Hmmm . . . I wonder how I ended up working entirely in WOOL??!!

They pulled more than 3000 carp out of Lake Susan (not named after me, to my knowledge) in Chanhassen, MN on Sunday. Some of them were over 50 years old. Who would be dumb enough to live in cold water in Minnesota for 50 years?



I guess carp tend to congregate when it gets very cold so they tagged a few with radio devices last summer and then waited for January so they could throw a net in and haul them all out at once through a hole in the ice. And they were probably just holding a nice Minnesota church supper down there with a variety of hot-dishes and bars for dessert, minding their own carp business when they were so rudely interrupted. Made me a little sad.

Carp are destructive and blah-blah-blah a bunch of other reasons I didn't really pay attention to. But I certainly can't blame them for congregating this week. These are the weeks that separate the men from the boys . . . or the carp from the other fish who have the good sense to die off . . . or the Minnesotans from the smart people.




Russ and I ask ourselves quite often how anyone ever settled here to begin with. Can you imagine living in a little sod hut on the North Dakota prairie? I've tried to figure out a justification for such behavior and I just can't. It boggles the mind.


Lovely marbled snowflake ornament by Lindsay


So we read the Albuquerque weather forecast and sometimes I look at pictures of the more temperate places we have lived. Today let's look at Tampa . . .


Our Florida home

Sunshine streaming in 365 days per year

Enjoying the white sands of Siesta Key any ol' weekend

We had a simply beautiful swimming pool and hot tub at that house, for example, on a lovely screened lanai with french doors opening out onto it from every room . . . . mmmm . . . . each night around 10 pm we'd gather around the hot tub, some in jammies just dunking their feet, some in swimsuits soaking it in, and have a lovely little good-night family time.


The lovely lanai

On the other hand, we had to live in Florida in order to enjoy those amenities, and that's a pretty tall order.

That meant things like huddling a little closer around the hot tub and speculating about what the rustling going on in the bushes outside the screen might be (Florida is ALIVE -- some of the possibilities included snakes of all poisonous varieties, lizards and frogs of many sizes and colors, wild boars, alligators, burglars and petty criminals of all descriptions -- these would be just the things in our actual neighborhood. In Florida as a whole, who knows what you might find?) Certainly things more menacing than carp holding church suppers. Seems we're northerners/westerners at heart I guess, because we had a terrible time trying to adjust to the culture of Tampa. And there was no sense at all in trying to adjust to the public schools.

Better to just say good-bye to the lanai.
Which we did.

They tell you not to make any major life decisions in Minnesota during the January - March time period. Probably sound advice. Although most major life decisions would involve things like moving, which would involve going outside a lot, and trying to haul things down our incredibly treacherous driveway. So the danger of making such decisions is actually rather slim.

Our suitcases are quite small and have wheels, however . . . which gives me an idea.


Not a major life decision, just an idea . . .



Okay, no guacamole until after Baltimore. Then all bets are off.