Not Spring Yet

I was just getting excited about spring after 3 or 4 days of beautiful weather last week.  It got up to 49º and I didn't wear my winter coat or a hat for 2 days!  Didn't put on my boots at all!  All of our mountains of snow melted, leaving messy mud puddles everywhere, but that was okay because you could see the grass. 

And then last night Mother Nature decided to dump 7 inches of fresh snow on Ann Arbor, with another 1-3 expected tonight.  Sigh.  I'm so tired of winter!

Mid-semester Updates

I just realized that I am halfway through my last semester of school!  I have a number of reactions to this: 
1) Thank goodness, it's about time!  I'm so tired of homework.
2) Yay, it's almost spring!
3) Yikes, I only have 2 months to find a job before being officially unemployed.
4)  And wow, that means I only have a month and a half to finish my master's project.

So it looks like the next couple months will be pretty busy, but hopefully filled with a little more sunshine.  In the meantime, since I've been so bad at writing lately, here are some updates from the first half-semester:

• The EcoValuation Working Group at SNRE, which I helped start in the fall of '09, took its annual career trek to Chicago in mid-January.  Read about our whirlwind weekend here. 
• I brought my maize and blue cheer to UMich basketball games for the first time!  I wanted to make sure to see all the "important" Big Ten sports before graduating, and so far I've been to football, hockey, and now basketball.  The team even eked out a win while I was there!

  

  Michigan vs. Ohio State
  

• Also at one of the basketball games was Brady Hoke, Michigan's new football coach!  I have high hopes for the former defensive coach.  Too bad Michigan couldn't put together a good team before I came to grad school here.
  
• I learned how to cross-country ski and snowshoe on a weekend trip to northern MI (fingertip area of the mitten) with Colin.  I have to admit, I thought cross-country skiing sounded kind of lame before I went (it's like you're walking, except harder!) and I'm still not sold on it as a new hobby, but I am more-or-less coordinated enough to make it across the trails, and the downhill parts are definitely fun.  Snowshoeing over a frozen lake nearly gave me a panic attack (how do we know it's frozen?!) but the view was spectacular.

  

  Colin snowshoes across a lake.

  

  First time ever on skis.
  

Well, I guess that's about it for now.  Back to homework, teaching, masters project-ing, searching for jobs, and most importantly... counting down the days 'til spring!