holden, of the Seattle Global Gourmet Examiner and Cornichon.org Please click the links to read my winning poem, essentially Ode To A Wine Collar, and to check out his articles, as he gave the Elkhorn Inn a wonderful plug, and included links to our Facebook "fan" page and this blog! I am truly delighted by this win as this wine collar is something we will truly use- no more wine dribbles on the tablecloths of the Elkhorn Inn! :-) And if we're ever lucky enough to get out to Seattle for a "foodie-winey" trip, Ronald Holden is definitely our "go-to guy"!

THE SNOWSTORM- & we still have power!

I write this at the beginning of what is evidently going to be THE SNOWSTORM of the last 7 years. It is Seriously Snowing, as you can see from my "Pokey-in-the-snow" pix, and Weatherbug's been chirping madly on my computer warning that we are due for 12-20 inches before Sunday morning! We haven't had a storm like this since the Ice Storm that hit when we first bought the Inn building in 2002, and it really is something to behold! It's beautiful and wondrous, seasonally appropriate, etc., BECAUSE we are on the inside, toasty-warm and looking out, & because Dan made sure we had enough wood chainsawed into manageable logs for the fireplace, propane, candles, batteries for flashlights, etc. (I had one small "Oh, s***!" moment tonight when the power went out for 10 seconds, and put my head in my hands in despair, but then it all came on again, and life resumed!) And so, with mugs of Chef Dan's turkey gumbo & glasses of red wine at the ready, we were all set when Route 52 shut down & we could take lovely, still photos of the Pocahontas RR chugging by from our front porch! Route 52's been plowed now (gotta keep The Highway open for our coal trucks, dontcha know!), and it's literally a twinkling, snow-covered wonderland out there- right out of a Currier & Ives engraving! It's 1:20a.m, and our Inn guests are tucked up into their beds and the table is set for their breakfast, Pibble-Bear, Lady & Kitty are snug in their bed, and I am winding down: Facebooking (started an album of Pokey-in-the-snow pix for our railfans on the Elkhorn Inn "fan" page) , Tweeting, eBaying, Sweeping, & Blogging... because we still have power! Yay! LOL

Trains in the snow... and other signs of spring...

It's been a Very busy train day at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre...

Lots and lots and Lots of trains coming and going past the Inn thru the powdery snow... Dan,

with his militarily-honed hearing, can hear a train Long before I do, & yelled "get the camera!" early enough that for once I actually got out there in time! (I actually stood out there in the snow w/my camera muttering ''why?" for a good, cold several minutes until I heard it coming...)

I've gotten so used to ol' Pokey that I don't even hear her most of the time- I grew up in Queens, NY, smack under the plane-path 'tween JFK & Idlewild airports, & my father had an apt. right under the El in Woodside, so I have a long-standing & well-developed ability to tune out Really Loud Noise- I think it's called the "oblivious gene". (In July of 1976 I slept thru the planes flying low over our Kibbutz on their way to Entebbe... no one else did!) But today was truly a Railfan Day if ever there was one- and it continues thru the night as I write this. Tres picturesque, & I finally managed to get some decent pix with our 'toy' camera, at least in daylight... It's now dark, and when the trains go by in the darkness in the snow, the headlights making the wind-swept snowflakes sparkle in the blackness, it is Incredibly cool looking, but our little camera won't take any decent night shots :-( It is still snowing fit to beat the band, as they say, as it did all day; truly beautiful, esp. if you don't have to go anywhere! We have Inn guests arriving tonight, & hope they're okay out there in this picturesque snowstorm...

Segueing from holiday to holiday as we do, Dan deflated Valentine's I Love You Bear, & inflated Mr. Leprechaun, getting him all lit up & on display just in time for the snowstorm... I changed the Inn's tabletop decor from V-Day to St. Pat's, storing away the Valentine's teddy & red-&-white heart napkins, & festooning the green floppy-eared bunnies with rings of shamrock tinsel surrounding a pot o' gold (candies)... Disappointment of the day: WalMart had no green taper candles! ;-) (Believe me, I know- this should be the worst dis of my life!)

The finches have been flocking to our feeders all winter, but they are terribly camera-shy, & so I have yet to get a photo; Dan filled the big feeder w/thistle seed for the finches, as the fat, greedy doves kick the tiny finches out of the way to get to the sunflower seeds... Read a blog about the possibility of poisoning birds w/tainted peanut butter (shades of Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning

Pigeons In The Park???!) & so opted out of proffering suet-peanut butter cakes this year... The spring bulbs have sprouted (yay!), & we pruned back the butterfly bushes & Dan repaired the fence... This morning Dan discovered- just in the nick of time- that a fuse had quietly blown & shut down one of our freezers, & so we managed to save everything in it... but as a few things had defrosted, we had chili for lunch, and tonight I'm making Chicken Mole, Dan is doing a 10 lb. corned beef (& he makes THE best corned beef in the known universe- & I say that as a devout & drooling fan of the 2nd Ave. Deli), and we're both doing something TBD (FoodNetwork.com here I come...) needing several quarts of peach puree- the bounty of last summer's harvest... We've got a Truly roaring fire going in the fireplace AND one going in the potbelly railroad stove in the back of the building, and so periodically I hear the happy sound of Dan mitre-sawing giant hunks o' tree into manageable logs...

The new thing I do when it's too cold to do almost anything else, is to sit on Facebook... & it is fun, esp. when you set it to "Live Feed'' & all the things your friends are doing (or not doing- because they're sitting on Facebook, too...) pop up... We now have a 'fan page' for the Elkhorn Inn on Facebook and we invite you to join it, and share it with your friends; there's a coupon on the page that's good for lodging at the Inn or our on-line gift shop, & I've downloaded railfan photos and lots of other links and cool things... & when we get to 100 fans we'll have a sweepstakes for a nice gift from the Inn's Gift Shop!

Another sign that it's been a Really cold winter is that the dogs have taken to Totally Refusing to go outside when they deem it too cold; after enduring one particularly foul snarl from Tiger when I 'invited' him to go outside, Dan & I simply decided to let them lay in their beds until They decide it's time... And they do let us know, thank goodness... For two foundling strays, trolling the garbage cans for scraps in the cold, they've become awful soft, much preferring now to loll all day in their cozy, blanket-covered bed (preferably on their backs w/their tummies in the air)

in front of a heater... lucky dogs! It is fun to have these two dogs around us all the time, full of cuddles & puppy kisses, & to know that we've given them the Life of Riley... This giant building Truly had an empty, dog-shaped space in it after my old lab, Trapper, died, & one at a time, these two magically appeared on our doorstep & more than filled it :-) Tiger is sitting behind me in my chair as I write this, attempting to slather me w/puppy-spit- the 'Tiger Dog-Spit Facial" as I fondly call it... Nothing fixes depression or the winter doldrums better that puppy kisses!

Well & truly fed up w/winter, last week I jumped the gardening gun & planted the first of our spring veggie seeds in their little peat-pot, table top greenhouse, full of hope that come early April we'll be able to set them out in their Cozy Coats & so harvest veggies 1 1/2 months early! I started watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, squash, herbs, & the Tabasco pepper seeds I brought back from Avery Island, LA in Nov.; we'll buy tomato & other plants as soon as they appear @the garden store... How you get thru the cold of winter w/out going totally ga-ga is by dreaming of spring!

Ski WV! Glade Springs & Winterplace ROCK!

Newsflash! Elisse, at the ripe old age of 49 7/8, is still an Intermediate Skier! And she's apparently in far better shape than she thought she was!!!!












Elisse, a.k.a. The Michelin Tire Woman, in 6 layers of clothing...

Wonderful as "Dan & Elisse's Great Big House" is, I finally got SO fed up at being cooped up, that I put my tiny foot down & booked us a one-night Ski Getaway @Glade Springs & Winterplace Ski Resort, & it was WONDERFUL!

The last time I'd been skiing was @Winterplace some 5 years ago, & it wasn't much fun, as I'd felt Incredibly Guilty because Dan doesn't ski. Winterplace is only 1 1/2 hours from the Elkhorn Inn, & so we'd made a day trip of it, which wasn't a good idea either, as the driving made it a long & stressful day for Dan, & so I felt even More guilty. As I have no one else to go skiing with, I hadn't been back for 5 years! This made me Nuts, because one of the things that pleased me so much about moving to southern WV was that we were only 1 1/2 hours from a ski resort! In the last 5 years my feet got larger (!) and my ski boots didn't fit anymore- the Rossignol skis I bought at the AFRC PX in Garmish, Germany in 1989 when I first learned to ski at the age of 30... Last week we got some Serious Snow here in Landgraff, & I knew the skiing @Winterplace would be Great, & after 2 weeks of stewing & fretting & getting over the guilt, (& Totally ready to slam my head into a wall from from Acute Stir-Craziness), I finally said Wot The Hell, a la Mehitabel, & booked us a mini-ski trip. We stocked the puppies up on food & water, & drove to Glade Springs early in the morning, thru white-out snow conditions, which were truly very beautiful: the frozen waterfall icicles on the mountains alongside Route 52 glistening in the sunlight, the snow-frosted tree-covered mountains, the little houses covered in pristine whiteness... McDowell County in snow is truly a Currier & Ives illustration... The snow was coming down even heavier in the Beckley area, & we drove it R-e-a-l-l-y S-l-o-w-l-y... They checked us in to our "Executive Suite" @Glade Springs early :-) & I actually got on the slopes by 1p.m. I said "Wot The Hell!" again, & plunked down $50 for a one-hour private ski lesson with Toby to start off my one day of skiing- THE smartest thing! This was truly the dif between what would have been an "okay" day of skiing and a GREAT day! His one hour lesson (and we wound up spending about 1/3 of it on the lifts...) basically gave me 2 new, key things that enabled me to make speedy, parallel turns, and Really Ski those blue Intermediate runs for the rest of the day- until 9p.m. at night! (The "trick" for me is what I now call "C-down"- essentially shifting my weight onto the outside ski & carving my turn).

I almost did the Group Lesson as it's a lot cheaper, but I'm SO glad I didn't. As I hadn't been on a pair of skis for 5 years & had No Idea if I was still anything even Close to the Intermediate Skier I was back in Germany, I didn't want to risk either the embarrassment of being told I should be in a "beginner" class, or the waste of time a true "beginner" class with people who'd never skied before would be. A private lesson is tailored to where you are as a skier, & if I can ever get Dan out there on the slopes- something he even suggested might be possible- the First thing I'd do is get him a Really Good private lesson to start off the day. I rented equipment (and they have a "military discount" that is available to retirees and their families, which is GREAT), and got to use the new, shorter skis with rounded, uplifted tips; I was Really pleased with the control they gave me, & if I do decide to replace my ski equipment, those are the type of skis I'd get...

It was Evil Cold, & at times the wind was pretty rough, whipping the tiny ice-needles from the snowmakers into your face... I was wearing 5 layers of clothing & was Still cold! I never did take the lifts to the top of the mountain, simply because I didn't want to spend 30+ minutes on a lift in that icy wind! My hope is to get back in March before the season's end, and do their many other blue runs...

Dan had a nice day at the Glade Springs Resort, (they have a lot of stuff to do there, including a movie theatre & a bowling alley, and in the summer horseback riding, golf, & the lake...), and they have a shuttle bus that runs to & from Winterplace, as well as around the resort, so you don't have to worry about the road conditions or parking, AND you can have a drink at the bar! :-) Dan met me back at the Winterplace bar @6:30pm, I skied until 9p.m., & we took the shuttle bus back to the Glade Springs Golf Club Bar (Laphroaig! Yay!), & had a Great evening. In the morning we had breakfast & then an Excellent "Couples Massage" at Glade Springs' "Spa Orange" before driving home- & found that all the pretty snow had melted in the morning sunshine!

We were both Really impressed by Glade Springs; we'd had a lovely dinner there back in 2002 when we first came to WV & were living in Beaver, but we'd never stayed there, & it's truly Great. What made it great wasn't just the accommodations & services offered, or their reasonable "ski package" deal that includes lift tickets- it was the staff; everyone we encountered at Glade Springs had Great customer service skills! I don't write this lightly; we've been in the hospitality business, creating and running the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre, for the last 7 years, & prior to that we'd both lived in hotels for years on business; we know the diff between good & bad customer service, & how bad service can totally ruin even the nicest accommodations. (Who cares if the room is pretty, if the service is terrible or the staff insulting or cold or unhelpful?) Glade Springs truly exceeded our expectations.

We both slept great, & I woke up feeling Fine- no aches or pains at all! This pleased me the most, as I was expecting to feel like True Crap in the morning, given that I've basically sat in a chair in front of a computer since we got back from Vietnam last April. But I felt so great that if we could have stayed an extra night I would have happily spent the day back on the slopes!

Glade Springs at night: deer!

Our Executive Suite "Frat House" photo...

The skiing @Winterplace was very good- Much better than I remember it being in 2003- and so I had a Great day, but there is SO much that could be done there that would make it a REALLY great ski resort... Neither their outdoor cafe area nor their bar have fireplaces or firepits, so there's no place to warm up... there's no "real" dining available, only cafeteria hamburgers & pizza :-P There's no places to stop for even a warm drink anywhere on the mountain, so you have to keep coming back to the main lodge... there's no outdoor hot tub like I fondly recall from Germany... and the feel of the place is high school or college hang-out, rather than real ski resort... If Winterplace offered more "grown up" amenities it would Truly be a great ski resort... But that being said, it's still a 'bargain', & I do feel lucky we live only 1 1/2 hours from it, and I HOPE to get back out there (& back to Glade Springs...) before the ski season ends in March! My New Year's Resolution is to ski as often as I can- as often as we can afford to!- as long as I am able!

Home from FEMA!

Just got back home from 24 days in Elkhart County, Indiana, where I was working for FEMA Community Relations on the disaster response/recovery operation for the January floods. We had the best little team in the universe (and the most tolerant, funny, and "FEMA Flexible"one, too!), and in 3 weeks the 5 of us did everything in our power to get the word out to Elkhart County, IN residents that if they'd suffered damages from the flooding they should call and register with FEMA for disaster assistance. This was truly the best team I've ever worked with in my 10 years with FEMA, and if we did a good job it was because of them.
I also had a chance to enjoy a bit of Indiana, including great Amish food, beautiful quilts and woodwork, Michiana wines (especially the cranberry and sour cherry-ginseng wines!), beautiful rural scenery of snow-covered fields and farm houses, and the great, flat, wide, straight roads that have Plenty of room to pull over onto when you get "glazed" (as I do after 2 hours of great, flat, straight roads...). I also got to experience (again) some of that Ab Fab Midwestern winter weather! Only the two "native Midwesterner's" on our team could possibly have referred to -11 degree cold, topped by sleet/freezing rain/iced snow and 60 mph winds, as "A Norman Rockwell Painting"! As for food, besides 3 great local meals, I mostly got to experience a wide variety of Wal-Mart's microwavable gourmet delights in my room... But I can't complain: with my FEMA computer, printer, & phone, plus the Holiday Inn's coffee pot, fridge, microwave, & ashtray, we were able to run the "Reports Section" of our CR Field Operation right from my hotel room!
Got to see myself on TV, too, following an interview with WNDU, and was so appalled by what I saw, that I got my hair done in Indiana, too! I also had a chance to go to my two Fave Places To Shop, which I almost always try to get to when I travel: Goodwill & the Salvation Army! Almost nothing beats the joy of finding that $100 dress (with the tag still on!) for $5!

Although I came home to a WV snowstorm (all that pristine, gorgeous snow now gone, following a day of rain), after again experiencing what constitutes "normal" winter weather in northern Indiana, I will NEVER harp on how @!#$%&*! cold it gets in West Virginia! I only wish that we hadn't lost our little airport in Bluefield; driving 4 hours in blinding snow from Charleston to Landgraff was NOT fun... I am still convinced that the State of WV should make Route 52 a Certified Tourist Attraction; there is no Thrill Ride at Disney World that can even come Close to the experience one has driving Route 52 from Bluefield to Landgraff at night in the dark in a snowstorm. Or in broad daylight, for that matter. People actually pay Big Bucks to experience stuff that isn't half as terrifying- why not let our winding, narrow, mountain 2-lane make some dosh for the county? After 6 years here I no longer scream Oh G-d, Oh G-d, Oh G-d for 45 minutes straight (much to the relief of my husband), but I do gasp audibly (and pray silently) when those coal trucks whip around the hairpin turns, comin' at you half into your lane, or when someone who thinks he's been magically reincarnated as Dale Earnhart decides to pass you on a double yellow...
For all that, however, it Is good to be home again...
Many thanks to the residents and officials of Elkhart County, IN, and to the staffs of the Goshen, IN Holiday Inn & Marriott for making us welcome and able to work, and to Unit Members (Yes, we were a Unit! Not a Team!): Corey "Energizer Bunny", "Special" Emilio John, George "The Navigator", and "Wonder P" Ken, and to our Team Leader (Yes! That's what you are! And we were one of your Units!) John S., who shielded us from the chaos as much as was humanly possible! (And extra thanx to George, for referring to me as "Fearless Leader"!)