i like spring... or maybe i'm just getting my hopes up

Okay, so we're taking kind of a different tack with this post.

I like spring. Why, you ask? It's only one season away from summer! It's summer that I'm truly partial to. (Or rather, it's summer to which I'm truly partial. Just for you, Dad.) Folk Fest, the lake, being able to go outside without mounting a major operation to get dressed, sandals (the ultimate in slip-on convenience)... what's not to love?

It's not that I don't like winter. It has its charms too. Bitter cold I can handle -- it just means staying inside when you can and more clothes when you can't. There are even fun things to do in winter. But ahhhh..... summer.

We've had several days in a row of mild weather, where it goes a little above zero in the daytime and a little below zero at night. We've even had some significant melting -- just enough to give Thunder Bay that "March" look: filthy snow and dirty slop. It's tempting me to think that maybe spring has sprung. Don't worry, I know better than that. Nobody remembers the March 1997 blizzard better than I. My arms still hurt from shovelling off the front steps, which were covered in snow deeper than my head. That's one of the few occasions where I've had to reach up, way up, to shovel snow. Hey, I even remember the May 2004 blizzard, even though it hit west of Thunder Bay and all we got was rain. (We went hiking in that snow a week later when we did Mantario. We pretended we didn't see the snow.)

But still... today it was 6 degrees and sunny. Oh, why, why do you tempt me so, you treacherous early-spring, you?

my first mac post

So my Mac got here today. Man, what a step up. I don't know what happened to my old computer, but after this one I have a better sense of just how far gone my old one was.

Now the trick is adjusting to Mac OS X, which though not completely different from Windows (it too uses a mouse!) has its own little set of quirks. It's sort of like getting into a car that isn't yours; everything is there somewhere, but it's not the same as what you're used to.

Let's see if Blogger can import a picture from a Mac.

Hmmm... not sure that went very well. Oh, wait, yeah, it went, but the picture didn't show up in my preview pane -- just the html code (which is all gibberish to me -- I quit computer science after grade 10). It seems to be here in the post though!

Anyway, this was us last weekend, tobogganing at Hillcrest Park in Port Arthur.

and along the same lines

For full size, see Doonesbury, March 5, 2006.

I've really gotten hooked on Doonesbury in the past year or so. Okay, sure, the strip practically writes itself in the current U.S. political climate, but still, Garry Trudeau has shown himself willing to take on some pretty serious topics (see, for instance, B.D. losing his leg in Iraq last year). I used to be pretty intimidated by this strip because of the enormous cast of characters, but I've slowly figured it out (with a lot of help from slate.com -- here) and now I think that as much as anything that lets the strip go in a whole bunch of directions, which keeps it really interesting.

one can only hope it doesn't come to this

In the current climate, who knows? It could happen.

1 March, 2006. To see full size, go to Non Sequitur.