White as snow

This week the Bradford pear trees have been the talk of the town, or at least the clinic where I work.  People come in and will comment something like, "Well, have you seen the Bradfords today?" or "Those Bradfords across the street just keep getting prettier."  Granted, working in a PT clinic we discuss the weather a lot and I think the changing of the seasons counts as weather where small talk is concerned.  It seemed like everywhere I was there was talk about spring.  Once again most of this was at work-- Are your tomato seeds coming up yet?  I better get my lawn mower tuned up.  I need you to fix my back pain so I can get out in the garden.  What do you mean I can't use my arm after surgery-- who is going to prune my rose bushes?  It seems like this past week spring as been in the air.
One reason everyone has been talking about the Bradford pear trees is that our clinic looks out over about 10 Bradford pears trees that started to blossom on Monday and Tuesday and are now a brilliant white.  (Side note: Our clinic is on the 4th floor of a 4 story building with the orthopedic clinic.  I'm not sure who the brains were behind this design.  If for some reasons the elevators aren't working properly I might has well go home for the day because only about 5% of my patients can walk up 4 flights of stairs.  They have told me that it gets interesting if we have a fire drill because we have to make sure everyone gets out-- including those in wheelchairs or with knee replacements.  Any way there is my rant.)  Since we are on the 4th floor often when I look out the windows I just see the tops of the trees and this week once I had to do a double take since all I saw was white-- it took a second to realize it wasn't a freak snow storm but just the pear trees' blossoms that were white as snow.
This week on my drive to work I was listening to a CD when the song "Jesus Paid It All".  The chorus is as follows: "Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow." The song instantly made me think of the Bradford pears and what a reminder during this Easter season about what was done on the cross washing us white again and giving new life--- just like spring.  (Side Note: In the last post I shared that sometimes I have had trouble hearing and understanding phrases correctly.  It wasn't till I was in high school or college that I realized the above hymn wasn't necessarily about snow leopards.  One of the lines in the song is that Christ has the power to "change a leper's spots".  I was hearing this as "leopard's spots" which I thought was strange to be singing about in church.)
We live on the edge of a tall grass prairie region.  In this area each spring large portions of the grass is burned which allows the grass to green up more quickly.  On Friday it was a calm day so while I didn't see anyone burning the air was kind of smoky and hazy for miles around.  That evening Arthur and I took a bike ride and when we got back we both had scratchy throats from breathing the smoky air.  However this sign of spring was another good reminder of a spiritual parallel.  Sometimes it takes a "controlled burn" in our lives to get rid of the "dead" stuff and to clear the way for fresh new growth to come in.  While this "controlled burn" process such as trials or hardships isn't fun the latter results are worth it if we keep our eyes open.  The blackened charred fields I drive by every day will be plush and green in a few weeks.  Omnia Vincit Amor. 

March Mascot Madness

So I realize that it is actually April.  I meant to write this blog several weeks ago.  It didn't happen-- oh well, the title is still applicable.  Way back in March I was filling out my basketball brackets for the NCAA tournament.  I was going to do a research study on whether I had a better percentage with filling out the bracket flipping a coin, picking based on the mascot, or based on my own knowledge.  However due to general life happening I didn't keep track of the games and lost interest.  Let's just say with my coin flip bracket I had North Carolina Central winning the whole kit and caboodle.  (Side note: For much of my life I have had trouble distinguishing certain words in common phrases.  I may have just realized that the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle" is not "the whole kitten and poodle" which I have been hearing all my life-- A little piece of the world suddenly makes much more sense than it has in the past)

I have always found school mascots slightly intriguing so I especially enjoyed filling out the "toughest mascot" bracket.  My basic guidelines for toughest mascot match ups were carnivores beat herbivores, people with guns beat carnivores but carnivores beat people without guns, and natural disasters kind of take out everything.  With those basic guidelines though there were some mascots that just don't fit.

Some of the more interesting mascots include the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, the Delaware Blue Hens, the Wofford Terriers, and the Manhattan Jaspers.  Coastal Carolina's mascot is based on a rooster from The Nun's Tale in the Canterbury Tales.  The actual mascots nickname is Chauncey after Chaucer.  The state bird of Delaware is a blue hen so thus it is their mascot (less original than I thought). Wofford's mascot is a terrier but their logo is a big W.  Manhattan College was probably the trickiest mascot to find.  I have no idea what a Jasper is and their logo is a big M.  Let me just say that while I am sure Wofford and Manhattan are wonderful schools someone in the graphics design program could add a little pizazz to the logo or create a drawing of the mascot for some originality. (I would like to state that these are the opinions of the writer and only opinions on  subject I don't really know much about through my 5 minutes of research).  It turns out a Jasper is name after Father Jasper, one of the important men in the history of the school supposedly credited with making the 7th inning stretch popular. I am sad to say that in my mascot bracket none of these teams fared well-- the Spartans were the obvious choice over the Blue Hens.  

There are two other colleges worth mentioning in this discussion in mascots didn't make it to the Big Dance this year, partly because they are not NCAA DI schools.  The first the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. 

Originally they were the sea lions but the student body mutinied and the student-athletes voted to be the "Slugs" as well.  The other school is the St. Louis College of Pharmacy's mascot-- the Eutectic.  Here's the explaination from the school's website:
 “Eutectic” describes the scientific process of two solids being combined to form a liquid.  A common term in pharmacy, it is the perfect metaphor for the school's intercollegiate athletic program – combining athletics and a demanding academic program.

The mascot at games is Mortarmer McPestle and their gym is nicknamed "The Pillbox".  Their previous mascot was a purple dinosaur named Rex (Rx) but when Barney came on the scene in the early 1990s they decided it was time for a change.  (Side note:  St. Louis has a high concentration of odd mascots including the University of St. Louis Billikens and University of Missouri-St. Louis Tritons (nothing like a mythical Greek sea god in the Midwest).  

In my bracket the Iowa State Cyclones won it all.  I suppose growing up in Tornado Alley I have seen the power and destruction of cyclones and that they will take out anything in their path regardless of where it is a human with a gun, carnivore, or anything else.  That is unless Father Jasper has enough pull with the Almighty to calm the storm.  Omni Vincit Amor.

Two Fools in Love

While many associate April 1 with April Fool's Day and practical jokes, it is actually the anniversary of our first "date".  When Arthur called me up to ask me out I told him he would have to wait about week since I was studying for my board exams.  The day after the test was April 1, my first free day from studying, so we agreed to meet then for ice cream.  I about had second thoughts and had cold feet about going down to meet Arthur for the date but that would have been a cruel joke.  After all it was just one date- how bad could it be?  We ate ice cream, walked around campus talking, and wound up at the campus art museum.  As we perused the exhibits we tried to guess the name of each piece without looking at the name plate-- our percentage was very low.

So the April Fool's joke was actually on me now that 4 years later we are married-- I guess that date ended up going somewhere.  This evening to celebrate 4 years of "intentionally hanging out" we ate brownies and ice cream.  Also for our date nights in April we signed up for an introductory drawing class through the local art council.  On our first night of class we dove into shading, cross hatching, and even had to do a still life.  Next week we learn perspective (if the past four years haven't done that.)  Omnia Vincit Amor.