happy april fool's day!

restrain yourselves today....make your pranks mature, sophisticated, and thoughtful.
for example, this year i am frosting my pan of exlax brownies with a dark chocolate ganache made from fair trade organic chocolate.

'wwcd'--what would cesar do?

the temp hit the mid-40's, nice and sunny, a good day for playing outside. people were out biking, walking, and running. young parents were out in the neighborhood with strollers and little kids on bikes, their helmets on and their training wheels blazin' down the sidewalks. and the teenagers! they were out en masse, mixed groups of kids with their hormones flowing like the sap that's running in the sugar groves right now.

i took a nice long walk with brodie. our usual 45 minutes turned into an hour. he just had to stop and sniff every flippin' thing, and had to mark every melting snow bank with a couple drops of pee before the snow is gone for good.

on our popular route along the river the disappearing snow has uncovered some gargantuan piles of dog turds littering the tree lawns, reminders of many winter dog-walks taken by dog owners who aren't aware of the only redeeming quality of plastic grocery bags.

it was a grand day, all in all.....

"have you tried on your summer shorts yet?"

SPRING IS NATURE'S WAY OF SAYING "LET'S PARTY!"

-----Robin Williams

wish me luck!

am setting out on a personal journey of sorts. actually it started last week. i hope to end up a better person when i come to the end of it. don't know for sure when that will be, but i've set out with high hopes; it took me a long time to finally decide to embark on this particular voyage. i'll keep you posted...........

vernal equinox has arrived! (not a moment too soon)

sweet spring signs for you today

happy first day of spring, everyone. walked to work this morning to the song of the neighborhood cardinals. i live 3/4 mi. from the office so it's a nice brisk walk. i get to

the office and wish i could just keep walking.....:)

jaysus, mary 'n joseph

be careful out there today, paddy, and havin' a few goes around yer circle of blessed beads afore venturin' out tuh the pub'll bring ya god's own luck................xo

what are you up to this weekend?

molly and i are going to the milwaukee public museum tomorrow to take in the "body worlds" exhibition. we are so excited!!

spring signs

7 days until march 20, the first day of spring

i heard my first cardinal song this morning, a

big happy male perched, as always, at the very

tippy-top of the tallest tree in the neighborhood

singing his little lungs out in the hope that love will

find him

where's that march wind? we need it!

we had 2 inches of snow last night. by the time i left the office at 4:30pm today it had all melted, but we definitely need some wind and rain action here!

To the Thawing Wind

Come with rain. O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do tonight,bath my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.

-------------------------Robert Frost

can spring be far behind?

the north wind doth blow, and we shall have snow,

and what will poor robin do then, poor thing?

he'll hide in the barn and keep himself warm,

and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

---------------------------------an old english nursery rhyme

with that said, saw our first robin in the neighbor's crabapple tree this last sunday!

9 days till spring!!

just another workday

tonite's dinner feature @ chez dennis

YUM!! ALL COOKED ON THE GRILL!!

why do i do this?

i've been asking myself why i got started on this blogging stuff. and why i keep it up--albeit sporadically, depending on my mood.

there are so many blogs that are much more tech-savvy than mine---they have reader polls, and lists of recipes, and lists of music and videos that one can click on and enjoy--or not, lists of the blogger's favorite blogs, and blah, blah, blah.

i don't have a list of favorite blogs that i read because i don't usually read other people's blogs. i don't have the time. and i don't want to make cyber-friends with other bloggers. i guess i am a cyber-snob.

i thought it would be cool to start a web diary of sorts to look back on now and again. but it doesn't contain my most private thoughts, feelings and struggles.

i wanted to be able to keep in touch with family and friends in a new way. but i didn't want them to feel obligated to be blog-ees.

a blog sounded like a good way to fool around with my camera and my love of all things natural and to discipline myself to channel my daydreaming/deep thoughts into something maybe a little more organized and constructive for myself.

so you will never see a hit counter on my blog. or advertising. if no one other than myself ever reads my blog that is ok with me, since i started it mostly to please myself. if it happens to give pleasure to someone else, that is frosting on the cake.

will being a star go to his head???

take a gander at this. dennis was asked to be in a commercial for the hospital to attract new nurses. scripted, of course. unpaid, of course. no royalties, of course.

just the honor of being asked. he said yes because he's a nice guy and cares about the people who go there for care. which is as it should be.

a sweet scene

i love to people-watch. and i love bookstores. so when i was away in the big city at the training i just posted about, i spent a large part of one evening at a huge bookstore.

i love the smell of paper. one of my high school friends had a garage loaded with paper products--her dad sold paper bags to grocery stores, etc. i always wanted to hang out in her garage because it smelled so...papery...a digression. sorry.

so i am at the bookstore sniffing lots of books.

go upstairs to the kid's section and am nasally lovin the kids books. i turn the corner and see a man with his little one. just the two of them. no female in sight. and i hear him reading to his little boy. they are curled up on the floor in a quiet corner, totally absorbed in the story. it brought tears to my eyes to see the tenderness of that man as he quietly read to the little boy.

later on i was in the bookstore coffeeshop and i saw them again. this time the man was giving the little boy spoonfuls of the whipped creme and honey drizzle from the top of his cup of latte.

and once again, quietly and tenderly.

it was such a gift to be a witness to these acts of love. done quietly, not for show, not to impress bystanders.

by day i was learning how to react to all the nasty things that man can do in our world, but this nite i had my faith restored in the goodness that man can do for the most important beings in our world.

daylight savings time

atta girl.......looks like she's getting ready for st. pat's....i just love her dog. he reminds me of brodie.

now i know how to exorcise! i mean exercise! the homeland security way!

greetings, my fellow americans. for the last couple days i was out of town at an "hseep exercise training".

yes, i realize you're jealous and want to know how you, too, can enjoy this type of spa-sounding experience. but hold on, don't start lining up just yet.

of course we all remember sept. 11 and the nation-wide emergency response system that was born out of it. (interestingly enough, based on the methods of fighting wildfires out west--involving the use of an incident command structure, etc etc)

hseep is actuallly u.s. govt. acronym-speak for "homeland security exercise evaluation planning."

now do you get it? no? i didn't either, and i had to go spend 2 9-hour days trying to do it!

by friday afternoon my brain had turned to alphabet soup.

the trainig centered around a massive 3 ring binder filled with modules, and power points with slides so small i couldn't read the print, even with my cheater glasses, and an a to z list of acronyms that was 5 pages long! and the instructor used them constantly, talking about nims, and eoc's, and pheps, sop's, eeg's, aar's, ics, and about being sure to share your mesls (pronounced measles) with all the prime players. hearing that made me smile--but only the first few times of the hundred or so times i heard it!

the gist of the training was learning to plan disaster exercises in order to practice emergency response and evaluate and improve emergency preparedness--for any type of disaster--be it terrorism, natural disaster, pandemic influenza, blah, blah, blah.

i know this doesn't sound like something a public health dept. would be involved in, but depending on the type of emergency we might be right in the thick of things.....oh joy.....i even have to carry a cell phone for emergency call-in these days. nine-eleven changed so many things for so many of us, didn't it? and i don't mean for the better.....

blogging is hard work

i've spent a good hour redesigning this silly blog layout--just fiddling around, clicking and dragging and swearing.

i guess it's better mental exercise than watching some lame tv show but why can't i be like my kids, all high tech savvy, keyboarding at the speed of light and oh so very computer literate?

it just isn't fair!

"if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

shelley had it right.


to fully appreciate
a scene like this,
a white carpet of trilliums
filling our little woods...
we must first have our winter.

an afternoon at the orchid show

emilie and i went to an orchid show in neenah today. wow!! i am in love! brought home 2 new babies...one for home and one for the office. some of the orchids were almost otherworldly and a few were absolutely twilite zone/outer limits looking. i think i have found a new interest......long ago lost interest in house plants, but this orchid thing may be a great replacement. there are countless varieties of orchids with varying degrees of propagation difficulty. i brought home 2 phaelanopsis orchids, which is a good variety for beginners. they only bloom twice a year but the blossoms last 5-6 weeks. their common name is moth orchid. the mottled burgundy photo above is a moth orchid.