I took off for a few days of spring skiing in the Sierras, and after a wobbly first day, I settled into a groove and performed very well.

But back at the cabin, my athlete's ego took a bit of a bruising.

The mirror, unlike what I have at home, displayed more than a head and shoulders shot.

It was the full Monty, as they say, and I had more than the expected number of slopes slaloming down my front side.

"This can't be!" I told myself. "I couldn't have put on this weight between home and here!"

Calming down with a killer chocolate chip cookie I acquired the day before at an oasis on Interstate 5, I said, clearly, it's the mirror's fault. If my mirror at home tells me one story, and this two-bit, broken down, rent-a-mirror says something else, who am I to believe?

Heck, everything about cabin life is a little rough around the edges; I consoled myself. How can you expect any comfort, physical or psychological, from a place that groans more at night than Jacob Marley's ghost?

Nah, don't fall for this trick, I said.

I'll just focus on my skiing and have a good time and then return to the funhouse I call home.

Where I have the good sense to have nothing but skinny mirrors!