February appears to be a slightly brighter January

February started out a little warmer than last month, but the next few days are dipping back into the deep freeze. Tomorrow morning is predicted to be about fifteen below zero. Brrrrrr. So because today was a warmer day and since I have the day off from the tennis wars, I decided to hike around down by the big river. It was about ten degrees when I got to Harriet Island, but the sky was very blue and there wasn't much wind. I decide to go out onto Raspberry Island and get another view of downtown St Paul, including the central steam heating plant smokestack, the heating strategy for quite a bit of the downtown area. It was pretty, but also pretty cold.  The picture is of the band shell structure on the island, in front of the Wabasha Street bridge, and behind that the smoke stack from the heater.  All against the deep blue February sky.

I didn't blog yesterday, mostly because it was a busy day and I ran out of energy at the end of the day.  My USTA mixed doubles team had a match at Baseline Tennis on the U. of Mn. campus in the afternoon and I was hoping to end my longish winless skein in the league.  With a little luck and some good contributions from my partner, we won and ended the drought.  One of the team's other duets also won and thus we won the team contest 2-1.  We are about in the middle of the standings with little danger of winning the league.  We're having some fun, though most of the time.

After the match I hurried home to change so that I could get to the Moohoo Super Bowl party.  The Prairie Princess and I joined Unky Herb, Wireless, Andy, and the Moohoos along with a fine assortment of snack foods, to watch a pretty good football game along with a mediocre half time show.  I enjoyed the game and the friendly banter, and didn't even mind that the Packers came out on top.  After all, I was born in Wisconsin, and football fandom is a granfalloon of a high order.  I guess they're having a rather large party in Green Bay tonight and probably the rest of the week.  The Super Bowl party was super.  And the pork sandwiches were exceptional.

A little more about granfalloons from the Book of Bokonon.