Random Notes from the Arctic

This is a shout-out to our awesome sister/ sister-in-law Mary! COME VISIT US MARY!!

I am not quite ready for this three-day weekend to end. It was very relaxing... we mostly used the weather as an excuse to stay inside and glance out at the snow every hour and say "Wow, the snow is still there!!"

Scott did take me out for a date last night to the Smoky Mountain Brewery-- apparently everyone else in the city had the same idea. There was barely room to stand and wait for our table... it was wall to wall people. I guess everyone had been stuck inside for a few days like us and wanted some hot food and cold beer (blechhh) to comfort them. But our date was amazing :-)

My favorite accomplishment this weekend: I finished reading Mornings on Horseback. Fantastic book! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in American history or likes biographies. Our 26th President was a highly interesting person. Some interesting trivia:

• He was highly asthmatic as a child and almost died at least once from suffocation.
• His family were seasoned world travelers in the days before airplanes. As a preteen, he spent months in Europe and floated for months down the Nile, all while attended to by multiple servants.
• Until his second year at Harvard he wanted to be a biologist-- at 8 years old he used to kill and dissect multiple birds a day
  
• He spent the better part of 3 years as a rancher in the Dakota Territory. He and some friends once chased down and caught three robbers who had stolen their boat and carted them 50 miles to the nearest town to face justice (he was made fun of for having not killed them on the spot)

I love biographies so much. It is so much fun getting engrossed in the story of a person's development and to read about all of the factors that led to who they were as an adult. This one even made me cry (when his wife died), I was so invested in his story!

On another random note, I made Linguine with Clam Sauce tonight. Yum.

And, to end this extremely disjointed post, a picture to remind myself that it once was summer in Eastern Tennessee. And that it will probably eventually look and feel like this again someday.