Category: Minnesota

All Quiet on the Carleton Campus

I grant that today was the day before a three-day weekend, but the Carleton campus has been deader than the King of Pop all week. The only excitement anyone can find is a roofing project that requires a gargantuan red crane, apparently borrowed from Dubai, and periodic showers of roofing debris. If you visit the campus center after the snack bar closes (at 1:30 pm! well before my afternoon iced-coffee jones kicks in!), you’ll probably find only some dusty chairs, a groggy clerk in the bookstore, and the post office’s two bins of undeliverable magazines. (Anyone for fifty copies of the current Economist? Or twice as many copies of ESPN The Magazine?) In making – over the course of the week – four round-trip bike commutes and three walks to and from the Rec Center, I’ll bet I didn’t encounter a dozen people, total. Hell, in the Arb, I saw about three times as many red squirrels as people. And I saw three of those surly rodents.

Oh well. The plants in the little garden plot on the lawn between Olin, Goodsell, and Boliou have all sprouted now, as have signs all over campus inviting anyone – anyone? anyone! – to go ahead and pick whatever’s ripe. Anyone? Anyone! I don’t know about you, but I’m having radishes for lunch on Monday.

And the trees! God. The maples and oaks are shimmering with life. If you get too close, you might get knocked down by the photosynthesis. I discovered this beauty in the Upper Arb, just north of the concrete bridge near Bell Field – sublime, in the truest sense of beautiful, awe-inspiring, and a little bit frightening. This giant has already seen more summers than I ever will.

Upper Arb Tree

Funday

A minute ago, in the middle of a conversation about our post-bath, pre-bedtime activities (centered on coloring pictures of Disney Princesses [I’m ready for my lobotomy now]), I commented on how I was having fun with the girls. Julia paused, pencil poised over her sheet of paper, scowled, and said, “But grown-ups don’t have fun, Daddy.”

I’ll grant that I’m rarely having a blast at 7:45 p.m., but nonetheless I did have quite a bit of fun today. I used the bike trailer to take the girls to the Arb for a nice long walk, I went downtown during their naps to do some drawing, and after nap we played outside until the sun said, “Oh my god, can’t you people take a rest?” Julia enjoyed jumping off our Little People slide/climber thingy – jumping being a skill she has lately been cultivating) and Genevieve enjoyed running the bases after her mother helped her use our big new oversized baseball bat to clobber a line-drive triple to center.

Short version of the above: today was a perfect summer weekend day.

Mid-Jump

Runing the Bases

Como Chameleons

Tempting fate, Shannon and I made plans with some wonderful but too-rarely-seen friends to take our collection of offspring to the Como Zoo today. Our last outing in St. Paul, a Memorial Day party at a friend’s place, was itself tons of fun, but led to three days of horrible sleep and terrible behavior on the parts of the girls.

But an outing to the zoo? On what turned out to be a beautiful spring day? With great friends and their ridiculously cute toddler? We’re in.

But Vivi didn’t get the memo, choosing – instead of having an easy morning of getting ready for the “yong wide” to St. Paul – to throw what even Shannon said may have been her biggest-ever meltdown. (The highlight: half an hour of screaming, “Mama, PUT IN MY WIP [hair clip]!” even though it was already in her hair.) We were thisclose to canceling, but miraculously Vivi collected her manure in time to hit the road. The girls were so tired of making and listening to noise that they were silent the entire ride up.

And the zoo was great. We saw a whole bunch of the big-name animals: giraffes, lions, a tiger, and many kinds of monkeys and apes, including a baby orangutan whom I’m sure never has meltdowns. The girls enjoyed it all a lot, though I think Julia (who pretended to be a snow leopard all the way back home) most enjoyed hanging out with our friend’s baby, who’s practically the prototype of the round-cheeked babbling toddler. And of course the grownups enjoyed talking with each other, at least in the broken-up way that you can when also minding three sets of kids’ feet and hands.

What the girls did not enjoy, though, is posing for a picture. These are the best shots I could get: one of Julia refusing to look toward the camera, the other of the two of them shaking hands with a man dressed like a tooth. (Long story.)
Broken Pose

Tooth Guy

We will definitely have to go back to the zoo soon to see more animals and do some of the other fun stuff, like ride the carousel or explore the conservatory, which was gorgeous.
Como Conservatory Pool

Arb Ride

Except in winter (when I have to use the streets, if I can’t ski to work), my bike commute runs from my house to the southeastern corner of the Carleton Arboretum, over Arb trails to the Rec Center, and then over the Lyman Lakes to the center of campus. My favorite leg of this trip is definitely the dirt-path section in the Arb. The trees and grasses are glowing with color. Even the browns and tans of the path itself seem heightened somehow.

Trail around Alumni Field

Old Faculty Picnic Grounds Oaks

And the manmade sights – like the vista over Bell Field toward Evans Hall or this bridge near the Cole Wetland – are nice, too.
Bridge near Cole Wetland

Wading into Summer

We capped the insanely busy weekend with a nice trip to the Arb so the birthday girl could wade in Spring Creek. (It’s not really wading if the water only covers your feet, but still….) Vivi, against her inclinations, decided to join the five-year-old in the water.

Vivi’s experiment ended after a few minutes, when a scary stick surprised her and, trying to get away, she stepped in some squishy mud, which was too much to bear. Before that, though, she did enjoy herself. How about that thousand-watt smile?
Wading

Rainy Day Near-Nudity

This afternoon, just after starting my drizzly ride home, I passed a student walking along in a straw hat and some raggedy khakis. He was carrying his flipflops in one hand and his shirt in the other. As I passed him, he turned and gave me a smile that was, I think, more than a little bit stoned-happy. 

I’m all for embracing your inner nature child/pothead, but I’m also glad that I didn’t encounter him another hundred yards along the path, by which time surely the pants (et cetera) had been shed, too.

Kicking Off the Summer

Today was the first day of summer, for all intents and purposes. Yesterday still seemed springlike, but today was hot enough to give me that feeling of being suffused with heat. More to the point, we were lucky enough to partake of a classic summer activity: a garden party held by an old friend who, in the past year, has both beaten cancer and earned her PhD. Anyone who accomplishes either of those things should have the right to throw a celebratory party for herself; doing both in the same six months is phenomenal. Congratulations to her on both counts!

So we headed up to the Cities for the party, and had a blast. Julia made a new friend (the four-year-old niece of our friend), all the kids cavorted in one of those inflatable bounce houses (rented specially for the occasion), a great deal of excellent food was had by all, and Shannon and I caught up with a bunch of old friends. Not a bad way to start the summer.

Teletubbies in My Subdivision

As it often does, the internet reacted hilariously to my blog post and photos about the girls riding their bikes up the slope at the end of our neighborhood park. Some preliminary comments on the blog about how the hill can be a tough little incline gave way on Facebook to chatter about how the park looks just like Teletubbyland, the place where the Teletubbies live.

All the talk was summarized neatly by my friend Doug, who used his Photoshop skills to… To… Well, to make me laugh almost to the point of tears, and to put Julia and Genevieve in Teletubbyland:

Jefferson Parkway Teletubbies
Jefferson Parkway Teletubbies

Well done, Doug!

Queens of the Mountain

The Tour de France awards a polka-dotted jersey to the rider who does best in the mountains. The overall leader of the Giro d’Italia wears the maglia rosa – the pink jersey. Blurring the two, I think my little cyclistes should wear pink jerseys for their new interest in climbing the short and shallow “hill” at the end of our neighborhood park. For all the effort they put into it, you’d think they were climbing the Tourmalet or Mont Ventoux or l’Alpe d’Huez. But like true climbers, they enjoy reaching the summit.

Vivi on the way up; Julia waiting at the top.
The Girls, Climbing the "Hill" in our Neighborhood

Heading away from the hill, on a high-speed descent to the next corner.
The Girls, Climbing the "Hill" in our Neighborhood