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March 3rd in Japan is a Girl's Day, also celebrating the arrival of early spring season of peach blossoms. I happened to be off from work, so I cooked a bit special Japanese meal. The main dish was the colorful sushi on a plate. Even though it was cold and snowy outside, our dinner table turned to be cheerful, light, and somewhat spring-like.
The temperatures still dip down sub-zero, but the sun is definitely getting more intense. Real spring might be still away, but little signs of spring should pop up around us soon enough, we hope.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Our plan was to drive to Lake Gogebic, 2 hours west of us, to see some friends and try ice fishing. But instead, we got snowed in. Saturday all day the winter storm with gusts up to 40mph did not show any weakening, closing several major roadways around us. We kept looking out our windows, amazed, and watched a bunch of movies and shows on Netflix in our pj's. A happy and warm Valentine's Day it was.
Next day, Sunday, snow stopped finally, and it was time to clear our driveway. (These pictures are mostly for Matt in Hawaii to show how our snow banks get so high. Simply you have to keep putting snow higher and higher not to run out of space for more snow.) This time we only got about 1 to 1 1/2 ft of snow total. The worst was the blowing snow and wind.
While Joe was working, I went up the back hill and made a new sledding trail. In this picture, you see my feet on top of the hill, looking at our house below and the street view, all covered with fresh snow.
Today is Fat Tuesday, as expected up here another cold one. We are going out to our favorite Cajun restaurant. Happy Mardi Gras to all!
I had one last print making class today. As always, it was inspiring for me to see a participant explore with different colors and expressions.
For a quick and easy dinner we had okonomiyaki-Japanese savory cabbagepancakes. Recently we bought a small electric skillet, mostly for this purpose, so we can cook and eat right at the table just like in Japan. We are practicing for another okonomiyaki party!
Today we woke up to some snow. Nothing serious, maybe 6" total by the end of the day. Definitely the white snow cleaned up the dirty brown yards and roads. And tomorrow is Joe's birthday, so we celebrated a day early tonight with a tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet) dinner- Joe's request. We even toasted with Asahi Super Dry beer!
And homemade frozen strawberry yogurt for dessert.
Joe got a tiny 4" square oil painting of his trout stream that I just painted this morning. I'd been meaning to paint him a small piece he can put in his deer blind. Happy Birthday, Joe!
Last minute I decided to make a little dessert with what I had in the kitchen. I tweaked a recipe and made Irish Cream rare cheesecake. It was very good-- we could taste Irish Cream liquor. Yum.... Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!
We rewarded ourselves with an afternoon beer and (tiny little) cheesecake when we got home. Better than an afternoon tea!
Then the weather got very cold again. One sub-zero temp morning two of our cars didn't want to start. We suspect tomorrow morning Joe will have to jump-start his poor old Subaru again, expecting it to drop down to twenty below tonight. Who wants to start up to go to work in the morning?? Brrrr....
When it's this COLD, it doesn't even snow much. But our city crew recently cut back and removed some snow banks 1) so we can actually have some visibility in the street corners while driving and 2) so they have more room next time we get lots of snow. 
