Friends Im just checking

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Friends, I’m just checking my emails here late on Monday afternoon and I’ve noticed a number of them asking whether I’m okay and if anything is amiss since there’ve been no new posts for the last three days.

In brief, nothing is amiss.

At the moment, I’m hurtling down the Northeast corridor on an Amtrak train bound for DC and will be getting back to TPM world headquaters mid-evening.

It took me about thirty-five years to get around to it, but this weekend I went skiing for the first time in my life. Why I’d never done it before I’m not precisely sure, since I grew up in a part of Southern California where there were skiable mountains no more than a fifteen minute drive from my house. Maybe it was a family thing or that we just didn’t have much money. But I’d just never given the idea too much thought until my girlfriend suggested it about a month or so ago.

In any case, before getting even my ski boots on the snow I had half sketched out in my head all manner of self-mocking riffs about spending the weekend falling down in place trying to stand on my skis, with some frustrated, hapless ski instructor trying to explain to me how it was all done.

But, improbably enough, I ended up being halfway decent at it and managed — on my last run on the second day — to go down the entire mountain without falling one time.

Now, having grown up in Southern California, it’s a little hard to call this thing we were on a ‘mountain’ and, sure, the trails I made my way down on were the ones marked green for feeble beginners. But those are secondary details we really don’t need to go into or concern ourselves with.

In any case, once I learned to control my rate of descent — something which I heartily recommend to the president, by the way — I found myself really liking it.

More later this evening on the turning tide on Capitol Hill, the latest intel revelations, and more.

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