Category: Spring

Paddy melt

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments
The ground drank that snow like a college kid hitting a beer
during spring break in Florida.

Our St. Paddy’s snow lasted about as long as bipartisanship in Congress.

Herself went out for a short run yesterday afternoon and reported that the trails were barely tacky. And this morning is as you see.

When the weather gets goofy like this I miss running. It’s such a convenient workout when God is pitching changeups at you. Efficient. Minimal gear. No coasting.

A 45-minute trail run isn’t long enough to be boring, and it doesn’t gnaw off a sizable chunk of your day the way cycling does. You can get started early, and finish early, too. Nobody honks at you, unless you’re running past a goose with attitude.

Running and swimming are probably our purest forms of exercise, although an indoor pool is an expensive accessory. You can always acquire property on some placid sandy beach in a tropical paradise, but that’s even pricier than a Y membership.

And the ocean likes to go for a run every now and then too. Sometimes it takes you with it.

Oh, Lord, I can feel myself getting talked into it. Running, not swimming; we got sand, but this ain’t no tropical paradise. My feets have already failed me once. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Sprung

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The pear tree in the back yard is a bee magnet.

Spring keeps on a-springin’ in these parts, and maybe where you are, too.

If it’s not, well … I probably shouldn’t tell you that today’s high in the Duke City is expected to hit 72 degrees, with abundant sunshine. And it might be a week before we see any precipitation.

The downside of all this explosive warmth and growth is, of course, pollen.

Mullberry, cottonwood, ash, juniper, maple … seems damn’ near everything is making whoopee. Except for those of us with (snork) allergies.

This is no time to have allergies and voices in your head, believe you me. Every tickle in the throat, every sneeze, every bout of fatigue sets ’em to yelling like talking heads on cable TV.

“Can you make a biohazard suit out of an old shower curtain, duct tape, and a goldfish bowl?”

“Where are my oven mitts and barbecue tongs? I want to fetch the mail, see if my Plague Check is here yet.”

“I don’t care if we are out of toilet paper, quit wiping your butt with my Kleenex!”

Make it March

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
We got some Sandia pink going on in the backyard
this first morning of March.

Buds on the maple, bits of grass peeking out, and some pretty pink clouds. Well done, Yahweh.

Elsewhere, I see the media are finally getting the story they’ve been craving — Daffy Uncle Joe Resurgent, a.k.a. “dude just won his first primary in three presidential campaigns,” and he had to go to what Chazbo Pierce calls “the home office of American sedition” to git ’er done, with a big assist from Rep. Jim Clyburn.

Now that they’ve got it, of course, they have to dry-hump it. What next? Does Daffy have Big Mo®? Will Comrade Eeyore hammer ’n’ sickle him on Super Tuesday? What about “the remaining candidates?” Etc.

Over at the WaPo, Dan Balz notices the same thing I did: The networks (and the WaPo, and the NYT) all called it for Daffy about 30 seconds after the polls closed, based on exit polling, with something like 1 percent of the vote actually tallied.

Notes Balz: “That guaranteed him hours of positive analysis on cable television and the setting of a narrative favorable to him between now and [Super] Tuesday.”

It’s all about the narrative, bay-beee.