Be careful what you wish for

The weather in these parts has been gorgeous.  Too gorgeous.  After our soggy flood stage, the water has receded and not been replaced by much rain.  It's also been dreadfully windy lately, and last evening as I was driving, clouds of topsoil were visible gusting across the road.
On the competition front, a good time was had by all at knowledge bowl, but the team placed well out of the running.  Meanwhile, two of my speakers have qualified for state, so we're bound for that tournament next Saturday.  Then, I'll have my Saturdays back!
Meanwhile, I think I'll find something constructive to do with my few remaining hours of weekend...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Spring sprang

Here in our part of the upper Minnesota River valley, its been all about the high water lately. Two of my three routes to work were underwater for the better part of the last two weeks. The third came close. Tuesday last, the wind picked up and blew ice onto the causeway, reducing traffic to one lane. MnDOT had electronic signs in readiness in case they had to post warnings. The water receded and MnDOT in its infinite wisdom decided this was the perfect time to drag those signs out and light them up. And leave them there for two weeks.
Spring has been busy. I had planned to roll seamlessly from Knowledge Bowl season into Speech season, but my first Varsity team decided to be stinkers and qualify for state, requiring another month of practice and extending the season into April. We'll head to a lake resort up north for State competition on April 15, and the way the weather's been, some of the parents may be booking tee times. Meanwhile, the speech team has been plugging away as well, and I expect a couple of them to qualify for state as well. The regional competition starts this week.
We've had a dryer on the fritz lately, and have made quite a challenge of line drying and ironing. It will be interesting to see the electric bill. It has led to wonderful family togetherness, enjoying games like "Sock Concentration."

The local Chamber had an Easter event downtown:  egg coloring, Easter Bunny, and a door to door basket fill, a la trick-or-treating, but with more pastels.  The kids named it the Creepy Bunny Crawl, however, due to the stylized rabbit poster marking participating stores:

And, in a sure sign of spring, the train is back:

Although you'll note, the engineer is not so optimistic as to remove the snowblower just yet...