Hello Gorgeous

Days like today are why I love living in Minnesota.

Some people live in places where you get weather like this every day. It becomes old hat. You start to take it for granted.

But you get a day like today at the end of a long, cold, snowy winter - when you finally get a day like today when the sun is shining and the sky is blue and the trees are budding and it's not too cold but it's also not too hot and there are no bugs out yet, well, if you live in Minnesota you understand in the very marrow of your bones what a rare and precious gift such a day is and you do everything in your power to soak in as much of this beauty as possible. A day like today makes even dour and unassuming Scandihoovians visibly ecstatic to be alive.

It was just too nice not to be outside. So I went over to Dad's tonight and we played catch in the front yard.

There's this students vs. faculty softball game coming up, you see, and I haven't thrown an actual ball or swung an actual bat in close to a decade (maybe more than a decade. . .as far as this is concerned, Wii and whiffleball don't count). Not only do I not want to look like an idiot on the field, I also don't want to hurt for a week after the game. So I thought it might be good to get a little practice in, ease my muscles back into certain ball-playing uses and movements.

So we were playing catch, but the lawn was uneven, and I was scared to chase down simulated pop flies because I didn't want to turn my ankle in a divot being too busy tracking the ball to look where I was running. So Dad suggested we move into the street. Three or four throws into this change of venue, the ball drops out of his glove and rolls right into the gutter!

We ran over to the cover thinking we'll just need a stick to fish it out. But nope, as we hover over the top looking for the ball, we can hear it steadily rolling down, down, down, then SPLASH!

That was the end of the game of catch.

Somewhere out there tonight a brand new softball is floating down the Mississippi River. Finders keepers if you snag it. ;)

Thanks be to God for a beautiful day!