Open season!

A quick one to kick off the weekend right:

My toes are out today!  Open toe shoe weather has finally arrived!

 

Yeah, I know this is a repeat pic, but it's hard to be a bitch when your feet look this cute.  Have a good one kids!

It's the most wonderful time of the year

I left my coat at home for the first time today!  And drove with the windows down!

It can only mean one thing:  spring is really here.  Sure, Ohio's been known to get a snowstorm in April, so we're not totally out of the woods yet, but it's hard to care when the clock-thermometer at the bank says 60 degrees in March.

I love the sunshine, the smell in the air, the buds on the trees and flowers... but what I love most is that spring kicks off my absolute favorite season.

It's Festival Season, kids!

One of the stereotypes of Midwestern living is that we'll celebrate anything with a festival.  My hometown and the surrounding area alone are host to a ton of fun weekends, with "guests of honor" that include (but of course, are not limited to):

Cherry Blossoms

Kite and Flight

Hamburgers (Akron claims to be is the birthplace of the burger!)

...and of course, the rib burn-offs and ethnic festivals that almost every city hosts.  Watch the Irish dance troupes one weekend, scarf up homemade cannoli the next, take a week off and then come back to mariachi bands and taco trucks! 

And oh, God, the people-watching.  Unbelievable.  These celebrations are the great equalizer of humanity.  Where on earth are you going to a toothless trailer park family rubbing elbows with a Fortune 500 exec?  In the line for a funnel cake, that's where. 

My new town played host to the annual spectacle that is The Arnold Sports Festival this past weekend.  It's the largest annual multi-sport event nationwide, and MAN, is it gross.  Congratulations to the winners... now please go away.

Start planning your summers!

In like...

...this kid:

Aw!

YOU GUYS.  There was sunshine today!  And chirpy little birds all over the place, and clear skies, and I swear it even smelled like spring out there.

It's so much easier to be nice to people when the weather cooperates, isn't it?  I had a full schedule of student appointments today and not ONCE did I vow to drink my lunch.  (To be fair, it's a dry campus so that makes the vow a little easier, but still.)  Even the street people that usually lurk around our building were pleasant. 

Really, though.  How can you not feel like a nicer person with this

 

and this

 

and this

going on around you!?

Fingers crossed that the other half of the adage just kind of forgets to show up.  Easter egg hunts aren't nearly as fun in a blizzard.  (Plus there's the whole Twilight saga connection to the lion and lamb imagery, and I would very much prefer not to have to address that issue.)

Hope it was nice today, wherever you are!