April snow

From what I can tell, the meteorologists called this snowstorm right. On Thursday evening overnight into Friday, 7-8 inches of snow piled up in our backyard.

Look at the transformation in 24 hours:

I went out to look around. My mode of transportation:

Honestly, I had hoped to snowshoe more this winter than I actually did, but I couldn't have imagined that I'd have another chance on April 4.

Some peeks from my trek:

With temperatures soaring into the 50s (and beyond?) by the end of the weekend and into next week, this snow cover shouldn't last long. We are all ready for that warmer weather's arrival, but I liked tromping around the neighborhood on snowshoes during what may be the season's last snowstorm.

March Madness

Just for fun, I make a bracket for March Madness most years. I begin the tournament with optimism, but my success is generally short-lived.

This year is more exciting than usual for me because the Tennessee men's basketball team is in the mix!

Unless you are new to Miles and Laurel, you know that I've been a Tennessee football fan for almost three years. There have been some unintended effects of this project - for example, I've followed college football in general more closely than I ever expected. This year, another unintended effect was that I ended up following the Tennessee men's basketball season fairly closely simply because the Tennessee beat writers I follow on Twitter go from covering football in the fall to hoops in the winter. The team's season gained a lot of momentum at the right time heading into the SEC tournament, and they ended up playing last night in one of the First Four games to begin the NCAA tournament.

And what a game it was! UT trailed early and in a big way, but ended up winning 78-65 in overtime. It was a thrilling start to March Madness for Volunteer fans (including Josh and me, but not Wish - he was sleeping).

Even the snowman is rooting for UT!

Who's in your Final Four? How do you craft your brackets? And are you rooting for powerhouses or underdogs?

Snow blanket

Now that it's nearly spring—or at least there's more daylight and puddles everywhere—apparently I am eager to recap winter.

If memory serves me, the Twin Cities really had only one or two significant snowstorms this winter (though March isn't over yet). But because it was so cold all winter, everything stuck around and piled up (and I mean piled up).

And I got used to it, and because there weren't very many big, big snowfalls, I'd forget how much snow  was on the ground. (Until Wish would try to walk across a drift and plunge through snow cover that turned out to be taller than he was, which happened more than once.) The only really clear reminder of the snow depth were the little outdoor landmarks that got swallowed: the benches, the signs, the bikes.

I got a weird kick out of seeing those reminders this winter. The snow blanket is melting fast now, so I thought I'd collect a few examples before it's gone.

If you dropped by the blog on Monday, you saw these little benches without benches at the Lake Harriet Bandshell:

An Adirondack chair on a patio that's not quite ready for warm-weather lounging:

From over the weekend: that bar is the top of a bench.

And from after that big snowfall a few weeks back: the little stubs are the tops of the fence stakes around our community garden.

(Hard to picture? Here's what they looked like in the spring!)

I wondered at first why I was collecting these odd photos of things like buried Adirondack chairs—and then I figured out that these funny sights speak to my love of seeing these neighborhoods, one detail at a time, in every season.

After the snowfall

A peek at skijoring

It's City of Lakes Loppet weekend!

Though I'm no longer doing much Nordic skiing (it was my main sport back in high school), I love, love this annual urban ski festival in Minneapolis. I volunteered last year with my friend Lindsay (we met on our high school's ski team, so this is a fun activity for us to do together), and this year, Lindsay asked if I wanted to volunteer again - this time, at the skijoring race.

Do you know about skijoring!? I knew about it in theory but had never seen a skijoring race for myself before today. It's a ski race in which the skiers are attached to their pup via a long cord, and the dog (ideally) pulls the skier along to make the pace even faster.

This is a bold statement, Reader, but I think it's my new favorite sport to spectate.

It didn't hurt that bright sun was shining at Lake Calhoun and there were hundreds (thousands?) of people (and tons of dogs) milling around the area, which also served as headquarters for the bike race, kids' races, classic skiing races, vendor village and other events going on today. (The 42K freestyle - or skate-skiing -race and a bunch of other events are tomorrow.)

It also didn't hurt that (unrelated to skijoring) our shuttle from Uptown over to Lake Calhoun was via horse!

There were 10K, 5K and 3K skijoring races, and Lindsay and I were part of the volunteer team that helped the racers line up by bib number, in rows of 10. It was sort of organized chaos, as you can imagine, and I was so impressed by the dogs. (Wish would love the sport itself but would not enjoy the crowds and the other dogs.) The dogs were excited (lots of barking at the start!) but I didn't see any squabbles (canine or human).

One highlight of the event was running into my friend Emily and her pup Doc at the start line. It was his first race!

We helped with some crowd control and then got to watch the start of the races! The leaders were fast. The dogs were having a ball.

The 10K was two laps around the lake's perimeter, which was snow-covered and groomed for both skate- and classic-skiing. I got to see Emily and Doc zoom by at the halfway point.

On our way out of the festival, Lindsay and I made sure to take a picture together (for the second year in a row, so it's officially a tradition).

January was a dismally cold month in Minnesota, and though today's temperature couldn't have been much warmer than 15 degrees or so, it was wonderful to ring in February at an event where so, so many people were out celebrating winter instead of fighting it. It was a fun and refreshing afternoon.

Snowy Friday evening

Long lines

More snowflakes

Two years ago, I remembered how much I love making paper snowflakes and ended up with a window full of taped-up snowflakes.

This year, I wondered if I might try to recreate that snowflake window, but I hadn't decided for sure. Then, earlier this week, I walked by a boutique with a window display featuring snowflakes strung into garland with white ribbon. (It caught me by surprise and I might have yelped "OH HOW BEAUTIFUL!")

My inspiration was set.

My goal: make a bunch of snowflakes out of scrap paper we had around the house and then string them on ribbon to decorate the window between our living room and dining area.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the snowflakes had to be made. The construction scene one morning last weekend:

I remember this process being messy two years ago, but I think it was a hundred times messier this year. When I last made snowflakes, Wish wasn't part of our family, and this time around, he made his presence known by 1) sitting in the snowflake scraps 2) tracking them all over the home and 3) trying to eat the remnants.

I didn't clean up as I went, but I did put the snowflakes into old textbooks to press them overnight.

Later, I took a few out and strung up one strand of snowflakes, just to see how it looked:

I liked where it was going, so I kept going: threading the ribbon through sturdy cutouts on the snowflakes, then using little pieces of tape to hold each snowflake approximately in place on the ribbon.

The final result:

I didn't actually count how many snowflakes I would need - just merrily cut out snowflakes to my heart's content - and I had a bunch left over. I looked at our mantel and decided that it, too, would benefit from some snowflake decor. I made little loops with ribbon and tape and hung eight snowflakes on a long piece of ribbon, then attached that with more tape to the mantel.

It was appropriate timing: lots of winter weather around the country made for some snowy football games. Snow on the TV + snow on the mantel!

My window display in 2011 stayed up long into 2012. I can only predict the same for these little snowflakes.

Winter run

There will be plenty of time later to grumble about tricky winter running conditions.

Today, my first snowy run of the season, was not that time. The miles felt like play. It was a wonderful combination of conditions: it was warm enough to skip wearing gloves, the sidewalks weren't icy yet, and the snow was dry enough so it wasn't piling up in my shoes under my heels - and I saw kids sledding and making snowmen.

I ran on a trail and followed the tracks of a human and dog who had traveled the same path just before I did:

I liked the scenery, too.

A cold snap is arriving soon, so I was very glad to get out for a run today.

The spring snowstorm's upside

Still: no matter the date, I will never tire of snow on trees.

Soft peaks

A pizza-related first

I promise I will connect the title to this post in a second. Just wait.

A couple of inches of fresh snow fell overnight, and this morning's drive to work was so outrageously beautiful I could hardly stand it. I mean, I truly could not stand it. I pulled over and snapped a few photos mid-commute.

And - ready - later in the day, I got to have heart-shaped pizza for the first time in my life! Monumental!

Josh has practice tonight, so we had a lunch date instead to celebrate Valentine's Day. I've heard all about these fabulous heart-shaped pizza specials that restaurants run on Feb. 14 but have never partaken in one.

The pizza was way good, as I feel about most pizzas, and I learned that it's kind of impossible not to grin every time you look down at this funny little pie. My other favorite part was the receipt:

Add a pretty snowy city to a day with a heart-shaped pizza, and I am a happy camper.

Sunday long run

As I type, some sort of winter storm has arrived in my neck of the woods. The precipitation is swinging wildly from rain to sleet to snow and back again in no discernable pattern, but I think it's supposed to shift to mostly snow for the rest of the day.

Anyway, I tell you that to explain why I wanted to hurry out for a longish run this morning before all of that moved in. I am so out of practice for weekend long runs, and the days of zipping out for 18 or 20 miles on a weekend morning seemed very far away. But the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run is on my calendar in eight weeks - along with some shorter races and maybe a half-marathon in the plan - so out I went for eight or nine miles.

There was a fine little dusting of snow on St. Paul's sidewalks. I got out early enough so that I wasn't the first person (or creature) to traverse the sidewalks, but I got to see them before the snow layer got trampled. It's not a huge new revelation to most of you that I have an odd love for sidewalk footprints, so I was having a ball watching the morning's history play out on the paths.

There was your standard, of course:

Your Yak-Trax-loving pedestrian:

A little lion all by its lonesome:

And a person running with a rabbit?

Later I was over by the Mississippi River and was fascinated by the ice chunks on the partially frozen river. Isn't it wild?!

Then I turned and headed into the wind, and it started raining, and I stopped taking pictures because hustling toward home sounded much more appealing. The rain started to freeze and make the sidewalks more slippery, and by the end my vest had a little frozen ice layer over the front.

Eight miles done, followed by coffee, cereal, and grapefruit. Let it snow!

Snowshoeing

Yes!!! I snowshoed!!!

I think you can tell by the combination of my exclamation points and looking closely at this picture that the only problem with my expedition was my totally inadequate low-cut cotton socks!

Josh and I both got snowshoes in the past couple of years as gifts from my parents, and the snow cover in those years has not been conducive to snowshoeing. Josh has never actually been out on his. I went once with my mom on wonderful snow, and I think it spoiled me. I didn't want to go earlier this winter because the snow was packed and icy, and I couldn't tell why it would be much different than going for a walk on packed snow. I want fluff!

Several little clippers have swept through in the past week, dropping a little batch of beautiful, fluffy snow each time. I decided that I had to seize the day and enjoy the fluffy snow. (I feel like I have already typed "snow" at least 600 times.) My real goal is to get out on trails with Josh this weekend (and/or the rest of winter), but I wanted to do a trial run first, so I zipped over to the local golf course for a mini-adventure.

Guess what is the most fun part about snowshoeing? From what I've read, at a lot of places, you don't have to stay on any sort of trail. You can go wherever strikes your fancy! After skiing for years solely on groomed trails, this was totally foreign to me. At the golf course I visited, it was game on: there was a groomed trail for skiers, but there were also tons of tracks from skiers who had forged their own paths. I even saw one other set of snowshoe tracks (and, to be honest, got confused that they were mine and that I had somehow gotten totally turned around).

I hopped onto the golf course next to a makeshift skate-skiing trail. (That kind of trail-blazing skiing is hard work.)

And then I got tromp around wherever I felt like tromping! It was daytime, so I followed this animal's tracks and tromped through a little grove of pine trees.

I tromped under a willow tree for fun. I tried to tromp up a little hill and saw that snowshoeing could indeed be hard work. For the most part, though, I kept my effort easy. It felt like going for a walk to bask in the winter sunshine! I looked up at one point and saw blue skies.

I only stayed out for a short time, just to get the lay of the land, but my snowshoe stint also felt more playful than walking and certainly more than running. I've even spent many hours skiing in similar places, but the element of play in snowshoeing is uncomparable and undeniable.

I had a great time puttering around even in this relatively urban setting. I could usually but not always see cars wherever I was, so even the "not always" part was a little treat. I can only imagine how much fun it would be in a more remote and peaceful park. I am consciously making an effort to add some zip and zest to February, and this was just the ticket.