Category: Northfield

Flurrious

Our trip to Moorhead – usually five hours, including a few stops – was today a good seven hour trek on the worst roads I’ve seen in a decade. We drove in and out of flurries, on roads that varied from wide open or passable to seemingly clear but actually icy or essentially unplowed. And we saw all kinds of accidents: straight-ahead ditchings, spinouts, rollovers, a semi truck stuck in the median, even a high-speed crash in the opposite lane on 694.

Luckily, we stayed on the road and, despite the slow travel (and the lack of naps by the youngsters) had an okay time of it. Julia and Genevieve especially enjoyed singing their small but well-polished repertoire of Christmas songs. Apart from roads that looked, above and below, like shots from the Novosibirsk scenes of the next Bourne movie, I think I’ll remember this trip for the way Genevieve kept singing her favorite part of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” – “Peef on earf an mercy miiild/God an sinners crocodile.”

Sun Dog

As far as I know, I had never seen a sun dog until Monday morning, when the sky over Northfield was illuminated by a towering specimen that lasted for a good four hours. Here’s what it looked like from the front steps of my office building:

Sundog over Carleton

Sundog over Carleton

Turns out sun dogs are as fascinating as they are beautiful. From the Wikipedia entry:

A sun dog or sundog (scientific name parhelion, plural parhelia, for “beside the sun”) is… an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. Often, two sun dogs can be seen (one on each side of the sun) simultaneously.

According to the article, sun dogs played a strange role in the rule of the famed Swedish king Gustav Vasa.

Beyond all that, I was pleased to hear from Julia that, on Monday, her preschool teachers interrupted their usual classroom routines to do a little lesson on the parhelia, which the kids could clearly see through the windows. (Julia confidently repeated their explanation, which, come to think, sounds an awful lot like Wikipedia’s…)

Weird Walk

Today was a pretty nondescript day in most ways. I suppose the highlight was the Northfield Youth Choir’s “Gloria” concert at Carleton’s Skinner Chapel: excellent singing – and a packed house.

The girls and I took a nice walk in the morning, enjoying the above-average (and snow-meltingly warm!) temperatures. Looking back on our 90 minutes of wandering, I realized that it was studded with some weird stuff.

First, the bright blue sky was covered with jet contrails. At one point, we counted six of them. (Well, Vivi counted “yeleven” of them, but I think she was counting the sun five times.)
Contrails

Second, there was this pyramid in the middle of the neighborhood park. It was rather well constructed, but sitting all by its lonesome, unaccompanied by a snowman, a snow fort, or a snow-moai.
Mystery Pyramids

Third, in a tunnel on the playground in this same park, we discovered a few dozen perfectly shaped snowballs. Were they fashioned by the pyramid builders? No one could tell, and then the girls spent the better part of a half hour sending them down the slides and dropping them off the play structure.
Mystery Snowballs

Finally, back at home, I admired the strange wind-shaped wall of icy snow on our gutter, defying gravity and looking quite shapely at the same time.
Mystery Snow

Ski Skid

I skied around the “backyard”* for an hour this afternoon, having a grand time and feeling like I was actually doing some decent work. After about half an hour, I was deep in the zone when I heard a weird mechanical shriek. I looked up to see a rusty blue Acura Integra fishtailing as it came toward me down the road, then twisting itself into a long sideways skid that ended, thankfully, with a sudden stop in the middle of the road. Just about when I realized I’d stopped skiing to watch, the driver nonchalantly straightened out and went on his merry way.

* I put “backyard” in quotes because we share a few acres of green space with everyone else in our townhouse association, and this space is both like and unlike a real backyard.

Skiday

It’s Finnish Independence Day today, which is mostly unrelated to the fact that it was also my first chance to ski this winter. Last year, I skied for the first time on December 1, so I’m just about a week behind, but I can’t help it: my prayers to Ukko weren’t answered favorably. Perhaps I didn’t use the right kind of birch trees in the pyre on which I burned the reindeer skins.

Regardless of supernatural or meteorological reasons, we didn’t have skiable snow until this week, and only last night’s blowing and drifting made my “backyard” viable for a half-hour of kick-and-glide meandering over a 360-meter loop. I was equally surprised to find that I didn’t feel abysmal (no spasming shoulders! spasming feet only about 20 minutes in!) and that the grass, barely covered by the snow, provided a halfway decent kick for my rock skis.

Backyard Ski Tracks
Backyard Ski Tracks

Tomorrow, naps willing, the Arb…

Winter Walking

Tonight was Northfield’s annual “Winter Walk” festival downtown. Just like last year, it was a good time for all – even if Shannon was too sick to go and it was a good 15 degrees colder. The girls enjoyed seeing the two live reindeer, listening to any of the bazillion caroling groups, scarfing a holiday cookie, riding on a horse-drawn wagon, getting our picture taken, and having their faces painted (Julia: Christmas tree; Genevieve: snowman). Julia did not enjoy trying to look at the moon through a telescope set up by a Carleton astronomer on Bridge Square, however – something about it freaked her out. And though it might be crass to say so, my favoritest thing about the evening was the cost: $0.00. Northfield is great that way.

(Also great: Julia asking, each time we passed one of the two banks downtown, “Is THAT the bank Jesse James robbed, Daddy?”)

Snow Cocoa

No sooner had I hoped for snow yesterday than the weather turned cold and everything turned white. After seeing Grandma off before breakfast and then burning a few hours with quiet indoor activities (including a mystifying chant of “Barack Obama/What’s the problem?” [which rhymes when Vivi says it]), the girls and I headed outside to enjoy the snow.

We were only out there for 45 minutes or so, and only walked a mile, but the girls burned so much energy jumping, running, jogging, leaping, and snow-angeling that they literally staggered back to the house – where Mama had actually done research on the internet to figure out how to make hot cocoa from the random ingredients on hand. That is dedicated mothering. Needless to say, the girls thoroughly enjoyed their “hot dodo” (as Vivi called it) – just the thing for four rosy cheeks.

Little Snow Elf
Little Snow Elf
Big Snow Elf
Big Snow Elf

Goosed

The Lyman Lakes on the eastern side of Carleton’s campus are chock full of Canada geese right now. Amazing. While taking this shot – admittedly, not the greatest ornithological photograph ever – I could hear an eerie squooshing sound as water beneath came up through gaps in the ice as the geese walked on it.

Lyman Lake Geese
Lyman Lake Geese

Skies of America

It’s been a warm, overcast, humid day here – more late May than early November. Around two, the clouds thickened and cast a dusk-like pall over the campus. Around then, I clicked on some link somewhere and watched this incredible bit of an Obama speech last night. No lie: as the video culminated with the riveting call-and-response (around 4:30), the clouds parted and a golden beam of sunlight came right through my office window.

90% Treats

Shannon already provided a full rundown of the Halloween festivities (and anxieties), and I’m buzzing from too many Milk Duds (I should have Milk Dudn’t), so I’ll just share this picture of the little witch helping the little ladybug make her way up to another door:

Witch and Ladybug
Witch and Ladybug

Anyone who can guess why Julia is wearing different witch hats gets a prize – all the Almond Joys we have in our house! (Shannon wants to give up the Milk Duds, too, but NEVER!)