Spring!

 Last night I squeezed in twenty miles after school. I didn't feel all that great, and I knew that some exercise would help. It did. It's lovely to be able to ride outside in shorts again!

 And here's Freya down at the creek this morning. Happy girl waded through the water.

Just seven days ago, this was us! How easy we forget!

Spring? Biking

So...Bicycling Magazine is hosting a contest: submit 100 words about your favorite ride  (I take that quite loosely) and a photo. I submitted a couple weeks ago, and TODAY (two days before contest ends), I read that I can submit ONE entry EACH day! Holy buckets.
So here's today's entry:

 

I ride to breathe in the seasons: I watch snow melting, mud emerging, the grass and tiny corn plants sprouting, and foals standing on toothpick legs. Geese honk, winging north, and the baby calves bawl. I smell rain coming, lilacs blooming, mown grass, baled hay, and grain drying in bins. I’m in my upper 50s. I ride so I only have one chin and so my thighs don't rub together. It doesn't hurt if I can beat some people 30 years younger than I am either.  Somebody asked me what I use on my face. I said, "Sweat."

: )

Photo by Steve Pottenger

Green day...green eggs? No ham.

So... I buy my cage-free organic eggs (sometimes I get them free) from a neighbor. This week, I opened the carton, and lo and behold, two eggs are green! Most of them are the beautiful brown pictured here, but GREEN? I've never heard of a green egg except, of course, through Dr. Seuss.

I ate one of them yesterday morning, and the yoke was bright yellow, the white pure white, and I didn't eat ham. So what kind of chicken lays GREEN EGGS?

I'm going to do a bit of research, but at this point, I'm going with this theory: some smart hen is celebrating the fact that the sun is out (FINALLY) and the meadow is green, and baby tree buds are popping. And the hen thought she needed to join the trend.

Time lapse: I just found my answer. Fun!

SPRING! Theater, and Blog Tour continues.

Spring! Spring, spring!

Can anyone anywhere love spring more than Minnesotans and Canadians? It's not possible to be more grateful for melting snow mounds and the sight of bright green grass, is it?

And a bike ride outside (yes, I got one in this weekend in spite of an insane amount of work to do)!

Joe is on the block today on the Teen Book Scene Blog Tour. You can read his interview here at Reading Teen. And don't forget that you can click on the icon here to donate to "Give a Girl a Bike" through Global Giving. Every meaningful comment on one of the host blogs will result in a dollar donated, too. $50 buys a girl in India a bike, which means the difference between being able to go to school or not getting an education.

Besides trying to get a bunch of grading done this weekend, trying to finish my part of the Program Review for Liberal Arts and Sciences report, playing with Freya in the woods, and riding my bike, I went to two theater productions in the Twin Cities: "Annie" by the Immaculate Heart of Mary Middle School in Minnetonka, which was SPECTACULAR and made it hard to believe that it was all seventh and eight-graders on stage.

Five of my Humanities students and I went to the Guthrie on Sunday to see "A Winter's Tale" by Shakespeare. I'd never seen this play, or read it, which is sort of rare for an English major. I hadn't heard the best reviews about it, but I actually truly enjoyed it, and my students did too. We had quite a lot to talk about on the way home. The two time periods of the two acts made sense if we considered the first act to be about 1950, and sixteen years later put it smack-dab in the sixties flower children era.

At any rate, every one of my students can't wait to get back to the Guthrie, so it was worth every minute and every penny spent.

Oh, yeah, I also did a reading/book event at the Blue Earth County Library Saturday morning. It was small, but there were great questions, and we had a delightful discussion. Thanks, thanks, thanks to those of you who came, and to Jennifer Cassman for organizing it!