wintery blast

This past week has been lovely. The temperature was up into the 30's and 40's--quite balmy around here. Our ice dam on the roof and all the ice that had built up on the side of the house melted. Our road into our neighborhood dried up completely for the first time since our December blizzard. It almost felt like spring was coming.

But, ha. That was just a trick of Old Man Winter. Today is another blizzard, with 12-18 inches of snow.

Nice joke.
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Happy Valentines Day

I like cute as much as the next person. But, I'm not artsy-creative, I don't have patience for working with kids on projects and I hate cleaning up their messes. Plus, I don't like cutesy.

That's why these are brilliant. So simple and so fun. We'll do these again next year too.
T's turned out perfectly. But, I couldn't get the Z-man to extend his arm straight at the right level with a fist, so his wasn't as good. Nonetheless, I'm pretty darn proud of our efforts this year. Too bad MJ's school party was on Friday. I didn't come up with this plan--or in other words decide to steal wholesale from another blog post--until Friday.

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Night Out

A long time ago, in what feels like a different galaxy, I was living in Provo , working on the last year of my master's program. After living for several years in the same place, I had recently moved. Because my roommates and I were all at least 25 years old, we weren't bound by the rule mandating that girls and boys couldn't live in the same section of an apartment building. So, we lived in a condo on a hall with three apartments of boys.

Across the hall were some guys that we liked to spend time with. I had started to develop a secret crush on one of them, which was just plain ridiculous because he had recently had a crush on my roommate and because he was quite a bit younger than me and because there was no way that he would ever reciprocate the feelings. But, we hung out.

In January of that year, this guy casually asked if I wanted to go see the Utah Symphony play a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, and I casually said yes. I don't remember all the details, but it seemed like he backed out because of a snow storm, allegedly bad enough to make driving to SLC too difficult. I didn't get a chance to talk to him about it--this was in the days before cell phones--but he left a note at my apartment. Then he spent the whole night in the computer lab, working on some kind of homework assignment. I was mad at him because I felt like he was treating me a little too casually. We were going to this concert, then he backed out rather thoughtlessly. That made me all the madder at myself that I was liking him. He wasn't treating me like a real date, he was treating me like a casual friend.

AJ has never lived that down, even though we've gone to several Rachmaninoff concerts since then. We get to go to another one tonight. A friend of ours plays french horn for the Minnesota Orchestra. He knows that AJ really loves the bombastic Russian composers who favor compositions that prominently feature the low brass. And so, when a Rachmaninoff and Shostikovitch program came up, he emailed to ask if we wanted tickets.

It's been a while since we've been out for date night. It's hard with little kids and lots going on. But, tonight we'll go to dinner, and then go listen to the amazing Rach 3. I'm really looking forward to it.
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February in Minnesota

It was -27 with the wind chill on the way to work, according to the radio.

A few months ago, I discovered a new to me band--Storyhill. I heard them on Prairie Home Companion. The band consists of two men, who started performing together in high school in Bozeman, Montana, and then later moved to Minnesota where they continued performing. They have a Simon and Garfunkel kind of sound, a folksy sound, with amazing harmonies.

One of their songs begins, "This year the winter will not break me."

That's been my mantra during this latest cold front. I have been doing pretty well. January seems like it should be a deep freeze, plus I was really busy with work. By February, though, I start to tire of the down coat and heavy scarf and gloves, the messy mudroom with dirty snow melting on the floor. I want a little more warmth. We are supposed to get up in the 30's over the next few days, and I mentioned it to AJ. I suggested that it might be the "end of winter", or at least the end of the bitter cold. He told me that it would probably get cold again and I got really mad at him. I need to maintain my perhaps delusional thought that the worst of winter is over.

I have no desire to stay here forever and I hope we can find a way to move in the next few years.

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