one last ordinary Thursday

All year long, it’s been a challenge to post on Thursdays. I come home late and I’m beat.

But April has this way of pushing things to a close really fast. From snow on the ground on April Fool’s to the end of the semester – time rushes, as if we can’t stand the pace of winter, as if we need to sprint to the academic year’s end.

Today wasn’t really the end of the semester – a week and a half remain. But it’s the last ordinary Thursday and so I’ll do what I always want to do on a Thursday evening – post a few photos and call it a day.

But what photos! Not exciting in their beauty, but exciting in what they stand for – the beginning of Madison’s best face – the face of warm, sunny days, by the lake, in green spaces, against the irrepressible blue skies of the Midwest.

So, here you have it, the perfect, if still ordinary Thursday:

… early morning bike ride on the lake shore path…











…up Bascom Hill to my office… (already a gaggle of girls congregates on the grasses of Bascom Mall, even though there’s still a nip in the air)





And the day of lectures begins. Classes keep me indoors. And when I do finally take an afternoon break and head outside for an espresso, I see that in these few hours, the campus (and therefore Bascom Hill) has moved into that wonderful presummer pink sunglasses mood. Relaxed, unclothed, happy.





And no place demonstrates this better, that Madison mood of outdoor pleasure, than Union Terrace. Predictably, it’s starting to fill.






I’m back in class for the rest of the afternoon and then, suddenly, the hands of clock slide all the way down and I am done.

I bike home. When the semester started, I would stand at the bus stop and count each second, willing it to be the last one of waiting in the cold. Now, I zip past the stop on the bike, enjoying the spin so much that I even take a detour to Centennial Gardens, where the pink buds are about to burst into bloom and the birds dart in and out of the branches, excited and as pleased as I am that we have sprung into a summery spring.





And the two girls on the grass smile and smile. And my ordinary Thursday suddenly is feeling very very bright and beautiful.