Spring has truly sprung.

Happy April Fool's Day!

I gave up trying to play practical jokes before I was ten, because my big brother was always a million times better than me and it just didn't seem worth the effort. Fittingly, that same brother's birthday happens to be the first of April. Happy Birthday, big bro!

Instead of failing at pranking people, I spent today enjoying the extraordinarily (for NJ in early April) gorgeous weather. I drove the long way out into farm country and walked in a few different parks and gardens, just enjoying the fresh air and the warm sunshine. The blooming flowers didn't hurt, either.

I sometimes forget during the winter just how much of an outdoor person I am, but one of my favorite things in all of life is feeling the air and the sun on my skin. (Through some kind of SPF-ified lotion, of course, since I go from ghost to lobster in approximately twelve minutes.) Days like today, with its perfect weather, make it crystal clear to me why our religions and myths so frequently include rising-from-the-dead allegories for the return of spring.

Instead of attempting to describe just how glorious today was, I'm just going to show off some of my photos. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out - I think they do a decent job of capturing the day's beauty. Maybe someday I'll even upgrade from my point-and-shoot....

The Itsy Bitsy.... Not a Spider....

I was thinking, a few weeks ago, that eventually I'd probably have to write an entry on bugs. This is the South, after all. The South is serious about its bugs. I was actually concerned about moving here specifically because of the bugs. I do not do bugs. Not even a tiny bit. (There's a story that involves a broom and a telephone and some hysterical crying....I won't get into it.)

When I had that thought, though, I brushed it aside with the very reasonable rationalization that as soon as I blogged about bugs I'd find them swarming into my life, when at that point I'd had basically no encounter with the crazy Southern insects. I figured I'd wait until they'd already made their appearance and then I'd tell the story.

So here's my bug story.

I like opening the windows, as you may recall from my allergenic lament earlier this fall. I really, really like opening the windows and enjoying the fresh not-quite-fall air, particularly when I'm bumming around my apartment in the late afternoon and there's just a little bit of a breeze. So over the weekend I went to open my windows, and as I did I noticed a whole bunch of teeny tiny winged bugs on the screen....on both sides. They were so small - and the screen so coarse - that they could walk right through the mesh.

I closed the window.

I went to the other living room window, and before I opened it I looked through. That screen was populated by the same little bugs, inside and out. I went to the bedroom window - all the way across the house, and lo and behold there were those same tiny buggers. Damn and blast!

They were too small to see any characteristics, but I nevertheless checked a National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders out of the public library and attempted to locate my pests in it. No dice. Turns out "tiny, with wings, on window screen in Tennessee" doesn't show up in any of the descriptions.

Well, not-very-long story shorter: I have bugs on my screens. For five days now I've been unable to open my windows for fear they'll all come rushing in and the apartment will fill up with little winged nuisances. I think they might be fruitflies, but it's really impossible to say.

Okay, so that's not much of a bug story, I know, but I'm hoping that by writing it up as my big insect encounter in the South I'll save myself from having any worse episodes for at least a while. And if you really want bug stories, sometime I'll tell you about the one I had to beat to death with a shoe.

Pickup Truck of Death

The last time I was on a bicycle was several years ago (much to my roommate's chagrin). My friend was last on a bicycle at least ten years ago. That is, until yesterday, when we decided to ride twenty miles - ten out, ten back - on bikes we dug out of the basement, one of which ostensibly fit her and one that was blatantly too small for me. We crammed the bikes in the back of the car, drove to the parking lot, donned our dusty helmets, and congratulated ourselves heartily on making it from the car all the way to the beginning of the path.

We considered riding the whole trail - 22 miles each direction - but once we found ourselves stopping every mile or two we changed our minds. It turns out that resting all of your bodyweight on, essentially, the top of a narrow pole is extremely uncomfortable. As in, I'm very much still sore in very inconvenient places, and probably will be for several days.

Fortunately we managed to avoid meeting motorized death at any of the road crossings, and were mostly able to ride side by side so as to hear each other's snarky comments and jokes along the way.

The weather was beautiful, the picnic lunch by the hard-to-find lake was chilly but nice... and I won't be getting back on a bike for at least another five years.

But a weekend out of town, with sunshine and fresh air and really good (completely uncomplicated) company is the best cure for almost any ill...or for many ills at once. It doesn't actually solve the problems, it just makes them seem a lot less problematic. Or, at the very least, it gives you a respite from thinking about them, worrying about them, being sad about them, trying to solve them.

Find a friend to visit or put a tent in your trunk and go. Now. Go.

That's Just Like a Vacation, Right?

Apologies for being MIA for more than a whole week! A dreadful sin in the blogosphere, I know. My excuse is that I was out of town, and too busy taking in a new city to sit back and reflect on much of anything. Now that I'm home I can share a few thoughts about (or inspired by) the trip:

• Southwest Airlines is lovely, but the way to "like where you sit" is NOT to "sit where you like." Give your sloganeers a pat on the back, and then find some other way of boarding people quickly without screwing us over. Thanks.
• Any city that has a coffee shop that serves a spicy vegan chocolate chocolate chip cookie (and a really good cup of coffee) is okay by me.
• Trees are nice. Grass is nice, too.
• A lake can be almost like an ocean, if you don't swallow any of it, and if you ignore the fact that you can see the other side.
• Long Island is REALLY big.
• I like nice people.
• I want a tiny house with its very own vegetation, within walking distance of civilization.
• Major corporations are the devil, but small-ish chains that make a strange city feel more like home might not be quite so bad.
• Motels are the most miserable places on earth. The free wireless access is necessary so the guests don't all drown themselves in the indefinably sketchy swimming pool.
  Time should be allowed, in life, for both varieties of vacations: the kind where you go somewhere new and run around like crazy trying to Maximize Your Time, and the kind where you go somewhere - probably somewhere familiar - and just become as much like a piece of furniture as possible for some amount of time. People call the first a vacation, but after trying to See And Do an entire city in 2.5 days, I'm really not sure it should count.

* photo(s) to be posted very soon *

Technically Spring

The vernal equinox was three days ago, and today almost felt like spring: it felt, really, like winter hasn't quite given up yet but spring is fighting to get in the door. It was warm in the sun. It seemed like a good day to get out the camera: