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At Long Last...

What a glorious day! At long last, a warm sunny day. Not quite 70 degrees, a little breezy, occasional small clouds, and all the sweet clean smells of spring. Trees starting to leaf out, making pools of shade on the sidewalks and roads, lots of people out and about, walking and riding bikes...Hallelujah!

Everyone was already out of the house by the time I was up and off on my run--and I thought I'd gotten up early. I went on a long run, up into the Oakland Hills a little, up and down footpaths, feeling (guiltily) pleased with myself that I finally know the terrain enough to explore a little and end up where I figured I would. It was great to have the house to myself all day. I put RJD2's Ghostwriter on the downstairs stereo, and blasted it...Douglas Adams (the science fiction author, not the Professor of Art and Religion at PSR) described drinking a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster (an invented cocktail that features prominently in his novels) as like having your brains smashed out by a twist of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. That's how I felt about listening to Ghostwriter this morning, loud on the speakers and the sun coming into the living room. Bitchin'.

I feel like I'm getting adjusted to Sarah being up at school half of every week. Still a little off-kilter, but getting my sea legs back. I'm trying to decide if I want to spend the summer shuttling between Oakland and Forestville with her. It depends on finding work up there for Tuesday thru Thursday. Okay, enough comedy jokes! Time to dive into homework. I hope that the rest of the world had at least as good a day as I had.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yesterday in Madison Wisconsin, it was in the mid to high 70's with daffodills and even tulips already blooming on April 15. We had March in January and are having May in April, and ice from the sky here as well. After choir practice (Bach fugue, a capella) Dave and I were sitting around the table and hear great huge thumps and knocks on the porch roof. A thunderstorm was underway, but the sounds were from hailstones as big as golf balls littering the yard. I tried to dash out mid-storm to fetch one, but was stung on the arm hard enough that I decided to wait. Later, after the brief rain and hail, I did grab three...now in our freezer for later inspection. The stones were not uniform in shape or texture, the surface of one looked like a brain, the other a cauliflower. Aliens? Who knows? Glad to here that you are coping without Sarah dear. Love Mom
6:50 AM
Elizabeth M. said…
Yesterday was a glorious Oakland day, wasn't it, Andy?

And Trudy, I saw on the TV that Madison had 3" hail! What a storm that was over the midwest. I experienced it, in a completely different way: I was flying over it on my way to New York City, and we had the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. It last for the last third of the trip, so we were thrown around for about an hour and half. Ugh, I don't speak it lightly when I say I almost lost my dinner. I would've pulled a Pope JPII, but I was too nauseous to kiss the ground.

Anyway, I'm happy to be safe in Brooklyn, and hope you have fun inspecting those hailstones!

(From Andy and Sarah's housemate, Elizabeth)
12:19 PM
Anonymous said…
I'm hijacking Andy's blog to pass Elizabeth some deep sympathy for having to be in an airplane over the storm that produced my golfball sized hailstones....I hope that your flight home is a serene one, Elizabeth.

And to all displaced midwesterners, this news...Today on the birding trail, I saw my first trout lilies, first blue violets, first white violets, first bloodroots and an injured female wood duck trying valiantly to get to water from the middle of the lawn at the park. She was being escorted by her handsome male and carefully watched by two huge crows. The ground there was soft and there were pockets in the earth from the melted the hailstones. It is now 83 degrees...Dave and I are going to Good Friday Vespers at church - we've donated the flowers in the name of our parents. Love, Trudy/Mom
2:01 PM
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