Lost Sweatshirt

In light of this week's high school boys basketball tournament and with the possibility that my alma mater, Omaha Central High, could be competing for their third straight championship and continue to simultaneously hold titles in football, basketball and track (yes, I'm annoyingly still proud of my high school. If you went there, you'd understand) I decided I'd try to once again find my comfy grey school sweatshirt that wouldn't be too obnoxious to wear to the games. (It's very simple, only lettering, no graduation years mentioned. Timeless fashion.) I realize now that I have many totes of old clothes stored in our basement, however, I didn't quickly find that sweatshirt. Of course, I found a few other things that had to be drug out of the basement, inspected by the cats and me, and photographed.

1. my Husker scrapbook from the 1987-88 season. There are no fancy football stickers purchased from Hobby Lobby's scrapbooking section, just roughly-cut stories and photos from the Sunday edition of the Omaha World Herald.

















2. my 1990 Earth Day t-shirt. I was in the middle of an environmentally-conscious phase back then. I was a vegetarian for a whole week once. I even found a kindred spirit with the same shirt at that summer's music camp. The shirt is a *little* faded now.





















3. my 1992 U2 Zoo Tv Tour t-shirt. Seems like just yesterday we were on the eve of electing Clinton to the White House. I had missed their show in Ames, IA that fall because of marching band duties at the high school football game, but I somehow begged and pleaded my way into getting to see them in Kansas City a month later. It was great-I think it was my first experience being around really drunk people, which was not so great. The shirt got a lot of wear-it too is faded and oddly shaped now.

















4. my college band jacket. In one pocket, there were a couple of peppermints, still in tact in their wrappers, the combination to a residence hall mailbox, and an empty clarinet reed case. In the other pocket, and I don't know why this was there, was one of Corrie's socks. No clue. I tried to collect pins for the front from all the places the band took me, but along the way I believe I lost my Kansas Jayhawk pin and maybe a Cyclone pin. The collars on these jackets were dreadful-Corrie has a jacket from the year before with a normal collar.

















5. Finally, there's a happy ending. I did find my senior class t-shirt! "U Can't Hold Us"-were we rebels or something? Had someone threatened to hold the whole class back? Unfortunately, I think it's too silly to wear to the game.

Does anyone recognize this kitty?

This cat has been showing up for the B&B option on our back porch the past couple of weeks. He's dark grey and white and appears to be neutered. He's very friendly. I don't see any lost cat reports on Lincoln's Department of Animal Control website that match him, so I thought I'd at least give him the benefit of a blog post.


Besides, I think I've had this blog going for over a week, and I don't think I've written about cats yet!

Holmes Lake isn't the only thing in town that's still frozen

The forecast for today said temperatures in the 60s (weather.com says it's 68 right now), so I knew I wanted to get my freshly-tuned bike out and go for a ride. When venturing out on the first really nice day of the year, one must consider the probable high traffic on the most popular trails and chose their own path accordingly. People seem to forget over the winter how to use our bike trails and what the phrase, "on your left" means, so I decided to head farther north than I usually go so I could get on the John Dietrich bikeway that eventually turns into the Murdock trail, which eventually would get me to Lincoln's Mahoney Park. (not to be confused with the Mahoney Park out by the Platte River. I'm not in that good of shape.) I knew before going out that portions of this trail are limestone, and I realized they'd probably be a little messy and get my freshly-cleaned bike messy, too. The fact that there's hardly anyone ever on this stretch was just too appealing to pass up.

I was right-there was hardly anyone out, however I underestimated the limestone messiness. Patches right next to Mahoney Park were still complete snow-covered, so I walked my bike maybe a quarter of a mile until I got on firmer ground. I decided I wasn't willing to do that again going back, so I ended up taking the longer way home by going on hilly 84th street south all the way to the Mo Pac trail, which is one of the busy ones I was trying to avoid. It might've been the heavy winds, but there actually weren't that many people out on the Mo Pac, so I had minimally frustrating trip the rest of the way home. All in all, a pretty good trip!

This week's tulip progress-I still can't find my crocus, but the tulips continue to grow: