Today is the first day of Spring! Yay! I made it! Winter is always so hard for me. It’s partially because of less light, partially because I can’t go out into the garden, and partially because of past experiences where I was being slowly poisoned with carbon monoxide from my old pickup truck.
But today none of that matters. It’s Spring!
I was reading up about the Vernal Equinox on Wikipedia. Here was an interesting tidbit:
Folk tales from various European countries claim that only on the March equinox day (some may add the September equinox day or may explicitly not), one can balance an egg on its point. However you can balance an egg on its point any day of the year if you have the patience
It kind of makes you want to try it, doesn’t it?
It’s supposed to be a little warmer this weekend. Maybe I can go out and clean up the garden some. This little pretty greeted me when I came home from school yesterday:
It’s right in the middle of my lawn. It’s leftover from two years ago. I thought they were all dead. Hello, crocus!
Yesterday’s Lenten Chore: Clean off the TV trays in the living room.
Two big eating events happened during my family’s visit.
The first was at a restaurant. There are currently student teachers at our school. Because my dad worked with some of them in Seward, he wanted to take them all to dinner. We went to The Crackpot. It is a local seafood restaurant. The student teachers wanted to try a few new things. One of the things they ordered was raw oysters. Since I had never had one, I decided to try one myself. It wasn’t as gross as I expected, but the idea still seems strange to me. I think raw oysters won’t be part of my regular restaurant fare.
The second eating event was the event of the year. It will be hard to top this one, and it’s only March. I opened the Quisp cereal while Beth was here. We each had a bowl the first morning. It wasn’t just delicious. It was dee-LISH-ous! We have confirmed now that Quaker “Sweet Crunch”, which is a bagged cereal, is the same as Quisp. But neither of us have seen Sweet Crunch in years. I have one or maybe one and-a-half bowls of Quisp left. I will enjoy every little morsel.
Yesterday’s Lenten Chore: Gather the trash to be put out.
Everybody has gone now. Harold, Beth, and Tara (and Tim) got on a plane around 2:30 yesterday. My mom and dad headed out in their car shortly afterward. It was a great visit. Much fun was had by all.
I have had some reality problems because I normally see them in the summertime. And it’s normally in Nebraska. But going back to school will set me right again.
It was nice to see them. Goodbye, family.
Here is the saddest picture ever. It’s where Tara sat for breakfast in the morning. Goodbye, Tara. 
Yesterday’s Lenten Chore: Wash the sheets and make the beds.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day yesterday! To celebrate, we went to Ryan’s Daughter. It’s an Irish pub and restaurant. They weren’t taking reservations because it was St. Patrick’s Day. Their custom is first come, first served. The woman I spoke to on the phone said to come right at 11am and we’d have a better chance of being seated quickly. We were a little later than that, but had no wait. 
It seems like we had one of everything on the menu among us. My dad had corned beef and cabbage. I had fish and chips. Harold had grilled chicken, Mom had shepherd’s pie, and Beth had a reuben. An Irish folk singer was singing, a fire was roaring in the fireplace, and Irish luck and good cheer was had by all.
The only problem was the ghost. I took a picture of my mom by the fire, but when I got home and looked at it, all I saw was this blurry figure. Is it a ghost? Is Ryan’s Daughter a haunted pub?
Yesterday’s Lenten Chore: Scrub the bathtub again. (Tara was going to bathe and I didn’t want her to be in a dirty tub.)
Yesterday’s big event was a bullroast dinner for my church. It was such a successful fundraiser last year we decided to do it again this year. For those of you who don’t live in Baltimore, a bullroast is dinner where you eat roast pit beef and sometimes oysters. Funds are raised by ticket sales and by “wheels”. You choose numbers by placing money on them and hope your number comes up. If it does, you win a prize. Here are the ones I had fun winning.
There was also a DJ. Tara had a lot of fun dancing all night. Here she is marvelling at the wonders of the Hokey Pokey. Beth is dancing so fast she is a blur.
Yesterday’s Lenten Chore: Load dishwasher.
