A New Author Found, Ilona Andrews

I've been pretty stressed out lately. My plate is very full, and I think it's starting to become overfull.  First off I've got my job which I'm working 19 hours a week at, that's just fine. Then I've got my solo research project which kinda stalled out because I was lacking info, but lo and behold ask and you shall receive, albeit with a three week delay. So now I have tons of info to sort through and my Primary Investigator (PI) wants me to move forward with the project.  Then I have my not one, but two summer classes (think of summer classes as twice as fast). Not only are they 'capstone' CBS (college of biological sciences) courses, they are also team based. Team based means you are permanently assigned to a nine person group and all of your projects and grades will happen in concert with these random people, even some of the tests are taken as a team. I have two sets of people to work with, somehow I've ended up directing the long term projects for both classes. Finally you've got the home life, which is not going so smoothly. My female roommate and I decided we no longer wanted to live with one of our male roommates.  We told the other male roommate first who decided that he could not stay if the other went, and is trying to convince the other guy to move out without telling him we don't want to live with him anymore. I don't think this approach is going to work well due the the guy's extreme laziness. So now we need two new roommates before our lease rolls over on August first. We think we've got one, but we're going to need to advertise and interview for another.  We can't really start looking though until they guys agree to move out.  This uncertain housing future has me really stressed out.

When I'm stressed out I want to escape reality with a good book. Unfortunately I've got a binge reading problem and will deprive myself of sleep to see what happens next. This makes me grumpy and prone to mood swings which is a bad combo with stress.  With this in mind I had an idea: why don't I buy some anthologies so I can read a short story before bed,and have a definite stopping point so I will go to bed. One of the anthologies I bought was Dark and Stormy Knights. The first story, A Questionable Client, was by Ilona Andrews which is a pen name for a husband and wife writing team. I read this story and about half way through I thought 'why have I never heard of this author before?' and 'I've got to read more of this' because it was such a unique world and character. I did a brief amazon search and found the first book in the Kate Daniels series, Magic Bites for $.76, there was no resisting and I bought it. I finished it within 24 hours of receiving it (see binge reading problem, though all in all it probably didn't take more than four and a half hours to read.). The first thing that struck me is that by reading the short story I'm actually getting the character's story in chronological order, because the short story explains an acquaintance that shows up a few times in the book.  The other thing that I noticed was that while the writing in the book is by no means bad, it certainly was better in the short story which means this duo only gets better with time. I don't think I would have gotten quite as sucked in a I did if I hadn't read the short story first. The novel was good but didn't have that same gripping power. That being said I can't wait to get my hands on the next one, though I know I need to wait until my classes are over.

The really interesting part of this series is the world it is set in. The Authors call it post-shift, the jist of it is that magic flows randomly so sometimes it works, and sometimes technology works. This leaves magic monsters stranded and they wreak chaos. The main character is Kate Daniels who is a mercenary who deals with these monsters. She's also something else, but so far I don't know what. It has something to do with her father and some powerful magic she's got in her blood. There's also a whole supporting cast of maybe good, maybe bad guys it depends on the situation. Overall I like the concept because it's different and the characters because although they are superhuman on the powers level, they're quite human on the emotional level.

A Brief Trip Home

At the beginning of April I got one of the worst bad news phone calls I've even gotten. My grandfather had had another stroke. He was paralyzed on half of his body and we were not sure he would make it. To cap the call off my boss from my previous job who I had known for eight years had finally lost her battle with cancer, her funeral was to be the coming weekend. I wondered if I would be coming home for two funerals.
 That turned out not to be the case as my grandfather held on for weeks. He was confused, frustrated, and unable to speak.  I called my parents and grandmother everyday. It was hard to be hundreds of miles away unable to be there for my family in anything but voice. Unable to say goodbye as papa slipped away.  At the end of April he finally came to rest, and I came home to be there with my family.  The funeral turned out to be both harder and easier than I expected.
As the closest family we had to be there before anyone else at the viewing in order to set up all the pictures. Overall we had to be at the viewing for three hours. I thought it was going to be really hard seeing him in the casket, but he looked so peaceful it was more of a relief after I knew how much he had suffered at the end.  It was confusing and awkward to know almost no one at the funeral, and have relatives you didn't know/couldn't remember come up to you and exclaim how big you are now(I should hope I'm 'big' now, I am 21 and a senior in college).  There were even cousins I had no idea existed. One of them is even going to grad school at my University. (We ended up talking about our university jobs and he got my lab office window fixed, it's all about the people you know apparently).  I think the absolutely hardest part of the funeral was the military honors for my grandfather's service in WWII.
As soon as we got out of the car at the cemetery I went to my Nana and put my arm around her.  As her only grandchild (my 'new' cousins were the children of Papa's son from his first marriage) I knew she needed my support. I stayed there for the whole burial service, which is how I know that the moment the soldier saluted her after handing her the folded flag her composure cracked. She had held up well all day, but looking in that woman's face as she thanked my grandmother for Papa's service to the country was heart wrenching.  And then they played taps. That's when I lost it. That song is so sad and plaintive when you're already sad, I couldn't help but lose a few tears.  After an emotional day like that I took refuge in one of my hobbies, photographing nature:
We have quite the flock of turkeys at home. My father feeds them and gives me daily updates on their activities. He can tell them apart by the carbuncles on their necks, and some of them even have names now. Last I heard there was a mom with four babies who's hanging out with the loner hen (she lost her only chick despite our efforts to save it on my trip home in June) and another hen who had no chicks.
The Jake.

 Jake vs Tom. Jake never gets to eat once Tom gets to the dish, though while we were watching this Jake pulled a clever ruse to get at the food. He perked up and looked down the driveway like he had seen something and then ran away, the Tom followed him. As soon as the Tom was moving away from the food dish the Jake did a one eighty and sprinted for the food and managed to chow quite a bit before the Tom came back and bullied him out of the way.

Our mound, my mom's been trying to make it into a flower meadow for years

The North Pond, my dad has been digging it by hand since I was a sophomore in high school, he calls it his exercise program. The plan is someday to stock it with game fish. I think it's my dad's way of making up for us not living on a lake like my mom had wanted.

Some wild blood root, I was lucky I was home while it was blooming

My mother's hyacinths. This is my favorite shot from the whole trip.

A Much More Masculine Hat

After I made my hat with the brim I wanted to try making another, but I didn't need another brimmed hat. I talked my boyfriend into letting me make one for him. We went pattern shopping on the internet and were pretty disappointed in what we found, nothing was like the hat I had proposed to him.  I could see the hat I wanted to make him in my head, so I started designing my own pattern. I started with the cast on from the pattern for my hat and altered it from there.  I let my boyfriend make a lot of the pattern choices, so this is truly a man's hat.

Materials:
210 yds worsted weight yarn, I used 100% wool
US 8 circular needles
US 8 dp needles
stitch marker(s)
piece of plastic for the brim, I used the other side of the cool whip container I used for my hat

Gauge: 18sts=4in
Abbreviations:
 k-knit
 p-purl
 K2 tog-knit two together
P2 tog- purl two together

Hat:
Cast on 96 stitches, place a marker at the beginning of the round and join being careful not to twist stitches. K2 p2 around, continue until hat measures 11.5 inches. ( I asked my bf if he wanted just the cuff to be ribbed, and the rest of the hat straight knitting, but he wanted ribbing all the way up. If you want just the cuff to be ribbed and the rest stockinette stitch, rib about 3 inches and then start stockinette stitch.)
Decrease:
Round 1: K2 tog P2 tog around
Round 2 and 3: k1 p1
Round 4: K2 tog
Round 5: k around
Round 6: K2 tog

Cut yarn leaving a tail, thread through remaining stitches, bring to the wrong side, pull tight, and weave in ends.
Brim:
I wanted the brim to be longer and more like that of a baseball hat than the way it turned out on my hat so I changed up the start of the short rows and how many rows there are between the short rows and the decrease rows.

Cast on 40 sts, knit is stockinette stitch. Start short rows on right side row 4 (as in the fourth row total, not the fourth of the right side rows).
Row 1: knit 25, turn
Row 2: slip 1 p12 turn
Row 3: slip 1 k15 turn
Row 4 slip 1 p18 turn
Continue to work in this manner, working three more stitches at the center each row until all 40 stitches have been worked. Work eight rows in stockinette stitch. Starting on a right side row bind of 2 sts, repeat 9 times (ten rows total 20 sts). Bind off 3 sts at the beginning of next four rows, 8 sts remain, bind off.
For some helpful tips on short rows and wrapping look here and here

Brim Assembly:
*note some pictures are from the assembly of the brim for my hat hence the different yarn color.

So step one fold the brim in half:

 I pinned the brim on a piece of paper and traced it before I took it to the cool whip container. Be sure to actually stretch your knitting when you pin it, you don't want your knitting to sag when you sew it around the brim. This is the tracing I got:

 I took the shaky outline and drew a smoother one just inside it small enough that the yarn would be able to be sewn over it. I cut out on the smooth line, folded it in half and trimmed it to make it symmetrical. Then I pined it to the cool whip container.

I traced my paper shape with sharpie

I'm pretty handy with knives and have had several art classes that relate to carving things, so I just carved this out with a box cutter. If you're not so steady of hand or experienced with knives I'd recommend scissors.

On my hat I could see a bit of the white from the plastic showing through my knitting so I covered the brim with electrical tape.

I used some stitch markers to pin my knitting around the hat brim

I used the tail from knitting it and started in the middle with a whip stitch. Here's the brim halfway sewn up

Unfortunately when I cast on I did not leave a long enough tail to sew up the other half of the brim, so I had to add an extra piece of yarn to do the other side.

This is the brim of my hat

Here's the brim of my boyfriend's hat, as you can see it's a good bit longer than mine.

The next step is pinning on the brim while that hat is on the wearer's head. My boyfriend loved this part, especially because it interfered with him watching the NFL draft.

He loves me enough, that with a few reservations he allowed me to sew the brim on while it was on his head.  The only problem that can about was that he kept futzing with the hat while I was sewing and it didn't quite come out like I had imagined (I wanted the bottom edge of the brim on the hat not on his forehead).

 At his request I tacked up the folded edge of the hat. Also note that the weird bulge at the back of the hat is because my curly haired boyfriend needs a haircut, not because my pattern does something weird.

The Fruit of Dragons

My roommate and I signed our lease renewal form, and as a thank you our landlord gave us a gift card to the grocery store. Since we had a gift card we decided to buy a few treats. Our eyes landed on the unusual fruits section of the produce area. We ended up buying a pepino melon and what we now know is a dragon fruit. When we bought it we were under the impression that it was a prickly pear that I had once had in Spanish class, and thought my roommate might like. Well, we were wrong prickly pears are smooth and red cactus fruit, dragon fruit are red cactus fruit with spiky leaves that kinda look like scales coming off of them.

Prickly Pear

Dragon Fruit

The mistake is somewhat easy to make if you only remember eating the prickly pear after it was cut up. Luckily searching Google images for red cactus fruit tells you what you have pretty quickly. Dragon fruit are supposed to be pretty good for you and show up in a lot of health smoothies and juices because they are mostly water and blend well.  We found a tutorial on how to prepare this thing and followed it.

I was not expecting it to be white on the inside. I'm also going to guess that the nutrients are found in all of the seeds (They're edible just like a kiwi.) In fact My roommate and I decided this whole thing is kinda like a white kiwi. Anyways according to the internet, once you cut it in half you scoop out the edible part with a spoon.

Then you cut it up, and if you want to be fancy looking you can put it all back in the rind for serving, just don't eat the rind it's bitter.

So we went ahead and tried it. It was not fantastic. It looks so pretty and colorful, but has nearly no taste.  It is extremely similar to kiwi in texture but not in taste. It really doesn't have one, there's a faint cactus undertone, but that's it really. It''s not sweet or tart or sour or anything. Just kinda cactus flavored water with seeds. We decided that if you wanted to be fancy you could mix this up with kiwi and serve it in the rinds, but other than that we wouldn't eat it again.

The rest of dinner on the other hand, was absolutely delicious.

University Of Minnesota Hat

I go to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. School gear is pretty expensive, maroon and gold yarn however is not.  After trying my first stranded project in the only extra yarn I had sitting around, which happened to be maroon and gold I decided to try and make my own M chart. I spent about forty five minutes with a U of M logo a picture of grid lines and paint to make the chart. This is the third try and I think it turned out well. As soon as I finished, I showed it to my roommate who had just gotten home, she gave me this look and said 'you know there are websites that will do that for you right?' No, no I did not know that, but I think I did a good job anyways. So this chart is truly handmade and unlicensed by the U.  I did make it in maroon and gold because that's my school colors, but if you went to the University of Michigan for instance You could make the hat blue and yellow to be your school colors. Anyways, the pattern basically makes a nice warm hat with an M on it in whatever colors you want and the M can mean whatever you want.

University of Minnesota Hat

Size 6  circular needles

Worsted weight yarn 2 colors (maroon and gold)

Stitch markers

Using contrast color cast on 112 stitches. Knit one round k2 p2. Using main color knit 9 rounds of k2 p2.  Knit 8 rounds . Start chart. A word of warning in knitting the chart, make sure you leave your yarn loose enough when you switch colors or your hat will kinda bunch up. Mine looks a little crinkly, but it smooths out when you put it on. Place stitch markers inbetween repeats of the chart. Knit 3 rounds

Shape crown:

Round 1: [K14, K2Tog] 7 times= 105 sts

Round 2: Knit

Round 3: [K13, K2Tog] 7 times= 98 sts

Round 4: Knit

Round 5: [K12, K2Tog] 7 times= 91 sts

Round 6: Knit

Round 7: [K11, K2Tog] 7 times= 84 sts

Round 8: Knit

Round 9: [K10, K2Tog] 7 times= 77 sts

Round 10: Knit

Round 11: [K9, K2Tog] 7 times = 70 sts

Round 12: Knit

Round 13: [K8, K2Tog] 7 times= 63 sts

Round 14: [K7, K2Tog] 7 times= 56 sts

Round 15: [K6, K2Tog] 7 times= 49 sts

Round 16: [K5, K2Tog] 7 times= 42 sts

Round 17: [K4, K2Tog] 7 times= 35 sts

Round 18: [K3, K2Tog] 7 times= 28 sts

Round 19: [K2, K2Tog] 7 times= 21 sts

Round 20: [K1, K2Tog] 7 times= 14 sts

Round 21: [K2Tog] 7 times= 7 sts

Cut a long tail, draw it through the remaining sts to close top of hat. Bring tail to the wrong side and weave in your ends.

Easter Adventure

I didn't have plans for Easter until I was coming home from work on Good Friday.  I know a lot of schools give their students a short holiday for Easter that is long enough for a weekend at home.  The University of Minnesota doesn't do that, so every year since I've started college I've missed out on my family celebration and had a makeshift one with my friends. I say makeshift because half of my friends at college are Jewish, and Easter often coincides with passover. Traditional Easter food is ham, ham is not kosher so menu changes had to be implemented.  The first year the cooking club I was running had an Easter dinner, I can't recall if it was our formal Alfredo dinner or Anna's home raised/slaughtered steaks and venison. I have a hunch it was the second one because a lot of local people were in the formal photos and they would have had plans with their family. My second year of college I made dinner for twenty people out of my dorm room. This already difficult task was complicated by two sets of food allergies, celiac disease, and a vegetarian.  All told there could be no fish, pork, beef, or any other kind of meat thanks to the vegetarian, milk, eggs, wheat, or anything else that contained gluten. I bet you're looking at that list and wondering what in the world can be made in a dorm room without those things in it? Well, I made sushi. Unfortunately I was unaware that sushi rice is not gluten free so my celiac friend could only eat dessert, while the milk, eggs, pork beef friend could not have dessert because I made mousse in these tiny chocolate cups. In the end everyone was able to eat something, and I did manage to feed 20 people, so I think it went well. This year was much smaller with only two people. One of my Christian cooking club friends invited me over to his place for dinner I made squash rolls, apple cheesecake, and brought a bottle of Riesling, he made pork chops and mashed potatoes.

Squash rolls are a family standby recipe that is rolled out every Thanksgiving and whenever else the occasion seems appropriate. I've has some roasted butternut squash chilling in the freezer ever since my roommate's parents dumped four bags of extra CSA veggies on us in the fall. I defrosted some of that and made a half recipe of rolls in the cloverleaf roll style. My family usually makes these into crescent rolls, but I felt the clover leaf style was better for this meal.


Squash Rolls:
1 package/ 4 oz of yeast
2 tbs of warm water (110-115)
1 C mashed butternut squash
1/3 C warm milk (110-115)
1/4 C butter softened
1 egg
3 tbs brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3-31/2 C flour

Dissolve yeast in water. Combine squash, milk, butter, egg, brown sugar, and salt. Add yeast and 1 1/2 C flour, mix. Add enough remaining flour to form a soft dough, knead 6-8 minutes. Let rise until doubled in size. Punch down and shape into desired form. My family usually makes these as crescent rolls (roll out dough and cut into triangles and roll up) or a braided loaf. To make the clover rolls spray a muffin tin and divide each roll's worth of dough into 3 balls. Place three balls in each muffin hole. Cover and let rise for one hour. BAke at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes.

The adventure came in with the Apple Cheesecake. I spent the whole day before Easter shopping at MOA and going to a play written by my roommate's friend. I didn't finalize the dessert recipe I was going to make until I got home around midnight. I decided on this one. I realized Sunday morning that I was missing three key ingredients: sweetened condensed milk, apples, and apple juice concentrate. I may have been able to fudge the apples ( I had some kinda mushy ones) and concentrate (apple kiwi strawberry, or apple passion mango? ...hmm) but I did not want to try to make my own sweetened condensed milk from dry milk and sugar.  Not thinking it's EASTER SUNDAY, my roommate and I ran to the store. The parking lot of Cub was deserted, Target's parking lot was deserted, Rainbow's parking lot was deserted, even Aldi's parking lot was deserted. The parking lot at Savers on the other hand, was hopping. Hoping it was a grocery store we went in. Nope, definitely not a grocery store, in fact is was basically a goodwill. We got sidetracked by donated prom dresses, and I actually ended up getting a skirt (If you know me, this is pretty weird because I am a major tomboy) that I wore to dinner. I also found some nice dress flats. The most amazing part of the Savers portion of the adventure was that we found some nice dressy sandals that actually fit my roommate. She is considerably taller than me and has proportionate feet. Most stores do not carry her shoe size at all, and shoe shopping for her can be incredibly frustrating. She usually ends up getting guy shoes because they're the only ones that fit, and they rarely go well with her skirts that she likes to wear; so dressy sandals for 6 bucks was a great find.  At the checkout at Savers we started asking around if anyone knew of a grocery store that was open on Easter Sunday. After some mulling the general consensus was that we should go to super Wal-Mart. We got directions to the nearest one which we happened to have passed on the bus between MOA and the play the day before and knew the general location of. We started driving down a main street of Minneapolis that is in a rather Hispanic community.  As we were going along I was reading the store signs and thought to myself, Supermercado, that means grocery store in Spanish. As we pulled even to the store I realized that the open sign was on. I got rather excited (hey, my dough was rising at home and I was getting worried it might explode, if we could be done soon it was all to the good)and yelled "Echo, pull over it's open!"
And this is how I ended up using my high school Spanish in a real situation for the first time. The store was one of those hole in the wall ethinic grocercy/money deposit/calling card/pharmacy/music stores that you wonder if you can even walk down that aisle with your shopping bag without knocking anything off the shelves. Everything in the store was in Spanish and the cashier only spoke Spanish.  We found the apples first in the tiny fresh produce section and got three lovely fuji apples. Then we started scanning the frozen section, but there was no juice concentrate. We decided to try some ethnic brand of apple nectar, though we could not figure out what made it nectar and not juice despite half the label being in English.  Then came the fun part, sweetened condensed milk, in Spanish only labels. I remember that milk is leche and sugar is azucar, so sweetened should be azucado or something close to that.  We started scanning the shelves, and after a bit I found leche evaporado, and I knew I was close, it turns out that sweetened condensed milk in Spanish, on the Nestle label is, La Lechera, leche condensada azucarada.  Feeling fairly triumphant that I found my milk, we got in line to listen to and understand about every fifth word of an argument between the cashier and a customer who was filling a money order and buying drinks for herself and her two boys who were running everywhere through the store drinking from their bear-shaped juice bottles. Once I got the gist that the cashier was telling her that the woman still needed to pay for the drinks after filling the money order, my attention and gaze wandered over to a cooler tucked out of sight from the rest of the frozen food section, but right across from the cramped cashier space.  As I looked at this cooler which was kinda like the ones gas stations have with ice cream cones I realized that I was looking directly at frozen apple juice concentrate, exactly what I had been searching for. Even more triumphant than finding the milk, we had now found the concentrate so we put back the nectar and gathered up everything we had been looking for and waited for the cashier and woman to finish their argument , get on the same page, and pay for the the drinks. Despite my roommate and I conversing in English while waiting in the line the cashier addressed us in the softest spoken Spanish that I have ever managed to hear. She told me Seis cincuenta y cuatro (6.54), but I handed her two fives before it really registered what she had said (hey I'm really rusty). I could have paid better, but over all, the shopping trip was an unexpected huge success. My roommate dropped me off at the door of our apartment and dashed off to her family's Easter event. Then the cooking began.
 Before I left I has assembled the squash dough and left it to rise.  When I got back I punched it down and divided it into 36 balls.  I sprayed my muffin tin and put three balls in each indent. I threw a towel over it and left it to rise again. Then I moved on to making the Apple cheesecake.  First you make the crust which is basically apple crisp topping.

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup quick cooking oats
• 1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. In small bowl, beat 1/2 cup butter and sugar until fluffy. Add flour, oats, walnuts and cinnamon; mix well. Press firmly on bottom and halfway up side of 9-inch springform pan. Bake 10 minutes.


While the crust was baking I started on the actual cheese part. I mostly followed the recipe, but made a few additions of my own.

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 (14 ounce) Sweetened Condensed Milk (NOT evaporated milk)
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed
• I also added:
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• Beat cream cheese until fluffy in large bowl. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk until smooth (do not overbeat). Add eggs and apple juice concentrate, also sour cream and cinnamon; mix well. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 45 minutes or until center springs back when lightly touched. Cool.

When reading these instructions I have no idea what do not overbeat means. Is it really possible to overbeat a cheesecake? It's not like pancakes that have a rising agent in  them, and if you over stir them a lot of the gas will escape leaving you with flat pancakes. Anyways I popped that in the oven at 325 as a compromise temperature between the rolls and the cheesecake. The cheesecake baked really slowly, I must have had it in there for nearly an hour before I called it done, and it still could have been slightly more cooked in the middle. When I ate it I decided about five more minutes would have been perfect, but then I would have been even more late than I already was.
While the cheesecake was baking I fried the fuji apples in butter and cinnamon for the top and made the apple glaze that gets drizzled on top.

• 
  
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 cup apple juice concentrate, thawed
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In small saucepan, combine apple juice concentrate, cornstarch and ground cinnamon; mix well. Over low heat, cook and stir until thickened. (Makes about 1/4 cup)


Assembly of the Cheesecake:

First the fried apples are arranged on top

And then the glaze is drizzled over

I had a few lumpy problems with my cornstarch in my glaze because I rarely ever actually measure things and when in a hurry I tend to dump a bit too much

The final product released from the spring form pan


It didn't really matter that I was late because my friend had waited for me to start cooking. He fried up some pork chops and boiled some potatoes to make mashed potatoes and dinner was done in no time.  The cheese cake had still not cooled by the time we finished, so we decided to go on a walk by the Mississippi.  We ate dessert when we got back. The cheesecake was even more delicious than anticipated, but after eating it there are a few alterations I would make before making it again. First I would put a layer of the fried apples on top of the crust before pouring in the cheesecake, and secondly I would peel the apples that go on top because the apple peels caused quite a few problems in the consumption of the cheesecake, and a rather grumpy roommate.
Some pictures taken on our after dinner/pre-dessert walk:
Riverside Park

A shot downriver of the Mississippi

A shot of the East Bank of the University of Minnesota, mostly shows the University's medical center. You can really see the river moving around the barrel.

A shot of the unusual amount of swirling river foam

A duck that floated by on the river, he was quacking the whole time.

I pushed the shutter button on my camera before it registered that the duck was taking off, I was pretty excited to get this shot.

A nice panorama of the University's East bank, you can see more of the campus buildings in this one

One of my floral close-ups with the river and Washington Avenue bridge making a nice background

Another shot of the fuzzy things, just because they are cool, this pic might be my favorite.

A flock of geese that were not so thrilled to see us

The missing half of Washington Avenue bridge. They've taken out the whole right side deck to put in the Central Corridor, a light rail that will connect Minneapolis downtown to St. Paul downtown via the University Campus. Once this is done it'll be super convenient, for now though the construction just looks scary. My friend who is a civil engineering major told me that the construction planners were worried that when they took the deck out the whole bridge would tilt because the loads are balanced across the sides of the bridge.

A rabbit that posed very nicely for me and then nonchalantly hopped away, I guess he was my Easter bunny this year.