Blowing & Drifting

There are more gaps in my pop-culture awareness than there are holes in a Sarah Palin policy speech, but thanks to the internet I can address one of those holes by watching the videos for all six of Lady Gaga’s number-one songs. Which I will now do, with the grounding assumption that I have never [...]

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he Lyman Lakes on Carleton’s campus are still mostly iced over, after many above-freezing days (including today, though it’s gray and gloomy). Ice is remarkably durable stuff.
Upper Lyman Lake is still mostly iced over, nearly two-thirds of the way through March.

Lower Lyman Lake, on the other hand, is still about half iced over, though as [...]

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As seen from the seat of my bike.
1. Numerous singleton mittens and gloves, most thickly distributed near bus stops.
2. Decomposing dead animals on the now-exposed roadsides.
3. Thick strips of plowed earth along the edges of the fields, where it’s dry enough for the tractors.
4. Harley riders heading loudly toward the country roads east of Northfield.
5. [...]

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Never mind the endowment’s slow growth, delayed building maintenance, the lack of pay raises last year, or helicopter parents: the real threat to campus is beavers. It looks like a beaver (or three) took care of a tree that had already been neatly trimmed with a chainsaw.

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Genevieve drew this portrait of me last Sunday. The text reads as follows:
To Dad
By Genna
Love Vivi
This is you!
And this is me
She didn’t draw herself into the picture, though. She also said that I’m wearing a brown dress, not pants and a shirt, and then laughed at how crazy that idea was.

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The 86th Vasaloppet, described as the largest (15,000 skiers), longest (90km), and oldest (1921) ski race in the world, was run in Sweden on Sunday morning. The race is an amazing spectacle and a magnificent athletic event. The Swedes pay attention to it the same way Americans pay attention to the Super Bowl, with the [...]

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The temperature hit about 45° F here on Sunday afternoon, which thus might well have been our last moment for winter fun. We made most of it, building two snowmen with our neighbor friend (who just learned how to do rabbit ears) while a cardinal serenaded us from the tip top of a nearby tree. [...]

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Crap. I shouldn’t’ve been Facebooking all this time. I never did fold the laundry.
Good lord. That pile is taller than I am. And there’s more in the dryer. Time-management FAIL.
At least it’s mostly sheets.
Sonofabeech! Two sheets, and now nothing but the girls’ tiny little socks. Omigod. I’m going to get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Cheezis. These goddamn [...]

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Adding to my unintentional but now tripartite (part 1 and part II) chronicle of the spring melt here in Northfield, another compare and contrast.
The girls, our next-door-neighbor, and I built big snowman (probably a good 5′5″) in the backyard on Christmas Day. Below, he appears on the day of his creation and this morning, on what might [...]

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The lovely curved benches out from of Laird Hall at Carleton are emerging from the colossal snowbanks which have buried them since Christmas. It’s not much, but it is a sign of spring.
BEFORE THE CHRISTMAS STORM (12/23/09)

AFTER A WEEK ABOVE FREEZING (3/4/10)

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Just before dinner today, our next-door-neighbors knocked on our door. They’re a Japanese family: the father teaches at Carleton while the mother stays home; the daughter, a frequent backyard playmate for Julia and Genevieve, is one year older than Julia. The little girl was dressed in a spectacular red kimono (and orange Crocs!) that was positively [...]

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Overheard, 6:15 p.m.
Vivi, pointing at the easel. “Julia, what you tryin’ to show me over dere?”
Julia: “I was just showing you the word ‘vowel,’ and that it starts with the letter ‘v’.”
Vivi: “Oh. I a growd-up, so I don’t hear you good. My ears don’t work.”
Me: “Genevieve, most grown-ups’ ears work fine. It’s just me [...]

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In five (or six) units…
1. Articles I Read:
A. Popular
“God Said Multiply, and Did She Ever” (Joseph Berger, New York Times, February 18, 2010)
When Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 [...]

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I know that for really fit and fast skiers, the men and women who win citizens’ races and better, 50 kilometers is a serious but not frighteningly tough distance to ski, either as training or in a race.
On the other hand, this middle-of-the-pack racer found 50 kilometers to be an awfully long way to ski – [...]

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For nordic skiers in the US and other snowy regions of the world, late winter means ski marathons – long races that focus the fitness built up all fall and winter into some tough competition. The biggest ski marathon of them all, the 90 kilometer (56 mile) Vasaloppet, takes place in a couple weeks in [...]

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