New Digs

I was very exciting when I arrived on campus this morning to see that Carleton is immediately starting to put up a new building, the William H. Sallmon Administrative Building. As President Oden says in the video announcement of the project, the building will be devoted to offices for Carleton’s large and growing administrative staff. In other words, me! Thank god. I need a new office, with room for a sofa and, I hope, a nice view.

Note the heavy machinery in place to start construction right away this morning.
Sallmon Administrative Building

A more legible close up of the sign.
Sallmon Administrative Building

Different Strokes

After dinner, I suggested to the girls that we go outside to enjoy a bike ride in the nice weather. As I knew she would, Julia balked at this idea. As I knew she would, Genevieve like this idea. I asked Julia if she’d like to walk with me while Vivi rode her bike. She said, “No, but I think I’d like to read magazines.” I asked if she’d like to sit outside and read magazines while I accompanied Vivi on a bike ride up and down the block, never getting out of sight of the house. Julia thought this sounded good, “but first I need to change into my jammies.”

Of course.

So ten minutes later, I was outside with Genevieve, who was wearing an appropriately safe helmet and an inappropriately thick jacket and sitting on her bike, rarin’ to go, while Julia, in her pinkest jammies (and sandals), got situated in her Disney Princess “camping chair” with roughly two years’ worth of Ranger Rick and other such magazines.

Internet, there has never been a more vivid display of similarities and differences between my daughters.

While Julia silently read, Vivi zoomed up and down the block for a while. She was just getting bored when Shannon came home, letting us head off to the hallowed bike path while Julia read through vol. 6, issues 9-12 of High Five or whatever. After a good half-hour ride, Vivi and I were back home, tired out, to collect Julia and her library and go inside for baths and bed.

The Power of Pretend

Being a kid is pretty much defined by being able to get lost in make believe, but this afternoon Genevieve took this to an extreme.

Playing outside with Julia and the girl next door, Vivi pretended to lose her favorite teddy bear, Robby Bear. She spent a good twenty minutes “hunting fow Wobby,” wandering around the green space behind our townhouse, calling for him, and fake-crying. Since he was sitting out in the open and since she hardly walked more then ten yards from him, she never actually lost track of him, but she did manage to get herself worked up to about 90% of an actual meltdown. She managed to keep that unpleasantness at bay, but only barely and only after the neighbor girl came over and whispered to me, “Genevieve is a very convincing character!”

Indeed she is.

Running Thoughts

For whatever reason, today’s run generated more random thoughts than usual. A sampling, in no particular order:

  • “There are a lot of energy-drink empties in the ditches these days.”
  • “Crows are awfully loud.”
  • “This hat sucks for keeping the sweat out of my face.”
  • “I wonder if I could tell a coyote paw print from a regular dog paw print.”
  • “If a kilometer is 1,000 meters, and a mile is 1,760 yards, and one kilometer is .62 of a mile, how many meters in a mile?”*
  • “Fuck that. I’ll never do that math in my head.”
  • “I wish I could have a snack right now.”
  • “I can actually feel my pulse in my hamstrings. Weird.”
  • “Do robins live in flocks? It seems like there are a lot of robins in that field.”
  • “I wonder where this road goes.”
  • “I wish I were skiing.”
  • “Haven’t seen any roadkilled animals yet.”
  • “A bright orange leaf! In March?!”
  • “My nose is running. It’s fifty degrees, but my nose is running.”

* Google tells me that there are 1,609 meters in a mile, which I should have remembered from running the 1,600 meter “metric mile” in high school track.

Three Poems by Genevieve

As Genevieve has improved both her printing and her ability to spell, she has started writing out blocks of text. Given her three-and-a-half-year old brain, these can be a bit mysterious, in a poetic way.

3
I lov
You
E
5
I
Love
You
To Julia


Love Genevieve
To Daddy
Two Princesses
Staff
Two Cows Two
Cats Two
Dogs
Two Babys


Crayola
For You
And a
Apple if Your
Hungry

(These three are presented as written.)

March Run

A truly bizarre situation – the girls going to a tea party with Shannon, leaving me unscheduled for two hours – let me to do a nice long run through the Arb on Sunday afternoon. The weather was perfect, and though early spring is not the most beautiful time to be in the Arb, it was nice to establish a “before” against which to compare the verdant lushness of late spring and summer. To that end, a few photos…

Lyman Ice

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.
Upper Lyman Lake

Lower Lyman Lake, on the other hand, is still about half iced over, though as late as Wednesday all of the open water here was still covered.
Lower Lyman Lake

Seven Signs of Spring

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. The Carleton grounds crews tidying flower beds, trimming trees and shrubs, and sweeping away tons of sand.

6. Balding middle-aged men driving their two-season sports cars.

7. The reddening tips of our maple tree branches, getting ready to bud next month.

Coffeeshopped

Julia improved on my shot of the girls at the downtown coffeeshop on one of our Saturday-morning bagel outings with this excellent rendering. The lights are realistic, if somewhat (say, 1000%) oversized in relation to the three of us at our table. Vivi was wearing heart-kneed pants; I was not holding my coffee mug over my head like an Olympic torch – nor was the guy at the sofa behind us. Not included in this picture are the twenty or so soaking-wet runners who show up every Saturday and devour coffeecake with whipped cream on top.

Blue Monday

Jammies Jams

The girls are into a hilarious (and occasionally annoying) phase of choosing, re-choosing, and re-re-choosing their pajamas every night. Tonight after bath, for instance, Julia put on a crazy pair of purple jammies that attract her with a complicated Ariel-the-mermaid motif but repel her with scratchy synthetic fabric and tight elastic cuffs. For her part, Genevieve donned a heavy, warm sleeper right after bath. Not five minutes later, she switched to her favorite bright-green t-shirt/pants set, having (correctly) concluded that the sleeper would be too warm on the night after a 60-degree day. She wore the green PJs until bed, at which moment she took off the shirt, put on a long-sleeve pajama top, and then pulled the t-shirt shirt back on. I asked her, as she climbed into bed, if maybe she thought she would be too hot in all those clothes under all her covers. “No, I not,” she assured me.

No more than three minutes after lights-out, Vivi called me back in, complaining of being too hot. As I helped her out of her long-sleeved top, Julia hopped out of bed, trumping up the usual charges against her Ariel getup and switching into some far more comfortable light-cotton jammies. At least now they’re settled in, if not yet asleep.

Such are evenings at my house nowawdays. For those scoring at home:

Time: 60 minutes
Number of jammies, Julia: 2
Number of jammies, Genevieve: 2.5
Average lifespan of jammies: 13 1/3 minutes
Equivalent number of jammies over 12-hour day: 54