Blowing & Drifting

The pathetic “winter” of 2011-2012 has given me a case of un-seasonal affective disorder. I can hardly overstate how much I look forward to winter – the snow above all, but also the cold, the storms, the crisp blue-sky days… This year, we’ve had almost none of that. With only a few brief exceptions, temperatures [...]

[Read more →]

I am ridiculously lucky to be able to take a lot of time off this holiday season, including all of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Before Christmas, Shannon and I decided to make the most of this time by doing fun stuff with the girls each day. Early this afternoon, we headed over [...]

[Read more →]

If Mother Nature respected my wishes, She would have blanketed southern Minnesota in snow six weeks ago. In fact, I would have been happy with snow six days ago. But we’re still snowless here, so I figured that a solid gravel-road ride could stand in for my three-year streak of skiing on Christmas Day. It [...]

[Read more →]

Exactly one year ago – on December 23, 2010 – I skied for 45 minutes in the Carleton Arb. According to last winter’s training log, I’d skied a total of 12:27:48 by then, beginning on November 14. So far this winter, I’ve skied one hour, a couple weeks ago, just after we received our only [...]

[Read more →]

As the girls get bigger, sledding becomes easier and more fun. Already this winter, we’ve twice made the short drive to a relatively big and steep hill near Julia’s school – a hill they found too scary even last winter. They’ve loved it both times this winter, which I find exciting. And I’ve also been [...]

[Read more →]

Friday afternoon, as we headed downtown to do some window shopping, we admired the beautifully-decorated evergreen outside our neighbor Mary’s place. We mused about how it would be nice to have a nicely decorated tree outside our house too. Before I could even get to thinking much about how to make that happen, we’d run [...]

[Read more →]

The girls were outside this morning by 7:30, having a blast sledding in the half-inch of snow.

[Read more →]

Genevieve: “Know what my favorite population is?” Me: “Population? Uh, no.” G: “Seventeen thousand.” Julia: “Daddy, did you know that if you’re a human, you have thousands of ancestors who were cavemen?” Me: “Sure. You do, too.” J: “What? That’s crazy! I wonder if they looked like me…”

[Read more →]

Friday afternoon, I rode home through the Arb, which wasn’t unpleasant:

[Read more →]

With the opening of Carleton’s new Weitz Center for Creativity, the College gained several great new spaces for the display of art and other visual materials. The crown jewel is the Perlman Teaching Museum, which is right inside the front door of the Weitz Center and which has two excellent inaugural shows running right now. [...]

[Read more →]

The girls were VERY EXCITED about Halloween – Vivi way more than Julia, but still. They had a blast on Friday at the Halloween parties at school, and we had fun on Saturday carving pumpkins fun on Sunday at Carleton’s big Halloween carnival (despite this “I won’t smile for you” portrait) and fun today trick-or-treating – [...]

[Read more →]

I spent pretty much all of Friday serving as a handler – like the security agents who keep tabs on journalists in North Korea, only with less authority. Rather than preventing the subversion of the state, my job entailed managing the campus visit of two staffers from a foundation to which we had recently submitted a [...]

[Read more →]

Wednesday, I took the day off to do a long gravel ride, my first substantial bike outing after the Almanzo way back in May. I had initially intended to do an all-day century, but then I decided that my legs probably couldn’t handle a hundred miles of gravel cycling. Luckily, the guys down at my [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday, Carleton dedicated its second wind turbine, a gift from two alums that will significantly cut the College’s energy costs and reduce its carbon footprint. In true Carleton fashion, the dedication ceremony was neither too formal nor too casual – a low-key gathering at the turbine (a mile or so east of campus); some remarks [...]

[Read more →]

Today, we took our annual trip to Red Wing, a great little river town about 45 minutes east of Northfield. We had a blast there last year, and expected the same this time around. Trouble is, the geniuses in charge forgot to check if any of the good reasons for going to Red Wing – [...]

[Read more →]