Change of "Plans"

    Historically I have tried not to make too many concrete plans, instead opting to go with the flow most of the time.  Most times doing so turns out great but there are other times where I semi-wish I didn't quite roll with the punches.  This past weekend was one of those where I only kinda-sorta plans, definitely nothing concrete.  Typically on weekends I roll with a group of four (three others, plus myself); however, this weekend one was out of town while another had a visitor from Indiana who he intended to stick with for the weekend.  With only two people left (Cale and myself), we planned a weekend of watching playoff football while also throwing in a hike in the foothills as well.  I don't know if calling this a "plan" is quite as accurate as calling it an "option," for it didn't take very long these so-called "plans" to change.

    After an uneventful Friday night, Saturday morning I awoke early (for it's nearly impossible for me to sleep in now-a-days) and, looking for something to do decided to watch the Purdue-Ohio St basketball game I had missed while at work on New Years Eve.  I didn't feel too bad staying in that morning because the weather outside was cold and snowy as we got a taste of what the Midwest would receive in a few days.  Later on that day, Cale and I went downtown to meet up with a friend of his who happened to be in town in order to watch the Colts game.  This was our first change of plans, for we had anticipated just watching at our apartment until Cale got a text and found out his buddy was randomly in Denver.

    Needless to say the Colts game was incredible, with Andrew Luck and company coming back from a 28-point deficit in the second half to win the game.  Of course, this only was made possible when we changed our luck a little after halftime by switching bars.  As those beer commercials say, "It's only crazy if it doesn't work."

    While watching the game, my new acquaintances informed us that they were going to go to Arapahoe Basin to ski/board the following day.  Cale and I were instantly sold and made "plans" to venture out to go board early the next morning.  The drive out was quick and painless but the rest of the day would be far from that.  Negative single digit weather greeted us at the parking lot, while it was a crisp negative thirty at the top of the mountain.  As fun as snowboarding can be, we could only handle so much cold and white-out conditions and were ready to head back after about four hours of boarding.  The nail in the coffin for me was venturing to the top of the mountain only to not be able to see ten feet in front of me and wanting nothing more than to get down to the lodge.  I had never experienced such bad conditions on the slopes and I will definitely get a better check of the weather next time we head to the mountains.

    The return trip home turned into an adventure all by itself.  With the end of the holiday season came an unbelievable amount of traffic trying to funnel into the Eisenhower Tunnel from the west.  What normally would be an hour and a half drive turned into well over three hours as we were bumper to bumper in extremely snowy conditions.  Frustration turned rapidly into fear when we were on a steeper incline and a mini-van from  Kansas stopped in front of us, killing our momentum up the pass.  This was the worst possible spot to lose momentum as we proceeded to get stuck in the snow that had accumulated on the interstate.  Quickly, I hopped out of the car and pushed it in order to gain just enough momentum back to keep on going.  After jumping back into the car as it slowly inched forward, we were finally greeted with the Eisenhower Tunnel, which signified the end of the bottleneck of traffic.  At that moment I heard an "Oh no, we're on empty" and we feared the worst, being several miles from the nearest gas station.  Despite being confident we had enough to make it back when we left A Basin, the crummy traffic must have turned the car into a gas-guzzler, or so we assumed.  Upon hitting the downhill on the other side however, the gas light turned off and we suddenly had more than enough gas left to at least make it to the next station.  Turned out that the long uphill battle toward the tunnel had tricked Cale's car into thinking it was low on gas and when the car was back in its regular horizontal position the car was tricked no longer.  With an eventful and worrisome day behind us we returned to our apartment, thankful to finally make it back in one piece.

    Monday brought on its own challenges though, as it was the third day of "Close" for us accountants.  Close is the most busy part of each month/quarter/year as everything from the month that just ended needs to be taken care of.  To give you a taste of how busy it can be, I got into work around 7:45am today and left around 8:45pm.  I'll be back early tomorrow morning and will be staying late again that night.  Why did I leave at 8:45pm when I could have stayed much longer and gotten more work done?  Well, as I said in a previous post, "I don't intend to miss the 2010s" and the College Football National Championship game was on tonight.  Knowing that missing a championship game is akin to missing a significant event of the decade, I left work a little after the second half started and was lucky enough to witness the largest comeback win in a BCS National Championship game.  Not only that, I also witnessed the end of the BCS era (finally!) and am more importantly now able to know what people are talking about tomorrow and twenty years from now when they bring up the 2014 National Title game.

Ahhh, finally done catching up with writing about the weekend... Now time to go to bed so I can be ready for another glorious day of accounting work!

P.S. Take pity on my not so colorful account of the weekend's activities, to give an excuse: I'm tired.