sunny and warm

1. My god, it's almost like it's not winter anymore. It's warm (above freezing!) and sunny; the snow is melting. The grocery store clerks were flirting with each other, people are walking around downtown looking dazed, wearing spring coats. Tonks and Parallax are chirping in the windowsills; Tonks seemed to think she could take on a squirrel, even though the squirrels here are the Ontario-style behemoths and probably bigger than she is.
I broke out the Birks yesterday.

2. Michelle and Scott are here! I'll go chronologically, though.
On Thursday, I got up sickeningly early to get picked up by Sue. Because it's a business trip, some funding somewhere pays for rental cars for these trips, so she pulled up in a shiny red PT Cruiser. She also brought her ten-year-old son, Cameron, because he's home sort of sick from school and she had promised to bring him up because he actually helped with the dig that I'm cataloguing. It's a two hour drive, and we spent a long time talking about the archaeology seminar and also the politics of academia and the way things work these days in universities. I really like these conversations with professors; the view from inside the system is quite a bit different than as a product-in-production within the system.
We got up there for a 9:00 meeting, which no one had told us had been pushed up to 10:00; so we walked around the construction site and relaxed a bit. The meeting itself was an organizational sort of thing and so I stayed behind to inventory some bags of dirt in the basement which we're going to have to screen later this spring; Cameron looked bored so I asked him to come help me. It turned out to be a good choice, because there were a lot of bags, and he was really helpful. I would never have gotten done without his help.
We had a quick and deliciously greasy lunch at a little place called Burke's, then headed back. By the time we got into cellphone reception zones, Michelle and Scott were already in Fredericton. When I got to the house, they were sitting around with Sean, playing with the kitties, who are quite pleased about having new friends to play with and bug at night.
We took off up to the mall with a few missions, and had a grand time shopping. I got a shiny new pair of shoes at Payless for my office wardrobe; Scott found a couple pairs of badly needed new jeans. After more windowshopping and deciding to come back later on in the weekend, we went home, and Sean made us some amazing (as usual) pasta. It was a quiet sort of night in; we listened to music and just generally had a good time.

Friday, I got up earlier than everyone else - earlier than I would want to - and went in to the office to get together some letters and so on for the student loans people. When I came back, everyone was getting showered and so on, and then we went out to the Snooty Fox for lunch. Scott catalogued the meal on his blog, but let me just say - awesome, awesome food. After lunch they went off to Botinicals and the yarn store to do some shopping while I went up to campus and continued the running around. That part was fairly boring, I must say, but at least the weather was lovely.
When I came home, Sean fixed us another excellent supper - maple curry - and Michelle discovered she likes curry just fine after all. We digested for a bit and then went out for coffee with Erica, and then she came back here to hang out. Eventually we all went over to Nick's for a visit, as he had some people over, and we finally met Corey's rabbit, Tyco, and Morgan's ball python (his name escapes me, but it ought to be Monty).

Today was another earlier-than-appropriate morning, but for a much better reason: the market! Scott and Michelle came with me to the market and got some fresh squeezed orange juice and my personal favourite, chicken souvlaki, for breakfast. We also ran into a high school friend of theirs, pretty randomly, which was really nice; he's leaving the city soon, so it was lucky.
This afternoon was another shoppingfest, starting at the mall and ending at Winners. It was exhausting, but I have a pretty cotton dress (only $25, too) and Michelle found some treasures. I tried to get in to get my eyebrows waxed by Erica but she was booked solid all day, which is good news for her, I suppose. We ate supper at Wendy's, by special request, and then went home to relax and blog. I also had to come to the rescue of the Botinicals site, which was deleted by accident by a friend of John's; it's been restored from my backup, happily. Michelle and Scott are watching a movie, but we're going to go out soon, I think.

3. Whew. A couple of links and then I'm done writing for the night:

• Caramel risotto? yum!
• The blog of the No Impact Man, which is really more of a No Impact Family, living in New York and trying to make absolutely no environmental footprint.
• A co-op of a different stripe.