it's not an april fool, it's an april fantastic

somehow, i feel like sending my grant application . . . pardon me, sending my completed grant application to Stony Brook entitles me to do a blog post in the middle of a work day. it really doesn't make sense, but my brain is mushy enough right now that it seems like at some point, it might. i imagine that the next week or so will hold a lot of "tweaking" type revisions as far as the grant is concerned, but for all practical purposes, it's done. yay.

mother nature is also in the mood to celebrate this accomplishment, it seems, because it is almost 70 degrees here today. i may be pressuring lacey into celebratory-style drinks on a patio this afternoon just because we can. we'll blind everyone with our wintery-white skin. it's good. it seems like forever ago that she, rach, and i were amazed at being able to play bean bags outside in sweatshirts (though in actuality that was only like a week and a half ago). in any case, there'll be no sweatshirts here today, my friends. and there's noticeably more green grass outdoors today than there was then, too.

actually, it seems as though pennsylvania is trying out spring this year. this is the first year that i can remember being here where things didn't seem to go from brown to green overnight. i can see things like buds on the trees and in flower beds. i was beginning to think that such things were figments of my imagination that i'd attached to my childhood in the midwest. but it appears that it is not, in fact, necessary to count the beautiful falls out here as 2 seasons. sometimes, in fact, spring blooms.

matt was here this past weekend. it was a bit of a pain on sunday when i had to do the graduate student exhibition on campus, but we pulled through just fine. matt perfected the art of making mojitos (as evidenced by the beautiful picture on the left - unfortunately you can't see the basketball games happening in the background) and he and ryan made plans to force people to call them "dr." and "esquire," respectively over the summer. i suspect that this rule will not include lacey and me, if only because they will both need a place to stay in state college at some point in the near future. that and in ten years it would be really annoying for everyone to still be calling everyone by their professional titles - though i fully plan to be entertained by it this summer should it actually be put into play.

courtesy of a birthday gift from shelley, lacey was able to teach all of us to play dominos. mexican train, i believe was the actual name of the game and we all really took to it after the initially steep learning curve (dad, note the LB coozie being used in this pic). i dare to say that i might have won the game had i not gotten stuck with 178 points worth of unfortunate tiles during one of the rounds.

hmmmm, my computer just made a strange beeping sound at me. i wonder if that indicates that my time limit is almost up. okay, okay. . .

we rounded out the weekend at our favorite little house-turned-restaurant/bar, the red horse tavern. i think i've mentioned this place before, but if nothing else, just remember that it is one of the quaintest little local places that you'll run into. a good time was had by all. and you will noticed that matt has already begun converting to bobcat green.

okay, i am going to do some more work before heading to afternoon meetings. and then i am going to enjoy this beautiful, beautiful weather without a grant deadline looming.


a ps for those interested: there is a guy that has been power washing the front of our house for almost the last hour. i'm not sure (a) why this is happening or (b) what i'm supposed to do when i want to leave as that necessitates a good deal of the currently-being-power-washed area. april fools on me, i guess.