I woke up yesterday morning feeling more alert and awake than I have in a while. Richard, however, was coughing and wheezing and has a sore throat. So I think the overwhelming lack of energy we’ve been suffering the last week or two wasn’t an effect of the weather; I think we’ve both been fighting off another bout of the winter crud. Except this time I seem to have avoided it, but Richard, unfortunately, has not.

He stayed home yesterday and today while I went to work and played with databases. I was very happy yesterday to have managed to get a particularly difficult piece of coding to work, but then realized that there is really no one else in the office that would have a clue what I was talking about if I bragged about it. So instead I just poked at the code some more and eyed my schedule and tried to figure out when it would be convenient enough for me to try the bus/bike thing to and from work again because, due to the sheer laziness of this past weekend (dancing and haggis do not, unfortunately, count toward bike miles), I am still sitting at 26 miles total for the year, and with the month almost over, I’m starting to feel a little nervous about how far I have already fallen behind.

This evening my friend came over to work on the tree. I sat and chatted with her after feeling a little guilty about how many leaves I have *not* managed to get painted on the darn thing, but she didn’t seem to care that I’ve been such a big slacker, and so she created leaves on the wall while I corralled the cats and kept them from stepping in paint. And then we took a break and ate ice cream because, it being Girl Scout cookie season, Dryers has their themed flavors out and as a former Girl Scout it is my solemn duty to support them in whatever way I can.

And speaking of trees and leaves and Girl Scouts and other things that are green, I finally have pictures of the back yard. Or rather, Richard took these pictures back in December but we have been big slackers and didn’t actually get around to doing anything with them until now. So here you go. From left to right, the new and improved back yard. It doesn’t look very exciting yet (well, except for the fact that there is bark where there once were oh-so-lovely weeds), and the trees all look so forlorn and vulnerable, all bare and grey since it is still winter. But we have been assured that come spring things will start to explode. There will be flowers and color, and even, quite possibly, leaves (real ones, not painted ones, no less). Needless to say, I’m looking forward to this very much.