She's a tease.

Spring made a brief appearance, but didn't stay. We now have tulips open and will most likely awake to find them covered in snow in the morning. I will be happy to see the last of winter, when it finally leaves for good. Friday night we all (M, L, H, Dej & Russ) all went to see the talk by Michael Shermer. I was so excited about it--I've been counting down days for the last month! I'm a big fan of his work (books & articles in Sci Am and Skeptic). He talked for about 1.5 hours, and the topic was Why People Believe Weird Things. He has a new book coming out in May that I'm also excited about.

The (inside) birds don't care what the outside temp is, but they certainly notice the extended day length. Some of them are very interested in building a nest and having a family (which is not influenced by whether or not they have a partner or have a partner of the opposite gender), and some are not. Those who are are busy staking out their little areas and building. Saffron, who is very old (we don't know how old she was when we got her, but we've had her for 15 years), has returned to her little nest in the corn plant that is still alive, despite the repeated attacks by our "beaver" rabbits at the trunk and by the birds at the leaves. Cypress, who we think is a male but is of a different species from Saffie, looks like he might be joining Saffie's family this year. He's been checking in with her on the nest and guarding from above.

Despite the crappy weather, the kids played outside Saturday for quite a long time. I spent Saturday cleaning the herbivore and doing other weekend chores. H had to go home Sat. night to hang with his dad, and L had to be at my parents' at 4:30 for this years' easter egg hunt at grandma's house. Her cousin Elijah was staying with my parents for the weekend, and wouldn't be coming Easter weekend, so she decided to move the hunt to this weekend. The kids took it very seriously and hunted hard, though I can't stand to see anyone get trounced, so M & I were sneaking hints to Elijah to keep things a little more even. Once the hunt was finished, we left for date night.

M & I had date night planned, and he had planned a night in Madison, as we've been having pretty uneventful date nights lately. We had dinner at Dhobans, where we've eaten a few times in the past. We were a little less pleased this time, as our pakaudas were a little underdone, as was my masala dosa. We then went to see a play at the Bartell. It's been way too long since we've been there, as we both always enjoy the shows and the venue. The play was Dead Certain, done by Mercury Players Theater (who we thing are always fantastic!), and there were only two characters in the entire play. It was interesting, suspensful, and left us with much to discuss on the ride home.

We ended up with a little extra time between dinner and the play, so M went to Bhan Tai to pick up some orders of mango sticky rice to go. We texted Dej on our way back to town to let her know we had sticky rice for her & Russ and would deliver it if they were at home. They were home working on their next stained glass mosaic piece--an octopus, so we arrived there at around 10:30 or so. We weren't planning to stay long, as we wanted to get home early, but ended up chatting, laughing, and having fun, and didn't make it home til midnight.

My grandkitties were adorable! Tillie stole the straw from my cup, as she always does. I was guarding it very carefully, too, and the stealthy little turd waited until the one moment my attention was distracted from guard duty, and stealthily snatched the straw, ran like the wind, and took it into their room (the cats have a bedroom full of cat toys) to show her brother Allistair.