Snow!

A few weeks ago, while out to lunch with my adviser and all her advisees, I jokingly bargained with M that when we went on the job market, she could have the South and I'd take the north. Adviser, in tones of mock despair mixed with real concern, said 'that does it. Now M will get a job in Minnesota and c... will get her only offer in Florida.'

Here are just a few pictures and captions to help explain the horrified look that crossed my face ...




Yesterday, we took our snowshoes and tromped down through new snow to the edge of the Mississippi River in St. Paul. The sky was lightly overcast, but the sun was bright behind the clouds. The trees were still coated with several inches of light snow and everything sparkled. It was a perfect winter day.

I'm rather fond of snowshoeing, but it only reaches its full potential after a foot or more of snow falls. Last february, during the massive snowstorm in central illinois, we made it to our friend Anthony's with dinner thanks to the snowshoes.

What I really love about snowshoeing (and about skiing) is the way it gets us out into the midst of winter beauty. A few winters ago, we had the most beautiful winter hike in three feet of northern Minnesota snow. We were staying at a cabin in Tetteguche state park and ended up taking a trail that had been untouched after several feet of snow. We were alone in the woods, finding the path by luck and careful observation of blazes... it was incredible, and it wouldn't have been possible without the snowshoes.


And Anna and I aren't the only ones that love snow. Ceisaf is a born snow-dog. He loves winter, loves rubbing his face in the snow, loves the way that smells (apparently) stand out stronger in the cold stuff.


At the end of yesterday's snow shoeing adventure, we decided to take a 'short cut' up the bank of the river: about 100 yards at a 70 degree angle from the river's edge to the road above it... the dogs were much better at climbing than we were, but we managed, sometimes on all fours. Halfway up, we stopped to watch a hairy woodpecker bang on a nearby tree branch.


Oh, and then there's cross country skiing - in my not-so-humble opinion, the very finest form of exercise in existence. It's also an activity that requires consistent snow-fall and, ideally, "packing and tracking" of ski trails. In lovely central illinois, even when we had last year's massive snowfall, Anna and I couldn't find *anywhere* that had groomed ski trails. In MN, as soon as a few inches fall, there are trails prepared and people there to use them.

Oh, and I also feel that winter has not been winter if my legs haven't frozen to my jeans at least once... i don't have pictures of that, though...

So, there you are ... my northern bias.

heh

Here's a little quiz (probably only interesting to a subset of this blog's readership):

According to sitemeter, I had the following hit to coughing in ink this morning:

from the domain msu.edu (Michigan State University)

a google search (quotation marks in the original): "is most often visible in the morning"

Here's the question: What was going on in that search?

First correct response wins a piece of candy from TB's jar.

PSA part deux

All,

Starmaster, over at Starmaster's Guide could use some help on a seminar paper he's writing, I'm guessing, for a certain genre-teaching professor. He's writing about blogs and what people who write them think about them, and he's doing an informal little survey on his own blog.

So, if you promise to keep yourselves under control (you know I'm talking to you, Candy, MGM, and EB), I recommend y'all head over and be helpful.

PSA

We interrupt our usual programming to offer a public service announcement for the fifty -two trillion people how happen across coughing in ink because they google "picture of someone coughing."

First of all, folks, here's a little link to a bunch of those pictures

Second, at the risk of being pedantic, let me offer a little advice for google searching. If you want a picture of someone coughing, go to Google, click on the link for "Images" at the top of the page, and type "coughing" in the search box. That should give you plenty of pictures that are labled "coughing." Don't search "picture of someone coughing" on the main google page. That will get you to my blog, called "coughing in ink" on which I have a post entitled "pictures you might expect from someone studying in Ecuador." There are no pictures of people coughing in that post, but the words "coughing" "picture" and "someone" are there along with some really pretty pictures from Ecuador. See, I'm sure you already know this, but a regular google search searches for words in text. A google image search, on the other hand, searches for words in the label or file name of images... much more useful for your purposes.

Also, in case you didn't know already and happen to be about to run a google search on it, the drug police, at least in Ecuador, know all about smuggling cocaine in tampons, so I don't recommend that approach. I do, however, recommend "smuggling cocaine tampons" as a reasonable google search if you wanted to find out about whether it's a good idea.

Deck the Living Room

Yesterday, despite the impending sleet, we made our way out to Ridge Road Tree farm to cut ourselves a Christmas tree. I'd had visions of a 8'10" wonder that would almost brush the ceiling, but, much to Anna's relief, the tallest balsam firs topped out at about six feet. It's probably a good thing, too, since we barely had enough ornaments to give the six-footer a nice coating.

But, despite today's freezing rain, it definitely feels a bit more like Christmas in our house now that I can sit here on the couch and gaze at the lit and decorated tree instead of getting that one seminar paper written.

Bring it on, Winter!

Having finally subdued the phlegmy cruds from hell, I returned today to the world of the tough and burly all decked out for cold weather in my new under-helmet beanie and lightweight, smartwool neck gaiter.

The beanie may look, um, slightly dorky on its own ....

but I am quite happy with the overall winter biker look once I get the helmet on top. Plus, I kept pretty much warm all the way in. The best part? No aching ears (oh how I hate the cold ear ache!). With my new gear, I should be able to bike as long as the roads stay reasonably clear. I don't have cool, all-weather studded bike tires (and don't plan to) and I don't really trust central Illinois drivers in winter, so I don't think I'll ride when there's ice or snow on the road.

(note: these pictures leave no doubt about the fact that I only added to the pasty chorus at st. olaf)

Now, I just have to replace my gloves. The tips of my middle fingers got a bit frozen.

Fram! Fram!

Struck suddenly by a bit of homesickness, a bout of financial foolishness, and the novelty of the event, Anna and I decided to attend the first ever simulcast of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival today. For some reason, the Savoy 16 had signed on for the broadcast (we wondered, when we realized this fact, how many St. Olaf alums live in C-U. The answer, given the 'crowd' in the theater seems to be 'not many') and that seemed like sufficient sign that we should try it out.

I knew this while I was at St. Olaf, but I have been struck by it again, and again, and again every time I've returned to campus, especially for Christmas Fest. St. Olaf is a *blindingly* white place. At one point during the performance as the camera panned past the fiftieth shade of blondish-brown hair framing the fiftieth subtle hue of pasty peach, I thought to myself "wow. I didn't know there were so many shades of white..." This recognition is not meant to erase the handful of people of color in the choirs and orchestra. Among the 450 or so choir members and 50ish orchestra members there were probably 25 people of color... but, um, it's a pretty astonishing sea of whiteness. And when you add in the audience, well, it's striking.



But, that aside, there remains something amazing for me about Christmas Fest. I performed in Christmas Fest for all four years of my college career, first in the Manitou Singers and then in Cantorei. I wasn't always happy at college - Anna and I talk sometimes about how much more we could have dug in to our college years ... instead, we passed many of them awkward and gawky (we noticed tonight that a fair number of the choir members have a similar awkward and gawky look about them ... we felt their pain). But Cantorei, in particular, felt like a place I fit, and the week of Christmas Fest is, I think, a highlight for most people in St. Olaf choirs. This afternoon, watching those young men and women sing their hearts out for the fourth performance in four days, I could very much see myself.

And, the memory is incredibly *physical* for me. This is especially true since I had sung at least half of the mass choir pieces before. As I listened, my body responded as if I too were singing, my ears tuned carefully to the second soprano line. And I remembered that even in the moment of singing with that enormous choir I knew that it would never be like that again. There was always an incredible bittersweetness to singing in Christmas Fest. You knew that it wouldn't be long before you were watching other people sing those songs you had worked so hard to learn, feeling the same anxiety and excitement, thinking the same panicked thoughts about homework left to do and exams approaching, and wanting desperately to hold on to the silence between the end of Beautiful Savior and the start of the applause.