Weekend in the Just-Barely-Frozen North

The promised break in the weather has arrived, it's been balmy 20s and low 30s for the last couple of days!

Saturday morning we rambled up to the local coffee shop, giving Jasper a nice long walk but keeping him on the leash so that he wouldn't leap into the river after the geese. We spent most of the afternoon sunning on the porch, then went for a ski on the golf course before it got dark. Our forced bulbs did some sunning too:



The artistic highlight of our weekend was a local symphony performance. It was all Russian all the time: Tchaikovsky's "Slavonic March," Borodin's "In the Steppes of Central Asia," Prokofiev's "Symphonic Suite from The Love for Three Oranges" (shockingly, even though you have probably never heard of this Prokofiev piece, you almost certainly HAVE heard the Marche from it, check it out on iTunes if you don't believe me), and Shostakovich's 5th Symphony. I am not a Shostakovich fan, but despite my pleading, Alex said that we couldn't just leave at intermission and skip the symphony. It turned out to not be too bad, but I am much more excited about the next concert, which is all Mozart.

Today, in addition to spending lots more time reading on the porch and doing the normal weekend household chores, we headed down to the Root River Trail in Lanesboro for a longer cross-country ski. Here's a photo of Alex...since he's usually the one taking the pictures, I wanted to make sure to get one of him today:



Jasper is slowly getting more used to the skis and poles, and he just loves any opportunity to get out in the snow! He does quite well with the extendable leash, only running circles around me once or twice an outing, and today gave me quite a tow as he went chasing after a family of wild turkeys who crossed our path. He is turning out to be quite a sensible outdoor dog: here he is taking a rest at our turnaround point today (yes, there are eyes under all that fuzz, we promise).



He seems to be resigned to the booties, which definitely make him more comfortable on these longer treks. This evening, he's been pretty zonked out, though he did just wake up long enough to give Alex the pleading eyes and get a piece of apple pie.