Unemployment Benefits

When I returned from working as a researcher in Central America a few months ago, I did not have any immediate prospects for employment-now that my most recent project was complete. So I got to work on becoming an independent consultant, which now fills some of my time. As my own boss, I am ineligible for a government unemployment insurance handout, but as someone working from project to project, I am sort of unemployed. At least during the gaps between projects. Gaps=sort of unemployed. Sort of unemployed=free time.

So recently, I decided it was time to start collecting unemployment benefits. Not the kind the government makes you light yourself on fire and jump through hoops for, but the kind that the much-more-generous Mother Nature offers, without any interviews, paperwork, or stigma. With word from the weatherman of impending powder, I headed over to a friend's on Tuesday night for a strategic jump on Wednesday morning's goods.

The day was great. The beauty of the east coast is that while many love to ski, most everybody is terrified of driving within a few hours of heavy snowfall. If four inches or more are in Wednesday's New England forecast, you can put your wampum on packed grocery stores after work on Tuesday, school closings announced by dinner, and normally-clogged roads as deserted as the parking lot at your local Bear Stearns by sundown. So on a midweek powder day, the ski mountains are crowd-free. This was no different on Wednesday and the conditions just improved as the day went on. January has been damn good to New England. We've already received more snow this season than we average for an entire winter, and the snowiest month-February-looms yet.

Being unemployed until my next project comes along, I was more than happy to take advantage of my situation and get an increasingly-frequent midweek session in...especially with about a foot of fresh. While I have this gap, I will surely claim more such benefits, so long as I can continue to find cheap lift tickets and borrow friends' season passes (not exactly legal, but then again, neither is covering your license plates with snow to fly through the toll booths without paying and then getting off at the next exit to remove the snow. But everyone does that.). Things could indeed be worse.

So for those of you frustrated from a fruitless job search or stressed from a recent layoff, find a way to take advantage of your abundance of time. Search the internet for deals on lift tickets-its not like you have much else to do. The times may be tough, but 2009 is dumping snow like the economy is hemorrhaging jobs. And you might as well get as many days on the hill as possible until the lifties get their pink slips too. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In an update from the story of our poor friend who lost his pants on a ski lift in Vail: it appears that more than pants were lost in this incident. Apparently, the photographer who took the photos now widely available to the world on the net lost his job over his actions. The photographer who provided the world with so many laughs, as it turns out, is a professional photographer who was suspended from his Colorado-based firm indefinitely. His employer cited the man's no compete clause and stated that his actions-using his personal camera-reflected badly on the company.

At least with the releasing of the photographer's name (which I will decline to mention here) the naked man will now know who else to sue.

Video of the week:

Sorry. I had to. The scene of him partying at the end was just too much.

And this link has nothing to do with skiing, but I thought it was kind of crazy.

(Top photo: Daquella manera via flickr)