The Return from Atlanta

Things have been awfully quiet here at XRK lately, but I do have some stuff to report.

Mr. Science and I had a ball in Atlanta, despite Duke losing the first game. Once your team goes out, you can just really enjoy some good basketball and not care about the outcome. So we were treated to overtimes and last-second three pointers and blocks and some really good collegiate bands. I think the heartbreaker was Sunday night when Villanova went out. They were our team this year, and it really hurt to see them go down.

Yes, I really love a basketball tournament, but I also really love being somewhere without the kids with my husband. It was all-grown-up, all-the-time. Sleeping late, drinking wine with lunch, eating dinner at 9pm, bars, tragically hip cocktail lounges with tragically expensive cocktails, touring historic sites, eating anchovies and smoked meats for dinner, chatting with local celebrity chefs, celebrity sightings, riding in taxis and chauffered Towncars, making friends with total strangers, Atlantans and Texans and basketball fans in bars and at the games. We loved it so much that we are going to make this an annual event, and have already signed up for tickets for the first round in Chicago next year.

And wow, was it nice to hear people talking Southern again! Philadelphians have their own accent, and while it contributes to the local flavor of my fair city, there is something so soothing about having a chili cheese dog at the Varsity listening to that smooth lilt of a Georgian man, talking about reading his kids a bedtime story. And in Atlanta, the trees are light green now, and the air smells like Spring. It was a little shot of Richmond for me, just when I needed it most!

The kids did great with my mom and my mom did great with the kids. They didn't miss us a bit, but were awfully happy to see us on Sunday when we got home. Now, of course, they are both sick -- Rosebud with a cold and Pepe with a tummy bug -- but it is nice to back together again.

And as you can see, I did manage to knit while we were gone. And when I returned home, my first crocuses had appeared. This is the first thing I have actually planted at the new suburban homestead, so this was a real moment for me. And just in time for Spring, I finished the Kimono Angora tipless gloves!