Recently I published my unbreakable rules for life on Facebook and I’m going to republish them here:

1. Never mess with the people that touch your food or medicines.
2. Ski season is holy.
3. No riding the green line after 10pm.
4. Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond is the greatest ice cream flavor in the world.
5. If you eat my ice cream, you get the sword.
6. Prince George is the cutest baby/toddler/future monarch in the world.
7. There’s only one acceptable baseball team to root for. They are named the Boston Red Sox.
8. You can never have enough dry erase markers.
9. The same applies for Under Armour shirts.
10. When I say we are meeting at 6pm and you arrive at 6pm, you are, in my mind, late. Being on time means being early. Actually being on time is late.
11. Never hit the snooze button.
12. People who don’t like dogs are inherently untrustworthy. There are notable exceptions to this rule.
13. I operate like baseball. Three strikes and you are out.
14: Outside > inside

Notice rule #2 — Ski season is holy.  Oh and ski season is holy.  Now ever since I instituted that rule, my life had become a lot better.  By the first weekend in January, the ski season schedule has been set until the end of February.

Thus far never letting anything or anyone mess with ski season has worked out quite well.  I never started Pepi’s famous massive papers until ski season was over.  In 2014, when I had to author my second one, I told Pepi that ski season was over and that I could start working on his paper.  His response was “I’m glad to see you have your priorities straight in life.”  You are damn right.

I choose to take my ending exam for my masters degree in the fall rather than the spring not to interfere with ski season.  Recently I had an employer who threatened to interfere with ski season, but I quit that job, following through on my rules.

Skiing has done no end of good for me.  I go to the gym because of it but most of all, it had established boundaries in my life.  I have an elaborate set of rules that I follow connected to ski season.  I work out, I keep my equipment in good shape.  I’m careful when I ski those demonic hills of snow called moguls.  I even pack an entire change of clothes for a little thing I like to call apres ski.  A particular favorite is an alpine themed onesie.

Last weekend I went to Stowe where I experienced a dream like ski day that goes into the top five ever in ski trips.  The conditions were perfect.  The wind wasn’t blowing on me.  Today I went to Sunday River, where the weather was perfect but my skis are starting to feel a bit of the end of season wax loss.

Its funny how when I have a so so ski day I still think about how next week will be.  Will it be a good day, or a bad day or what it will be.  Ski season 2017 will be over soon and I will shed a tear!!!!

Today I looked around at the Maine countryside when we were leaving Sunday River and I thought about all the happy weekends I’ve spent skiing.

Ski season is indeed holy: