Madeline's String Toy Art

I came home yesterday afternoon and found this. I was very impressed with Madeline's perpendicular arrangement of two of her favorite toys:



She should be featured in volume 2 of Why Cats Paint.

Yesterday my friend Adam and I went cross-country skiing at the Allerton Schroth Trail. I feel lucky to have gotten to ski twice this winter! The conditions weren't the best - the snow was a little wet and melty in the sunny open areas - but the majority of it was fun. When I was running this trail a couple weeks ago, it was flooded. So lots of the trees by the river had these "ice skirts" - sheets of ice stuck around the trunk, remnants of where the previous water level had frozen. These pictures didn't turn out that well, but they looked pretty cool in person:

Long Weekend

I flew to MD this past weekend for my mother's big 60th birthday bash. It was much fun to see relatives I hadn't seen in years. I'm not sure if they all want me posting pictures of them, so instead I'll post the cake...



...and the kitties (Mooch and Hobbes):





Aren't they cute! I also got to see my friends Erin and Kate this weekend. We went to the Body Worlds exhibit in Baltimore on Sunday. Then on Monday, after running 18 miles in SUNNY 70 DEGREE WEATHER IN FEBRUARY, I hung out with Pasha, my mom's neighbor's cat, who apparently considers our porch her second home:





Then my mom and I went to see the frog exhibit at the National Geographic museum:



Let's get it on!

Mucus Haikus

Chin to the sky. SNEEZE!
Slimy yellow booger string
Flies splat across nose.




Tongue cannot reach it
Try to wipe off on Mommy
No, Madeline, no!

Greg Craven's video

If you haven't yet seen this geeky science teacher's You Tube video "How it All Ends", take a look (it's about 10 minutes). Even if you don't agree with his risk-management logic and ultimate conclusion (ahem, CG), it's still entertaining!



Here's his website.

February!

Happy Birthday to me! I got 7 inches of snow for my birthday, and so the next day Andrew and I went cross-country skiing. It was a gorgeous winter day and we had a blast:





Then afterward we went to KRR's Fat Ass party where we each won a Mardi Gras shot glass like no other:



I have updated my "current reads" in the favorite book list part of my profile. I am reading (or rather listening to in the lab) a really great novel that I randomly picked up in the library. It is called The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, and I highly recommend it. It's fiction, but it actually goes quite well with the non-fiction book I'm reading When Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce. On the lighter side I'm also reading Stephen Colbert's I Am America (and So Can You!), which I got for my birthday.