Taking Out the Trash

After sitting around for the past seven days, afraid to move my arm, I really needed to get out and do something active. Behind my house there's a trail that leads to the top of Mt. Royal that I've been aching to climb. So I packed up my bag, grabbed my camera and started my trek.


As I stumbled along the snow covered trail, I couldn't help but smile and think: "thank God this year is over."

Looking back at 09'

January was a month I had been anticipating for almost a year. Unfortunately, it was a time of frustration that ended in heartbreak. I decided to leave my job at West High School for reasons that I realize now were completely flawed.


I did enjoy a trip to the Western slopes of the Colorado Rockies and my amazing opportunity to teach my students how to snowboard at Echo Mountain.

I also had a blast road tripping to Phoenix and partying with the family at Ryan's wedding. Not to mention making a new friend and experiencing Taos, New Mexico for my PSIA level 2 skiing exam. Unfortunately, I failed all three disciplines by .2 points and lost $550.


For some unknown reason I thought I could afford a trip to China (at the time I could) and committed to an incredibly expensive experience (which I wouldn't change for anything). I just didn't expect to go through interview after interview with opportunities for the jobs of my dreams only to be brought down by the lack of support that seems to always be attached with Denver Public Schools.

Before leaving for China, I had a ridiculous weekend with some of the best friends I could ever ask for. After that, I decided that some people never change and I can't keep fighting for a relationship where I'm the only one fighting.

I came back from China to a financial situation I could not cope with, no job, discovered that I had no support from my admin, and a familiar phone call - the possibility of the relationship I've been patiently (sometimes desperately) waiting for.

"Seasons change but people don't." That familiar phone call led to a familiar situation. However, this was different. I had never been treated so poorly from anyone in my life, never felt used. Any feelings of hope, love, or compassion were sucked out of me. I was cold and numb. My three year battle was over. I have no more emotional baggage and am ready to move forward with my life. She is gone, erased.

Moving into 2010:

Breaking my arm was pretty much the last straw of this stupid year. However, it's only a minor set-back. I'm starting the new year with my dream job at Summit High School, no surgery, and a great new network of friends. "You always end up landing on your feet." Thanks Kathy :)

This is my December
This is my time of the year
This is my December
This is all so clear
This is my December
This is my snow covered home
This is my December

Dinner party tonight (I'm making baked brie) with the roomies, Ryan and his friend from Denver, and Kelsey (girl I've been hanging out with for the last month or so). Time to bring in 2010 with some good ole shenanigans.

Verdict

No surgery :) However I have to go back next week for another x-ray to make sure there's no displacements.

Here's the results of my x-ray:

RIGHT WRIST
12/23/2009

CLINICAL HISTORY: Trauma.

FINDINGS: There is a multiplanar essentially nondisplaced
intraarticular fracture of the distal radius. There is also a minimally
displaced ulnar styloid fracture. No other fractures are seen.

IMPRESSIONS:
1. Multiplanar nondisplaced interarticular distal radius fracture.
2. Minimally displaced ulnar styloid fracture.

Whatever that means right?




As of right now and $2000 later, I will be in a hard cast for 3 more weeks, then in a removable-waterproof soft cast for 2 weeks. Not bad at all.

"Oh, Where It's All Deformed"

That was the nurse's response to her own question, "where is it broken."

I stood at the top of the terrain park at A-Basin poised to pop a 180 mute grab off the first kicker. Dropped, nailed the trick and stomped the landing then began to set myself up for a switch 180. It happened so fast - my heel edge caught the snow and I was hurled towards the ground with my arm pressed against the middle of my back. My head whipped back and kissed the ground (thank you helmet) and I stood up with a pain in my arm that I haven't felt since I skated down that slide in 7th grade. I caught my breath, unstrapped my board, walked to the side of the kickers, looked at Tripp, "dude, think I sprained my wrist." I sat for about two minutes before my arm started to swell and a feeling of nausea filled my stomach, "shit Tripp, my arm is definitely broken." I lifted my head up and saw two guys standing at the end of the ramp "I think I just broke my thumb" he said to his pal. "Yeah, you did the same thing this guy just did" he responded. Well, not quite....



Tripp helped me strap my board back on and I rode down to ski patrol. After filling out the necessary paperwork and getting splinted up, I put my gear back in my car and Tripp drove me over to the ER. A similar situation to the last time we rode together. Except I was the one providing the moral support while trying to help Tripp piece together the 15 minutes between rocking his head on the ground and meeting me at the base.

Before my x-ray even happened, at least three nurses stated that my arm was definitely broken. After about ten minutes of waiting in the room, Karen the P.A. came in and explained that I had broken my arm in five places. "You shattered your radius and chipped a piece off of the ball of your ulna on your wrist." My heart immediately sank after hearing the word "shatter." I was almost positive that meant surgery; especially after she showed me the x-ray and pointed out the bone fragments in my wrist. However she and the doc both said that "the fragments spread out" which apparently is a good thing? I just can't move my arm or fingers until further notice because of the nature of my fracture(s).

Right now I've got a soft cast on and have to call an orthopedist after Christmas to get the final say on whether surgery is needed and to get a hard cast. It looks as if I'll be in a cast for "a few weeks." Which the doctor immediately followed up by saying "a few weeks to you means three, but to me it's 8 to 10." What a dick haha.

Despite my misfortune, I'm keeping my head up and am still in good spirit. I arrived home and was greeted with a feast, a very strong eggnog, and Kelsey stopped by after work with brownies and a bag filled with ALL of my favorite candy. I also get some really gnarly drugs to kill the pain.

Percocet is a trade name of Endo Pharmaceuticals for a narcotic pain killer used to treat moderate to severe acute (short-term) pain. The active ingredients of Percocet are oxycodone and acetaminophen.

Percocet side effects

• shallow breathing, slow heartbeat;

• feeling light-headed, fainting;

• confusion, unusual thoughts or behavior;

• seizure (convulsions); or

• nausea, stomach pain, loss of appetite, itching, dark urine, clay-colored stools, jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes).

Less serious Percocet side effects include:

• feeling dizzy or drowsy;

• mild nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, constipation;

• blurred vision; or

• dry mouth.

The dry mouth definitely happened almost immediately after taking one pill, however drowsiness never happened - even after two pills. Unfortunately I was up til 2:30 am and had to
to be at work at 7. Did I mention it was my right arm? Brushing your teeth with your opposite arm is quite difficult.

I managed the rest of the day with no pain until around 2:30. So I popped two pills and within a half an hour felt extremely drunk, hence the side effects I listed above. Those will be the last I ever take, even though I was fairly entertaining for the next two hours of work.

Unfortunately the printer was down so I have no pictures of the break. I'll post some after I see the orthopedist - hopefully by Monday at the latest.

Mr. Baalerud is Back!

I got a job at Summit High School!

Last Friday I received a phone call from Gretchen (assistant principal) at Summit High School about a part-time math position opening up. Last year one of the math teachers had a brutal head injury and it has forced her to leave her math position. So they moved the part-time teacher up to her spot and me into the part-time position. I talked with m supervisor at Copper today and she said I should be able to work both jobs :)

My interview was originally scheduled for Tuesday evening. So I left for Denver on Monday night to pick up my teaching credentials and portfolio and to clean out whatever was left in my storage unit. As I was heading back up to the mountains (to go skiing at Loveland), I got a phone call from the call center and apparently I was supposed to be at work at 7am. A week ago one of the girls at the call center got fired, so I figured I was done. That also meant I had to possibly lose my job opportunity at Summit High School. However, I just ended up getting written up and they rescheduled my interview.

The next day I was getting off the shuttle and received a phone call from Gretchen offering me the job! This school could potentially be my dream job. I've been trying to get a job here since I moved out to Colorado. It's located about 10 minutes from my apartment in Breckenridge. They have a great school system and an International Baccalaureate (IB) program. I'm actually having coffee with IB program coordinator this morning (which definitely could be in my future plans). Summit High School is on a modified block schedule (the length of the class depends on the day). Since I have a .5 position, I will be teaching two sections of pre-algebra and one section of algebra every other day - this is which allows me to keep my job at Copper Mountain. Life is Great!!!

I'll be spending the holiday period skiing and planning for my upcoming semester. This is going to be a similar situation as my very first semester of teaching (the students have not had a consistent teacher during the semester and pre-algebra class will have a very similar demographic as West High School). However, I presume the parents will be much more involved and even after living here for a only a month of so, I feel a tremendous sense of community (Julie-head of the IB program won't go to Starbucks for coffee because she'd rather support a local coffee shop).

On a side-note, we are still waiting for a major snowstorm in Summit County. Usually the entire mountain is open by Christmas day... I don't think any of the resorts in the area are even above 50% right now :( Regardless, after my coffee I will be trekking to A-Basin to play in the terrain park with my buddy Tripp.

Christmas of course will be sad without seeing all of my friends and family, but I need to stay out here, work and keep pulling myself out of debt. Thankfully, my teaching job will get me health insurance again and allow me to come home for a few weeks over the summer (I also get this nifty laptop so I can keep everyone updated on my life out here). Jonny and Lauren are expected to make their way up here for the holiday and I have an ugly-sweater party to attend later that night to keep me occupied during the holiday.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Birth of a Salesman

I am officially a salesman.

Most of you that know me well probably couldn't picture me sitting in a cubicle...period. However, that's what I'm doing now and love it. Like I said in my previous post, it's really easy to get people stoked about spending a lot of money at a ski resort since snow riding is one of the things I love the most. I also work split shifts majority of the time (when we filled out our availability and hours I simply wrote "I want the most ride time possible") which gives me plenty of time to exercise and move around during my long day of work. I come in from 7am-11am, then 3pm-7pm - plenty of time to tear up Copper Mountain. On a side note, we got a ton of snow (finally) the past few days. So I've been ripping plenty of freshies in my spare time. Since my job is to basically sell everything that we have to offer at the resort, we get to "test out" everything as well. So next month our office is going on a 2 hour snowmobile tour over the continental divide, I get free demo ski/board rentals, a free one hit wonder at Woodward (I'll explain in a minute), tours of all the lodging areas, food tasting at majority of the Copper-owned restaurants (and bars haha), and of course my free Ultimate Pass (free skiing at Copper, Winter Park, Steamboat and five free passes to any other resort in Colorado excluding Vail Resorts).

Last week I did my one hit wonder at Woodward and IT WAS SICK. Here's what Woodward is: http://www.woodwardatcopper.com/site/index.html
Make sure you look at the pictures to really understand what it's like. By the end January, I plan to do AT LEAST a back flip on my skis. Stay tuned for pictures!

Last weekend at Copper we had the Grand Prix. It's the first Olympic Qualifier for snowboarding in the Superpipe. There were Olympic athletes from all over the world including: Shaun White, Louie Vito, Gretchen Bleiler (who looked at me, I swear!), and many others. It was awesome to see some of the new tricks they learned and to just randomly see them at bars, walking around the resort, talking with them on the phone to actually book their rooms.

Today I had to make a quick trip down to Denver to finally clear out my expensive storage unit and pick-up a few things that I need for later today (don't want to jinx anything, so I'll tell everyone about it later).

I love where I live. My roommate is awesome and his girlfriend is a little sweetheart that cooks for everyone ALL THE TIME. She's 25% French, 25% Irish and 50% Chinese. Needless to say, she is one of the most amazing cooks.

Another side note - I blocked my blog so random people can't look at it. So if there's anyone who wants to see this, make sure you give me their email addresses so I can send it directly to them. Or just set-up a blog account and friend me. :)