As we move slowly through the limbo known as autumn and the snow season comes closer and closer, my nerves start to tingle. If you find yourself in my same predicament and can’t wait until the first good blizzard in the mountains bringing powder so deep it buries you, here are some ideas for staying sane during your wait for winter.

Take your skis or board on a date. It’s the best kind of date because all you have to do is throw on some music and tune up your favorite toy; no tab to pay for and no chick flicks to sit through. Run a file over your edges and drip some new wax on the base and your boards will love you forever.

Your boards will perform better and you’ll blow past everyone when you come down that first run. This should suppress your cravings for a few hours, but don’t get carried away. Wax is expensive and your edges won’t last until opening day.

Another sanity saver, and by far one of the most necessary and productive chores, is creating, organizing, and updating your shredding music play lists. Nothing is worse than having to search through an iPod library on the lift with your gloves off and risking frostbite.

Autumn is the time to update your pump-up and mellow-out tunes. The new season needs a whole year of new songs. Running around stealing friends’ music and perfecting your play lists will make those epic runs much more epic.

My personal favorite go-to remedy for ski crave syndrome is to revisit dream lines and breathtaking aerials by breaking out my ski movie collection acquired over years and years of “wishing I could do that.”

It’s not the perfect solution for staying sane because sitting on a couch watching the extreme terrain that the pros hit, all covered in more snow than many hills see in a whole season, is more likely to make you go insane with ski crave. But we all know nothing gets a skier more revved up than seeing what the best of the best are throwing down. You never know, maybe it’ll give you ideas for the upcoming season.

It’s not easy. In fact staying sane this time of year is hard enough to drive anyone crazy. Don’t worry though, it won’t be long until the tuning, updating and watching will be over and it will be nothing but shredding.