Snowed and was generally miserable outside on Saturday, was sunny, warm and beautiful yesterday (Sunday)... must be Spring!! I was shocked to see the snow... coming down in big clumps, when I woke up on Saturday. So much for plans of hiking and working outside. In fact... so much for doing anything. I think if you add up the hours used for sleeping during the middle of the day between Tom, Jaclyn and I... it would be really embarassing. Once we were bored enough Tom and I went to wander around the mall awhile before heading for an Italian dinner. And that was about it for the whole day.

Fortunately the sun saved our sanity yesterday. (Intermission because there is a new 1st grade class hovering around my desk because they are getting a tour of the staff office. I am back in the zoo!!) We got up, went for a run, had a fabulous breakfast of eggs, strawberries, tea (thanks mom!), and bagels (thanks to the trip to the mall, I guess I have to give Saturday some credit...) and got cracking. Before starting on the garden I did a load of laundry and hung it outside, which felt terrific. In the garden, Tom and I chose our weapons and got really serious. Now that we've gotten some sun and rain, the weeds were coming in thick and tall so we attacked. I yanked out everything in the corner next to my window and Tom started working on the side where I would like to plant veggies. We filled about 6 bags of "burnables" for the garbage guy. When we got tired of pulling and digging, we started a fire! I have (HAD) tons and tons of old rose branches and pieces of a wood fence that fell apart, among other random chunks of wood. They made a fine fire and getting rid of my inherited piles of garbage was rather cathartic. Now the inside of my house and everything in it smell like a wood fire. When I woke up this morning I mistakenly thought I was out camping. Of course with the warm weather, I left my windows open this morning and hopefully the house will loose its "Yellowstone" fragrance soon. My clothes will probably take a little longer...

For dinner, we tried a new Matsumoto restaurant near the station. It is a Nepalese restaurant and serves the best curry I've had in Japan! I will be going back, probably frequently. As I've mentioned, the weather is beautiful today and I'm really looking forward to running after school. I think I'll need to move because it appears that I have relatively nothing to work on at school for the day. I'd love to be planning the first round of classes, but all the other teachers are busy. Same old, same old...