Joe's Birthday

This Wednesday was Joe's birthday... but he was tied up with his work out of town till dark. He finally came home past nine, in time for a light meal instead of a full Japanese birthday dinner. I made spicy tuna rolls, sautéed dandelion greens, and tofu soup. After a quick bite, we took out Joe's youngest brother Mark for his first legal beer on his birthday. We toasted to the double birthdays.
The next day we had the rest of Joe's birthday dinner. The main dish was his favorite "tonkatsu" breaded pork cutlet. Cheers again.
Friday we woke up to 8 inches of wet snow. Joe had to blow snow, and I was glad that he was home.
More snow than I could handle with a shovel!!

Where's Spring?

Once again it got cold, sub-zero temperatures. Hard to believe it's almost the end of March. The Big Lake has a bit of open water to produce some snow for us. Since Joe's out of town for work, I had to shovel and clear our driveway yesterday. The bright side was that the snow that fell was weightless, though it's definitely NOT the typical spring snow. Our snow banks are the tallest yet this season. It feels like we've been stuck in January for three month!. 
Well past the first day of spring on the calendar, I had to put my cherry blossom décor on the wreath. It's my protest against Winter.
Today is Joe's birthday. Hopefully he and his crew can finish their big installation this afternoon (day 3), so he can come home for his birthday dinner. Last night I was by myself, so I just had fried rice... and probably shouldn't have a whole pot of green tea.
But then, it was long past due for me to paint. I was up till 3a.m. painting a canvas that I started a couple of years ago. The green tea was well worth it.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

We arestill deep in the cold. The weekend was quite wintery... another sub-zero temperature. To start out the cold day, we treated ourselves to Hawaiian pancakes.

On Sunday we celebrated St. Patrick's Day a day early. This year we remembered to pre-order our corned beef from our local meat shop (to avoid walking in to see off another customer with the last piece of corned beef like last year). "Green eggs and ham" sushi rolls for appetizer.

Corned beef and cabbage turned out very good. I was glad to have some leftovers, too!

Yes, It's Warmer, But...

It's March, and we've still had sub-zero temps. Today it's actually a lot warmer, above 20, and it started to snow. Very wet snow, changing into sleet at times. I just wanted to share some pictures of our snow banks as of today. Can you tell we haven't had much snow accumulation the last couple of weeks? Really!The Valentine's Day weekend, now a few weeks ago, we woke up to no running water. As you might have guessed, our water pipe froze, like many other people in this super cold winter. Luckily our city crew showed up the same day rescuing us from having to melt the snow. Our short indoor camping experience definitely made us feel thankful for the convenience of running water.We wonder how long we'll have to keep our water running....Meantime, the Fat Tuesday happened. As usual we treated ourselves to our favorite Lagniappe. Though we ate far too much on Tuesday, we were ready to eat some light sushi rolls for Ash Wednesday. The last of Joe's fall salmon in the freezer was turned into the enjoyable meatless dinner.

Happy Valentine's Day

We wanted to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day one day early. Tomorrow evening we are going to see a hockey game with Joe's cousin and the family. It should be a fun outing for our Valentine's Day date.

I made a tiny little cheesecake upon Joe's request (the cheesecake, not the size) a couple of days ago, so it was good and ready to eat tonight. I felt slightly bad about not baking a larger cheesecake for Joe, who gave me a large flower bouquet as you can see.  

Death Defying Feat

Since we seem to have lost the month of January to the cold and sickness, we are now trying to actually enjoy the cold whether. You can only be cooped up inside for so long. Anyway, on this lazy Sunday we decided to put a Christmas present from Santa with a great sense of humor (aka Joe) in to use. Ever since we bought our house with a hill in our back yard, Joe had been wanting to go sledding on the hill. We finally own a large and strong enough sled!

Just imagine two grownups going up the hill, sinking knee deep into snow, sledding down, screaming and laughing out loud. And we live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. We had lots of fun and a bit of exercise. A sense of conquering the Winter, almost. We wish you could have been here. 

Winter Carnival

It has become our winter tradition to go up to see snow sculptures at MTU with Phil and Judy. We knew it was going to be cold enough this year. We just hoped and prayed that it won't be blowing and snowing like arctic weather. Yesterday our prayers were answered by the sunny sky with little wind, though it was still around 15 degrees.

We kept our smiles while walking around and viewing the sculptures. Students had plenty of snow to work with this year, in fact they asked the school to remove some snow for them to have room to make sculptures. That was the first time, we heard. The only other thing was they had to work in zero temperature weather. Brrrr. We were all so glad to go into a warm restaurant for lunch afterward.