Praxis

prax-is [prak-sis] ~noun: convention, habit, or custom.

Snowboarding.

As this last weekend was the last chance I’ll have to go snowboarding for quite some time, I made a special trip up to see my sister and take part in the annual psychotic communal sponge bath known as the Canyons Pond Skimming Contest. I was in Park City for the contest last year and remember thinking that these people must really be masochists.

Since it was a beautiful 60+ degrees this year, I figured what the heck? Costume Ideas? There can only be one.

A quick check of my luggage to confirm I have the proper choneys. A quick stop at Walmart to pick up some shiny white fabric for my cape. Done. Captain Underpants is set to awe the mountain.

My grand plan was cut short when Tony, in his infinite wisdom, ignored my request to watch our snowboards whilst i ran to get a video camera for the contest. Upon returning I found he had disappeared and taken the key to the locker containing my costume.

And great were the lamentations of the masses.

But not so great that the contest could not continue without me. make sure and check out the link above for the pictures, as there were some fantastic competitors.

Saturday, Emily Proctor came up to hang with me and so we got some great rides in while others were still watching the contest and drinking themselves sober.

Sunday, Tony packed up his groovy camera again and along with myself, Matt, and some other friends from the resort came up to the Park so we could do some tricks on camera.

Having a camera worth more than his entire wardrobe did not improve Tony’s attention span. Most of the time when I was engaging in some dangerous activity, Tony was busy talking to the other camera men in the park about the size of their… eh… lenses.

Despite being distracted, tired, and old Tony managed to snap several pictures of people at some point in the action. He seems to have missed most of my good airtime, but was able to catch me landing on my ass. Kind of him.

Watches.

I just packed up 4 of my watches that had sustained varying levels of damage in the line of duty. One of them, I fully expect to be repaired. The others I am hoping for a different result.

Metro Service Center does watch repair for alot of watch companies. Kenneth Cole, Fossil, Relic, etc. They have to stock parts for alot of watches, but given that a watch is somewhat subject to style and the nuances of couture, these watch parts change as often as a schizophrenic ladies handbag.

If the Service Center does not have the requisite parts to fix your watch, they send you a voucher for a new watch. These vouchers can be combined or added onto with cash to produce a new Super-Voucher that can be redeemed for any amount of watch relative to the voucher(s) dollar amount.

Enter the watch collector. I have many watches. Some I wear, some lay around. I have a number of old watches that have some mild to extensive damage to the exterior. I’m hard on things.

I send in these extra 3 old watches to the Service Center. There are two possible outcomes.

1. The Service Center is more well equipped that I imagined and can repair all the damaged watches, returning them to me as if they were new. Shiny Watches. I win.

2. The Service Center behaves as I imagine them to and cannot locate the parts to refubish one or more of the watches and must send me oodles of fake money to use at my discretion to buy new timepieces. New Watches. I win.

This looks to be a good plan all around. Total repair costs are about $75, but that is a small price to pay for 4 watches, since i probably paid that or more for each one initially.