Snow?

Liz and I were excited about taking our first long ride this morning. There are some new bike paths that have opened in recently that we haven't been on. One connects the bike path near our home to the path that goes over the Connecticut River through Hadley and Amherst to Belchertown, about a mile from where we used to live. We rollerbladed regularly on that path from the day it opened until we moved to Florence. It's a great path in that it goes through the woods and a swampy area, and has long stretches with no intersecting roads. It has deteriorated enough in recent years, though, that it's extremely difficult to blade on--tree roots have buckled the tar in so many places that it's impossible to get any kind of rhythm going. It's bumpy but fine for biking.

The other new path connects the path near our home to the one in Easthampton where we've bladed since we moved to Florence. The Easthampton path has a great surface, so that whole route should be really nice and a lot of it is really scenic.

So with those plans in mind, this is what we saw in our backyard when we awoke this morning:



Really? On the 23rd of April, a week before May, it's snowing out? What the hell!?!?

I had to go buy a new suit for work today, so I decided to do that in the morning and see if the afternoon would be better for biking. In general, I'd rather have a root canal without anesthesia than go clothing shopping, and today reminded me of why. I drove an hour to the Westfarms Mall outside of Hartford, because I've always had good luck at Nordstrum. No longer true. Their selection of women's business suits has shrunk from being in a number of collections to a small alcove. They had a beautiful suit that I loved, but made me look like, well, let's just say it wasn't flattering.

I was feeling bummed at the loss of a Nordstrum as a place I could count on, but knew I had to keep shopping because I'm making an important presentation in DC on 5/2 that I need a new suit for. I went to Lord & Taylor, and my depression grew. I saw lots of suits I liked, but they either didn't have it in my size, or they had the jacket in my size but not the pants, or vice versa. Argggggg!!!!

I had to keep reminding myself that the difficulty was not my body, but what they had in stock, but the idea kept creeping into my mind that if I had already achieved my weight loss goals, the world of suits would open up to me and there would be suddenly thousands of beautiful suits I could wear that would look great on me and I could leisurely choose among them. Or at least that beautiful suit at Nordstrom would have fit and I would have been on my way.

I was starting to reevaluate my existing suit collection--maybe I could wear something I already own to this meeting. My leg was starting to hurt--last night I was supposed to go to an event with the governor, and I had to walk a ways from the parking lot to the place on the Mount Holyoke campus where the event was. Then we had to stand around chatting, waiting for him to arrive. Someone told me that they had heard he hadn't yet arrived at the place he was supposed to be at before our get-together. After 40 minutes of standing, with my leg in increasing pain, I decided I didn't care whether I had a chance to chat with the governor or not, I was going home. So my leg was already hurting before I had to start walking all over the mall.

But I persevered and went to Macy's. I couldn't understand why all I could see was men's clothes and signs to more men's clothes. I went up a level, same thing. I asked a clerk--they have two buildings, one for men, one for women. Of course they did. We wouldn't want men and women shopping together. I had to walk across the mall to the women's store.

But it was worth it. I immediately found two suits I liked, IN MY SIZE, and tried them on. One of them had a very weird construction--the jacket had all kinds of weird folds making it looked wrinkled, but the other one fit fine. I bought it, and hope to god I don't need another suit for a year or two. Here I am in my new suit:



Now I'm going to go for a bike ride, despite the rain (thankfully, the snow turned to rain almost immediately). Biking in the rain will be 20 times more fun than shopping in the mall.

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