Blowing & Drifting

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.

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 – [...]

[Read more →]

Julia’s facility with words has always been strong; she was talking as well at two or three as many five-year-olds (including some of her current classmates). Since starting kindergarten, she has, as we expected, rapidly acquired and improved her writing and reading skills. She’s always loved to draw pictures, so being able to label some [...]

[Read more →]

The Vancouver Games are turning out to be pretty engaging, which means I’m writing a lot of stuff about the nordic skiing events, like this look at the unexpected results of today’s sprint races or yesterday’s assessment of just how bad Norway is doing. Perhaps you’ll enjoy reading them – or perhaps you’ll be appalled [...]

[Read more →]

The Saturday morning daddy-daughter breakfasts at the downtown coffeeshop incline Julia toward thinking about crucial issues in her life, such as whether cream cheese is better than peanut butter (it isn’t), when she can have coffee (when she’s older), and why we can’t go out for breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday. So far, she’s [...]

[Read more →]

I welcomed the Olympic Winter Games by knocking off early and going out for a long ski in Carleton’s Lower Arb. Conditions were magnificent: 20°F, no wind, cloudless blue sky, brilliant sunshine, and brand-new classic tracks everywhere. Fantastic. I love running on these same trails in the summer, but there’s nothing better than skiing on [...]

[Read more →]

Genevieve wrote this out entirely by herself – right down to knowing how to spell each word. Not bad for a three-and-a-half year old (says her father).

Translation:
I Love You
By Genna
To Dad To Mom To Julia

[Read more →]

That was fun. Apart from a little transportation glitch* that led to the relatively minor problem of missing my start by a minute, the City of Lakes Loppet classic race could not have gone better. Okay, I might have skied faster – and will try, next year.
In brief, I started pretty well, maintained a solid pace [...]

[Read more →]

I wish I could do a race every two or three months. Everything about the experience – choosing an event, training for it, anticipating the race as it approaches, doing the race-eve prep, enjoying the race-day atmosphere, and of course actually racing – is fun, so much fun that I would like to do it [...]

[Read more →]

Genevieve drew a nice portrait of her favorite teddy bear, PJ Bear.
The real thing:

The drawing:

I like how she got the face and ears exactly right; did the hood, sleeves, and legs of the pajamas pretty well (right down to the wrinkles); and then drew the bear on PJ Bear’s pjs next to him! Awesome.

[Read more →]

Sunday, Genevieve decided, as part of an elaborate game of playing “bank,” that we needed a sign for “Tassava’s Bank for Northfield.” Here it is, in all its crazed but also well-punctuated splendor. The key parts are across the top – “Tassava’s” (note the apostrophe!) – and in the center “BANK” (love the N that [...]

[Read more →]

January is a good time to enjoy nordic ski racing. On the “doing” side of things, I found out today that the Northfield High School nordic ski team is holding their annual fundraising race on Saturday, so I’m going to ski in that event, a little 5km around the Upper Arb. And yesterday I switched [...]

[Read more →]

I like this comparison in a comment by “Anthony” on a football blog today:
Rodgers’ Second Year
30TD, 7INT, 4.4k passing yards, 103 passer rating.
Favre’s Second Year
19TD, 24INT, 3.3k passing yards, 72 passer rating.
Brady’s Second Year
28TD, 14INT, 3.8k passing yards, 85.7 passer rating.
Manning’s Second Year
26TD, 15INT, 4.1k passing yards, 90.7 passer rating.
Roethlisberger’s Second Year
17TD, 9INT, 2.4k passing yards, [...]

[Read more →]

Today was the last day of the Tour de Ski, a multi-stage cross-country ski race that’s held in Europe just after the new year. Modelled to some degree on the Tour de France and shorter cycling stage races, the TdS has become a pretty big deal in the world of elite cross-country skiing – which isn’t [...]

[Read more →]