there's no place like home. there's no place like home.

It's true, you know. There is no place like home. But we had to keep reminding ourselves of that on Monday. We were sitting in the sun in SoCal Sunday morning, 80 degrees, nice breeze, gorgeous day, then we got on a plane about 4:30 in the afternoon, arrived home on the midnight flight, and woke up Monday morning to about 34 degrees and raining. Ah, Montana. And it rained, or snowed, or sleeted, all dang day long. Normally we are really happy to get home after a trip and see the animals, sleep in our own bed, etc. But it was a tough transition this time. I might not have been entirely cheerful about it.

We did have a great time. Our 30th anniversary is this year, so we wanted to go on some kind of mini-trip to celebrate (the actual date of anniversary is in May, but the weather around here is nice in May--we wanted to go away while it was still cold and gray). So last fall we started looking around for someplace to go, and we decided on the BNP Paribas Open, a pro tennis tournament that is held in Indian Wells, California, near Palm Springs. It was really fun. It's a major tournament, so all the big names were there, but it's a much smaller venue than many of the other majors, so you get to see a lot more of the players.

Our favorite part was watching them practice. They post the practice schedule pretty early in the morning, and you can sit about 12 feet away from your favorites as they warm up for their matches. It was so cool. We were shameless gawkers. We saw Federer, Wawrinka, Nadal, and Li Na in the first 15 minutes after we got there. It was hard to know where to look. Later we watched Djokovic and Andy Murray practice. We also saw several matches, including Nadal's near-loss to Stepanek in the second round (and since Nadal had a bye in the first round, it was his first match of the tournament). Then last night he did lose to Dogolopov (I'm not entirely sure I spelled that right), but we had to watch that on TV since now we are back at home. It's also really fun to watch doubles--we saw several of those, too.

Why am I telling you this? I have no idea. The best part was just sitting outside, soaking up sun and gentle air. We both really wished we could stay a few more days.

Let's see what else is new around here. Oh-- I keep forgetting to tell you that I got braces. It brings back lots of memories of high school, but unfortunately, I don't look like a cute teenager anymore. More's the pity. I'm told you can barely see them. I don't know if that's really true or if my friends are just telling me that. They don't hurt as badly as I remember them hurting. Fortunately, they're only on top and I only have to wear them until Thanksgiving.

My second Jane Austen class, this one on Emma, started last night. I wasn't sure we would have enough to talk about since I only had them read the first three chapters for the first night, but we ended up running out of time to do all the things I wanted to do. If you haven't seen the new BBC version of Emma (with Romola Garai as Emma), it's pretty good. Worth checking out.

That's everything I can think of right now. We had thick-as-peanut-butter fog this morning, but once it cleared off, it really did look like spring. Now we just have to watch out for flooding while all this snow melts.

Remember I promised you a picture of green? Here you go. Not the world's greatest picture, and I guess it's more blue than green, but I took it right as we were getting in the car to drive to the airport and head home.

And here is that same view off our deck on Monday when we got back. At least the snow is starting to melt.