On Monday CJ took advantage of some leftover, soon-to-expire vacation time, and my permanent-vacation situation, and took me on a super secret fun trip. Well, the plan was supposed to be a secret, but once the Sunday storm was being as shitty as the news promised, we had to decide if we still wanted to do it. So he told me the plan: Drive up to Lake George, NY, on Sunday night, stay over at the Great Escape Lodge, and spend Monday whoopin' it up in their INDOOR WATER PARK. We decided that the overnight was going to be impossible -- cars were literally being blown off of the road all day on Sunday -- but that we could drive up for the day.

We got there around 1, and had lunch in their "tavern" which overlooks the water park. We had been warned by the front desk the day before that it might be crowded due to winter break, but the only people we could see, in the entire place, were lifeguards. They were just hanging around, pacing, chatting with each other. Eventually we saw some guests, but I would estimate that they had no more than 20 guests at the park for the entire day -- and that includes us two.

They heat the water park room, and it's super humid in there (and loud: since the place is Six-Flags-related, they have to blast top-40 music as loudly as possible, which mixes poorly with the noisy water sounds). We walked in with our winter coats and sweaters and got blasted with the rainforest-like climate. We couldn't wait to get our heavy clothes off. Let me tell you: It is VERY nice to walk around in your bathing suit while looking out the window at piles and piles of snow. Just being in a huge hot and humid room for a few hours made it all worth it. They have two fun, big tubes that snake outside of the building, and you could feel the slightly-colder air as you were sliding through. We spent a lot of time on the Boogie Bear Surf thing, which is a fake standing wave for boogie boarding. CJ was great at it, and I was pretty good, though I wiped out big-time once. He wiped out a few more times, but that's because he was trying to do some 360s and such. For about half an hour we were the only people at the wave, so we just kept taking turns. Eventually a couple of little daredevil boys came over and did fancy stuff like take running jumps into the wave, and kneeling on the board. They had obviously been there before.

We also floated along the "lazy river" and played basketball in one of the coves. The unspoken rule was: you have to stay on the tube, no touching the ground of the pool. And this explains why my arms and shoulders are still sore today.

We took a break and sat in their "Adirondack" chairs, read the paper, and ate popcorn in our bathing suits. An occasional droplet of water would fall on the page when the giant wooden bucket at the top of the Tall Timbers Tree House would tip over.

Getting dressed in our winter clothes was a major drag.

But! Now I'm home, the snow is pretty, and impressively deep, and it makes my house feel filled with light. (During the day, at least.)