Here are some things I am not doing over the break: teaching, grading, prepping, researching, meeting with students, corresponding with students via email, traveling anywhere fabulous. I am happy about all of these items that are not on my to-do list, even the last one. After February, I am all traveled out for a while.

So what am I doing? So far my break has involved a lot of quality time at home and a little time out with friends. There has been plenty of time to hang aroung the house in my PJs, drinking coffee late into the morning.

(As always, click the photo to go through to flickr for titles and descriptions if you want.)

But I haven’t been hiding at home the whole time. Saturday night a few of us went out for sushi and then cocktails at the jazz lounge again — this time there was an actual jazz band playing and everything, giving me flashbacks to my days in band with my saxomophone. (The word “saxomophone” is to be pronounced, always, in a full-on Homer Simpson fugue.)

Hopefully I’ll soon be spending some time biking around town now that the weirdly wintry, windy, and rainy weather appears, at least temporarily, to have passed. In fact, spring really seems to be springing into business around here! Do you know what kind of tree this is? It’s not a cherry tree, right? It’s something else? I am no botanist, I admit.

For the first time since I have lived here, I am actually looking forward to spring and warmer weather with pleasure. It helps that I feel like we actually had a somewhat legitimate winter this year, but mostly I am eager to spend more time on the bike and in the pool, both of which are pretty unappealing in winter weather. I mean, if you’re already chilly in your jeans, do you really want to don a bathing suit and hop into the pool? Not so much, right?

The following pictures are unrelated to this post, but I just had to show you the pretty, pretty cupcakes I made to take to the Oscar party.

By now they’ve all been eaten, but weren’t they grand? I got the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is full of wonderful looking recipes, only a few of which I have had the opportunity to try so far. Let me assure you, though, that cupcakes made without butter, milk, or eggs are just as delicious as any other type of cupcake, if not more. If I could prove this to you by posting some downloadable cupcakes here on this very blog, believe me, I would. Until technology makes such a thing possible, you’ll just have to trust me.

And now I must return to my re-watch-athon of season one of Alias, aka Best Show Ever. Hope you’re all feeling fab and lovely, people!