Spring Has Sprung!

Aren't these pretty? The vase is from Karen - it's this cool ceramic pot with holes for each stem on the top. Red tulips are my favorite for it so far. I bought them to celebrate spring which has clearly sprung in Madison (I wore sandals and a cotton skirt yesterday! with no coat!) as well as to jazz the place up a bit since I have a roommate for March and April. Alice is from London and is a visiting scholar who needed a place to stay - since I'm hardly ever here, I offered her my spare room. Lois has welcomed her by peeing in several spots on the carpet, which is so generous of her. Sigh.

It's great having somebody else to come home to and cook dinners with. The accent is getting to me, though - I've started saying "Hiya!" in the morning like she does and reading everything I type with a British accent. It's weird, I'll be the first to admit. So far, it has shocked her how big all of our jars and cans of things are at the grocery store, how quick people are to abandon coats and shoes once the temperature breaks 50 degrees, and how Americans take doggy bags home with them from restaurants. Her favorite things about the US thus far, however, is reading the headlines on weather.com every morning: "Storm Shreds Northeast!", "Cyclone Slams Fuji!", "Temps Crash In Denver!" "They all sound like tag lines for horror movies," she remarked. She's right.