Still snowing

Yes, March is going out like a lamb. A big, fluffy lamb. With big, wet, fluffy flakes falling from the sky.

I walked out of the house this morning and it was snowing, but it sounded like rain -- the flakes were so heavy and the ground so warm that they hit the ground with a splat.

Bring on April. Please.

Ever made 60 pounds of sausage?

Yeah, I hadn't either, not until yesterday. I'd been in the house when such projects were being undertaken, but one of the things about being gone for 18 years was missing sausage day. But just take five Colemans, 60 pounds of pork shoulder butt ($1.45 a pound, I believe), a bunch of spices, some ancient equipment and sausage, and voila, six hours later, you have authentic Italian sausage.

And sore shoulders. Not the pig's.

It started with cutting up pork, 10 pounds at a time, trimming the fat and cutting the meat into pieces small enough to fit into the grinder. (Neil demonstrates, above.)

The pork gets ground into chunks. Not exactly ground beef, mind you, but small enough to fit into the sausage casing, of course. I did a lot of the grinding and was more or less cutting pork the rest of the time, so I don't have pictures of that grinding process.

The ground pork is mixed with the spices, which you can see Mom doing in the sink. The spices were measured out and chopped up in the blender, then mixed by hand. With one batch, we got to the bottom of the bowl and saw a lot of spices at the bottom, which prompted us to pull as much pork as we could back out of the packing mechanism and respice it.

If you get that batch, lucky you, very hot.

Very important: Each of the batches must have a small part grilled up and tested for proper spiciness. As a teenager, that was my favorite part of the process, and about the only part I participated in.

The grinder attachment is then removed and a funnel attached. The sausage casing is ... let's say threaded onto the end of the funnel, using a technique that you might be familiar with if you took health class in a public school, and pushed out into the casing.

It's then parceled out into one-pound increments, wrapped in plastic wrap, then foil, and sent to the freezer, where it sits for anywhere from weeks to months to years before being consumed.

Let's be honest, that's a lot of pork, and nobody needs that much fat, right? Each of the kids got four pounds to take home, and since none of us has anyone else to share them with, it should last for a while.

Plus, it'll only get spicier the longer it stays in the freezer.

Oh yeah, and then Neil cooked dinner. But he'll do his own PR. He doesn't need my help.

Where were the kids through all this? Blissfully ignorant and entertained: Nanny sent Legos, 40 various people with their attachments, from rakes to ray guns. Hours upon hours upon hours of fun.

Yep, definitely progress

Colleen just completed her third night in a row sleeping the whole night through in her own bed and waking up with a dry pull-up. Nonna has been bribing her with a trip to Wonderment, a shop she loves in the neighborhood, for staying in her bed all night Seems that may have put her over the top.

One year at goal weight

Last year when I left for the D-III Final Four, I had pretty much finished my journey to my final goal weight of 180. As I left for Salem, Va., I was pretty sure that I was going to need some more time to finish that off -- that trip is usually marked by a fair amount of beer, some food and the like.

Of course, it's also marked by a lot of stress, work and a lack of sleep, and those factors combined to help me burn more calories than I took in. So when I got home, I was at my goal weight, to my shock.

Six weeks later, if you recall, I was still there, centered around 180. Over the course of the year, I've gradually worked that down as well. I was hovering around 175 for most of the past four months, then after I was sick a couple weeks ago and it hurt to eat, I found myself centered around 172, and I kind of like how that feels for now. I started at 234, which is what I weighed when I came west for Neil and Alicia's law school graduation. There's a better picture than this one, one with Neil and Ryan which actually helped inspire me to make a change, but I can't find an electronic copy.

Now it's been a year, and it feels like this could be for the long haul.

Alas, there are still foods that I have trouble with sometimes: I still like bread, which doesn't do much for me; french fries are tough to ignore (except fast food fries, I can pass those off or even just leave them in the bag); the cookies Cate bakes; etc. But there are all manner of things I can ignore, like ice cream, hot dogs, anything with cheese.

There are a couple of bad eating habits I'd like to cut back on as well, most notably my Diet Coke intake! During the D3 seasons I feel like I need the caffeine in order to put in the hideously long hours, but I'm sure I don't need all the phosphoric acid. Or the aspartame. Considering it's not good for my singing voice, either, I'm trying to replace some of the caffeine with drinking tea, and I've been feeling alright.

Thanks, as always, Cate, for your support. I remember trying to do this by myself and failing utterly. I could not have come here without you.

A quarter century later

Twenty-five years ago today, we left Ypsilanti, Mich., and moved to Minneapolis. For some reason, the date was emblazoned on my brain.

A few years ago I was in the old neighborhood, which was fairly depressing. Mom and Dad had always said the plan was to live there for a couple of years and then move to Ann Arbor, but considering we couldn't sell that house even when it was time to move to Minnesota, I can see why that didn't happen.

I remember being bummed at the time about leaving my friends and such. But it turned out alright.

Hopefully Elizabeth and Robert feel the same way 25 years from now. I don't think Colleen will notice.

The last day at St. Francis of Assisi school in Ann Arbor, Neil and I both had gotten pink eye, so we were leaving school early. I remember my sixth-grade teacher sending me down to the office with some meaningless paperwork so they could get set up for my going-away party. We'd only started going to that school that year, but it was a nice gesture.

Dad will remind us, if I don't, so I'll just note that on the drive home from school I threw up in the back of the car. That was a car he had borrowed from a co-worker to bring us home, since we had only one car and he took the bus to work.

It's good to be home

Another Division III basketball season is over and I'm glad to be back in Minneapolis after what seemed like a fairly surreal week in Virginia, driving familiar roads and such.

For some reason I'm wired and can't get to sleep, so I heard Colleen get up to get herself some water. I usually get up to intercept her in the hallway so she heads back to her own bedroom, but as I went toward the bathroom, this three-quarters asleep little girl was making some strange noises:

Sssssssssssssluurrrrrrrp ... mmmahhhhhh ... ssssssssssssluurrrrrrrp ... mmmahhhhhh ... ssssssssssssluurrrrrrrp ... mmmahhhhhh.

When I got there she was stepping down off the foot stool with her face all wet. No cup in the bathroom, so she had to improvise at 11:40 at night.

Our Mother Bear

Nonna was on TV last week!

That's her, with her name spelled right, and everything. Mom has been volunteering with the Mother Bear Project for several years now, and unfortunately I haven't done nearly enough reporting on this to know the whole story. Knowing that she's a regular reader of the blog, though, hopefully she'll take the time to tell us more.

You can watch the video of the piece that ran on WCCO last week, and read an accompanying story that quotes her one extra time.

Meanwhile, Cate has been knitting as well, as has Elizabeth. Cate just put the finishing touches on a bear for Robert that didn't take her much time at all, while Elizabeth has been knitting leaves, mice, skyscrapers ... interesting stuff.

A developmental milestone, perhaps

Colleen still tends to wake up in the middle of the night, more often than not. Sometimes I can succeed in getting her back into her own bed without too much issue, sometimes I'm lazy at 3 a.m. and let her sleep with us. (Heck, she climbs in on Cate's side, so most of the time I don't notice her coming in.)

But lately I've been up at all hours because of D3hoops.com's March Madness, busy time of year. If the light is on in the bedroom when Colleen wakes up, she won't come in. Last night was one of those nights, and she was padding around in her feety pajamas out in the hallway. And then ... lo and behold, she goes to the bathroom!

It sounded like all was well, but after a few minutes she was back in the hallway, whimpering. I called to her to come into the room, figuring she was just looking to crawl into bed, and she sniffled and said, "It doesn't work!"

She walked in the door, with her pajamas off except wrapped around one foot. She got the PJ's off but couldn't get them back on.

I helped her get all zipped up and such. And she went back to her bed.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ...