Spring at last
--------------

Today is the second of three consecutive days of entirely
above-freezing temperatures with rainfall, which is proving to be a
pretty potent recipe for de-icing.  I am starting to see exposed
ground that has been hidden for months.  I am really surprised at how
green a lot of the newly uncovered grass is.  This stuff has had
little to know exposure to sunlight or liquid water for months, I
would have expected it to be totally dead.  I guess perhaps clorophyl
is totally happy to remain frozen.  Next weekend is supposed to
feature a maximum temperature of 10 degrees, so I'm going to go ahead
and call it: spring has finally arrived in Finland.

We received the happy news this week that we managed to get a
gardening allotment from the city this year.  We arrived too late into
the season last year to make it worth while, so this will be our first
attempt at gardening in Finland.  The city gives priority to people
who maintained a plot the previous year, so we didn't know if we would
receive one of our own on our first try, or if we did whether it would
be at a nice location.  As it turned out, we got one very close by to
our home and right alongside the river, so couldn't be happier.  I'm
really excited to put some time and effort into this and see how much
food we can produce for ourselves.  I'm not exactly sure when we
actually get access to it, but I don't think it'll be too far away.

I am also looking forward to being able to cycle again.  I'm going to
have to give my bike a little bit of a clean up and basic maintenance
after hauling it out of the shed once all the ice is gone, maybe next
weekend.  I don't really know what basic maintenance entails, but I'm
looking forward to figuring that out, too.

Meanwhile, while it's still indoor weather, I've taken tentative steps
toward learning some new programming languages, for the first time in
a long time.  Lua and Go made my short list, and while I initially
dismissed Lua quickly and easily over a couple of ultimately pretty
minor things which rubbed me the wrong way, I've decided to actually
give both a try before deciding what to focus on.  I'll probably write
a little about this over thw weekend.