Most of our snow has melted

Wow. It's been so long since I wrote that a lot of our snow has melted. While the rest of the country has been hit with extra snow in the last month, ours has really tapered off. Here is Ed, pre-thaw (taken from above by a very tall goat-sitter friend):



And here is the scene from yesterday. You can still see snow (although there's none in town anymore), but that neighbor's car in the background used to be totally covered up. While I wish we had gone skiing a couple of more times when the snow was around, the goats have really been enjoying the warm-up and have been making use again of the entire yard rather than just the alcove of the barn, which is always fun to see.



In other animal news, one of our roosters (not Gimpy the paralyzed one, the bigger and slightly meaner one), died a couple of weeks ago. No idea why. He was just dead one evening when we got home. No sneaking-in-weasel marks, no chicken-ganging-up-pecking marks, no he-attacked-the-alpacas-and-they-stepped-on-him trample marks... a heart attack perhaps? He was a very large rooster. Anyway, we (and by we I mostly mean Mike) put him into a large plastic tupperware tote and buried it under the snow to await real burying under our garden once the ground thaws.

Meanwhile, it has been a really busy couple of months. I am about to leave this week for my third trip to California in two months. And add to that another 5-6 shorter trips around Washington and Oregon, and visits to Spokane and Montana (these last two were for fun rather than work, though, more below). Basically, I've realized, after three years, that every winter is this busy for me. I think it's because all the farmers have nothing to grow, so they all want to talk. Winter is when all the meetings are scheduled and when surveys have to go out, plus all the normal end-of-year reporting and new grant application cycles. So I'd say about November to February is pretty non-stop-running. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to things quieting down a bit (although hoping they do so to a moderate level, rather than the so-slow-as-to-be-boring level it can sometimes hit). We'll see.

Spokane
Last I wrote, Mike & I were just about to go see Yoni-the-bro play Christmas weekend at the cathedral in Spokane. Very fun.



And this year there were some added perks this year. First, getting to meet Yoni's girlfriend Shani, who was visiting from Vancouver. Second, getting to attend a Burundian wedding at the cathedral. Turns out there are about 10 Burundian refugee families who have recently been settled in Spokane. They have taken to getting married at the Anglican cathedral both because it reminds them of their denomination of Christianity from Burundi, and because the cathedral lends a good bit of pomp and circumstance to the proceedings.

But 10 families doesn't quite fill a cathedral (especially when most of them, including the couple to be married, are on African time and arrive quite a bit later than the ceremony is supposed to start). So they have been trying to get broader church membership to attend. And while I can't say that Yoni, Shani, Mike, me, or our friend Julie (who was visiting family in Spokane and came to the wedding with us -- she had lived for a while in Tanzania, near the refugee camps where the Spokane Burundians had happened to have been living before coming to the U.S. -- and needless to say, with her command of Swahili, Julie was a big hit at the wedding), really qualify as broader church membership, we were able to boost attendance a little bit nonetheless.



There was all sorts of singing and dancing, and somehow, actually, I really related to the whole thing despite understanding little of it. I think it was the phenomenon of a small group of people, with a different set of cultural practices and background, trying to live those practices by example for an encouragingly but clueless waspy-type audience thinking "oh wow, your practices are so nice and quaint and cute, yes, we will be enthusiastic and supportive and clap along" while you're thinking, "no, dude, it's a totally different thing when you have 600 people all doing this in sync rather than 7.... it's not actually cute and quaint, it's just as powerful (or not, depending on your perspective) as anything that happens in your enormous gray stone stained glass cathedral." Of course I'm projecting Jewish here, and while there are way more Jews in America than there are Burundians, this is not really true of Wenatchee or Cashmere... So it was kind of interesting (and yummy food to boot!).



Yoni and Shani came back with us to Wenatchee and stayed an extra week through New Years. Their visit involved, among other activities, some downhill skiing (for Yoni, Shani, and Mike) and a snowboarding lesson (for me, but which left me incredibly sore, mostly from pushing myself back up to standing from a fallen-down position over and over and over again... on the bunny hill). It was neat to have them here for a bit.



Snowshoeing
When Mike and I got married, going on two years ago now, a few of our guests climbed the nearby hill and slid down it on the long grass in their wedding-guest-clothes. Ever since then, we had thought it would be fun to climb that hill and see the view from the top. Except that when we finally got around to it last month it was covered with snow. So we went on snowshoes. And never made it to the top -- too steep (indicating both that that our wedding guests were really buff and dedicated, and that it's perhaps a little slipperier in snow). Nevertheless it was really pretty.



And the snow in spots looked kind of like sand dunes.





We were a little nervous about the whole thing because a couple of our neighbors are very very territorial about private property issues, and while the hill does not belong to them, and we did not know who it actually belonged to, it is indeed private property. Of course as we were climbing, we heard them going for a walk below and stopping to talk to some people at the bottom. And then on our way down, we ran into said people on their way up the same hill in snowshoes. Turns out they had recently bought the property (we had seen for sale signs, but then they were gone, and we figured it was just as likely they had blown away as that the place had been sold), and were planning to build a house (into the side of the hill) and move there upon retirement. Meanwhile they drove out for the day once a month from Seattle, climbed the hill, had lunch on top, and observed how water ran and seasons changed, so as to make smarter decisions on where to build and how. Luckily, they were very nice, and didn't mind our trespassing, acknowledging that they often came across neighbors on their hill, and that it seemed to be quite a common spot for climbing up to see the view. So we finished going down, and watched them climb up towards their snowy lunch spot.



Swimming
I've mentioned before that Mike and I have been swimming with the Masters (=over 18) swim team in Wenatchee. Unexpectedly, it has involved some swim meets, something I had never done before, but which turn out to be fun. Probably the neatest part is that most of the swimmers are way older than me or Mike, but are nevertheless way faster. And quite competitive. Peony is a 76-year-old Korean lady with a strong dramatic streak. You kind of feel like she's in middle school and takes a liking to people until somehow, inevitably, it turns bad -- like if they can't come to a lunch she hosts, or something else happens that somewhat unpredictably goes over wrong, and then she no longer wants to talk to them... except the difference is that it seems so much sillier and so much less important when you're not in middle school.

Anyway, at swim meets the events are mixed among age groups and gender, but awards and points are given out based on times, sorted by age group. So if you have someone of similar skill level in your age group in the Inland Northwest (central and eastern Washington plus northern Idaho), it's harder to come in first. There's a lady that swims in Peony's age group who is an 80-year-old nun named Sister Madonna. She started swimming maybe in her 50s and now runs marathons and does ironman triathlons and swims in our league. She's not fast, but being 80, she wins a lot of awards. And being a nun, she writes a lot of books about spirituality and athleticism and conquering challenges. Typical inspiring type. And Peony, though she is sweet as anything to Sister Madonna in person, wants nothing more that to beat her in butterfly events, to the extent of almost bitter behind-the-back-talking-about-her in the locker room at meets. Nice lady, just with a bit of over-competitiveness running unchecked :)

Anyway, Mike managed to take a video of me swimming butterfly at our last meet. It's a bit hard to see, but gives you a sense of what the meets are like. Stay tuned (maybe) for better photos/videos at some point in the future.



Montana
Our last recent trip was to Montana to see the bro-in-law/sis-in-law/nephew. Mike's brother's 1-year-old was turning, well, 1. So we went for the birthday party. Long drive, but nice for down-time and much cake/ice cream/cooking/playing had by all.





With that, I'll leave you with a picture of the Columbia River in Wenatchee, when it was still cold enough to have icebergs floating down the river. Oh, and a note about movies. Mike & I just went to see the Black Swan last night. And it was... really scary. Very well done, but scary. Way more competitiveness than masters swimmers. I don't think I want to be a ballet dancer when I grow up.