This weekend was a little bit hectic, but much better than last!
I landed home from Florida (where I was traveling for work) at noon on Friday, and had a deluge of calls and meetings the second I landed. My day ended with a few meetings downtown, and a bit of fun stuff, too. The women’s professional book club I started at my office met from 3pm-5pm, and this month, we read Kim Scott’s Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. This is one of the best business books I’ve ever read!! So much of it resonated so strongly with me. There were a lot of examples she used where I was thinking “of course, doesn’t everyone do that?!” (while realizing they are the exact things my staff have praised me for doing, so no, not every boss does that); meanwhile, there were others that were new to me, where I thought, “What a great idea; I need to start doing that.” The core of the book is that you should be as straightforward and open as possible, but always make sure your candor is coming from a place of caring. Go read this book if you haven’t already!
After book club, I headed out for another fun office activity – our Denver Advisory group was doing an escape room! The only one I’ve ever done was in Vienna, with a team of pros, but this one was so so so much harder. We were struggling quite a bit throughout, and often would understand a clue but couldn’t seem to get it to do what it was supposed to (e.g., for one of them you had to play certain notes on the piano, and I was playing them in the wrong octave so the key wouldn’t release). When we finally ran out of time, we asked the gamemaster if we had come close to finishing, and he responded, “Well, kind of…” and then proceeded to tell us that next we’d do this, and then that, and then this, and then that… and I realized that it probably would have taken us four hours to get out on our own!
Next, I headed down the street to the Paramount Theater for one of my favorite annual events – Banff Mountain Film Fest! I had emailed a bunch of friends inviting them to join me for this fabulous night of adventure films, and my friends Kelly and Den took me up on it. It was really wonderful to see them and catch up – as long time readers know, Kelly is one of my oldest and dearest friends (and the reason I moved from New York to Colorado!), and I was really happy to spend the night with her and her husband, getting uber inspired for the outdoors. Here is one of my favorite short films from the night:
I headed to bed late on Saturday, but inspired by what I had seen. However, I couldn’t head to the mountains myself just yet – I was taking delivery on a new refrigerator. I spent the morning getting a Peloton bootcamp in, having coffee with my friend Heather, showering and packing, and then dealing with some unfortunate mishaps trying to get my refrigerator in the front door.
As you may remember from last week, I had ordered my fridge from Ikea; however, their delivery service leaves a lot to be desired. There was a pallet attached to the bottom of the fridge with bolts, requiring a heavy duty electric screwdriver with a bolt attachment to get the pallet off. But the delivery drivers said that the pallet was too big to fit through my front door (even though the fridge itself would have been fine), but they didn’t have any tools to take off the pallet – I was supposed to do that part myself after they delivered. What the heck?! They ended up leaving it in the garage, and next week I’ll have my handyman come over to remove the pallet, get it through the front door, and finish the delivery. What a frustrating waste of time!
Where I didn’t waste time, though, was getting out to the mountains. For once, the traffic wasn’t too bad getting out! This season, I-70 has been much more crowded than in years past, so even when I travel at off-peak times, I’ve hit traffic. I was happy that it didn’t take me too long to get out – and after quickly dropping my stuff off at my mountain house, I headed over to Vail Brewing Company to meet my friends Mike and Brittney for apres. (Can I still call it that if I didn’t ski that day?) We had a great time catching up over a beer, then headed back to Mike and Brittney’s hotel and then caught an Uber to Heather and Kirk’s house for a pre-dinner drink and cheese platter. Heather bought this awesome cheese board for Kirk for Christmas, and they love using it to host! After a bit of that, we then headed to Zino in Edwards for dinner.
Zino was just off the riverwalk, and from the moment I walked in, I was impressed. The atmosphere was lovely, with a wine cellar upstairs and a two-story dining room that felt simultaneously open and grand but cozy and intimate. And the food… incredible! I ordered the lobster risotto, without very high expectations, and it ended up being one of the best lobster dishes I have ever had.
The next morning, I knocked out a few hours of work in the morning, then headed over to Vail by 9am. Not quite first chair, but I wanted to be there early since I had a hard stop to fly out that afternoon for work. However, since I booked my flight to go out of Eagle instead of Denver, it meant I could ski right up till noon. Good thing – what started out as a sunny and dry morning turned snowy pretty soon – and the fat flakes made for a fun atmosphere on my last couple chairs of the day! The back bowls were pretty hard, but when I flipped around to the front side, I discovered it was actually pretty soft on both First Step and Highline – both steep bump runs.
I hightailed it from Vail to my house, where I grabbed a quick shower, heated up some soup for lunch (this awesome Thai curry brussel sprout soup I had made a few weeks ago and frozen), and packed up all my ski gear along with my regular work suitcase. I was headed to New York for a night, then Atlanta for a night, and finally on to Utah for a three day boondoggle with some of my favorite coworkers. I was so excited!
Although this weekend was a short one, I was really happy I got to spend so much time with good friends. Although my MO lately has been to take some solo time (skiing or hitting the gym) when I’ve been stressed, spending time with friends makes me feel much better than the solitude. I feel so lucky to have such amazing friends who don’t mind either listening to me vent about work, or distracting me from it, and this particular foursome I hung out with on Saturday night did so much to improve my mood. Hopefully things will be on the upswing from here!