Green...what?

Beautiful green spring days, that's what. I'm lame because I failed to take a picture of the ethereal lighting that results from bright green leaves everywhere (thank you March and April rains!) paired against a gray sky in the late afternoon...delicious. I thought that I love June the most, and I really do think that I still do, but middle of March through May is oh-so-wonderful with it's abounding life after a winter of discontent. That's being a bit over dramatic, I admit, but you get what I'm saying: I love when we bounce back from winter, it's an amazing time of year. Amazing if you think that extreme amounts of grading is a fabulous thing, that is...alas, that is the plight of the teacher. Spring break comes late this year which is "OK" I guess if you think about how quickly summer will arrive after break but from the other end of the vay-cay, the end where it's hardly peaking over the horizon, it stinks. We've got a full week left before that time off and I'm so looking forward to the mountain of grading that I get to do putting aside work and taking some time for myself to read, cook, bake, run, blog, go to Carmel, maybe go to the Ferry Building market, sleep in...can you sense my desperate tone?

In all honesty, though, things are quite nice. The weather and day light savings time are in full swing as is wedding planning. I finally got pictures from the last two months uploaded to photobucket so I can post with pictures (when it's not late Wednesday night, though) and I'm trying to figure out neat ways of posting those pictures (lightbox help anyone??). That actually is my explanation for those past two "test" posts; I have kind of figured out how to do that thing where you click on the picture and it pops up and makes the background kind of gray-ed out and then a little "next" button appears to use (kind of like what facebook does), which is called "lighbox" like I mentioned, but it's not quite working for me. I'll tinker with it or figure out a better way or something.

Last week we had some excitement when a stray dog came to us and was our dog for like a day and a half and we named her "Dolly" and Guinness was even getting used to sharing his people, but out of responsibility I took her to the SPCA to be checked in and she was microchipped so she got to go back to her family which I'm sure was quite worried and happy to have their puppy back so all's well that ends well =)

My amazing grandmother is celebrating a birthday next week which I'm excited about; a good dinner is sure to be involved...and Bundt cake! We apparently love our cakes in this family. Mike celebrated his day two weeks ago and we ate ourselves silly at Henry's Hi-Life (we fell for the prime rib special...the 16 oz ones...each [it is supposed to disturb me that one can gain a pain, more or less, in one sitting, yes?]) and then enjoyed a key lime tart...yum!I gave the birthday boy this special watch which is gps enabled or some such thing. He used to have one that I usurped and loved to use because it tells you how fast you're running and your total distance, which is great for slightly type-A personalities like moi. Then I lost it. I left it on the hood of the car after a run at a local park so that I could stretch without it on my wrist and drove away and didn't realize it for like three days. Then someone stole it right off of my dainty little wrist and I could do nothing about it.

Moving backwards, we celebrated St. Paddy's day in our traditional style which is corned beef and veggies and this year I made Colcannon too which I was pretty excited about; thanks Martha!

   

 I've also been making soda bread for a few years now. There are two recipes I like (again, thanks Martha!); one is a bit sweet and the other is very wheat-y...but don't worry, BOTH are delish with butter!   



  
Anyway, this has been oodles of fun (staying up late for no reason at all when I have work tomorrow =) ) but I must retire for the night...be good y'all!