Well after intensive research and toil... I pulled the trigger.
I decided to buy Völkl Karmas. It was a wild ride starting at Head Mad Trix going through everything from Line to Atomic.
I still have to demo some K2 PE's tomorrow because my bindings haven't shown up yet, and thus can't be mounted on my new Karmas before tomorrow, but they'll be all ready to go by Thursday when I go up. Should be fun to get a feel for the difference between the K2 and the Volkl.
I ended up with 177's, which should be perfect I think.
I almost went for some Atomic Tweaks to save money, but I got a local shop here to give me a little break on the Karmas, and I managed to very quickly sell my Atomic GS:11's with Race 614 bindings for $250 total. I figured with the Karma I'd be alright with just a lone pair of skis.
Take the little discount plus free binding mount along with the money from my other skis, and I thought I'd treat myself to a little b-day present (ugh... 26).
Oh and my folks drove up to surprise me which lead to the good fortune of being able to give them a check, have them buy the skis, and avoid sales tax... whew... $50 extra saved there :)
Now that I got all that hot air out I can condense it all down to three words...
I'm completely amped!
-Nathan