Yeah, but check out them socks.

I was going to remark on the same thing. Business socks again? Try thocks!

They're Smartwool, gentlemen, and they're on a 9-year-old boy, so be kind.

Hey, I like 'em!

They're fresh socks, but I was worried about that shoe coming untied.

I heart smartwool socks. it's my goal to ONLY have smartwool socks. As a pair of my socks wears out, that is what i'm replacing them with! WOO!

Is this a new trend, tucking your pants into your socks? I am a fashion bonehead, but that soesn't stop me from having an opinion, lol Yesterday noticed a woman walking on first street with her socks on the outside like that. I thought she might be stuck in 1988 or something, but now that I see this, I wonder if I don't have that completely backwards. Bush is still president, though, right? lol

Wow - that's a big snow difference (I'm electing to comment on the post & not the fashion ;) - as we look for houses in Duluth people always say that it's so much warmer "up the hill" i.e. Woodland, but this does not seem to support that theory. Thoughts?

Lucie: Yes, thank you. In the summer, my neighborhood will be much warmer than areas closer to the lake. But we're tucked into the woods, so the snow melts slowly.

warmer than say Lakeside/Lester?

I think so. We're over the hill enough that the lake doesn't affect us the same as in Lakeside. However, I have a friend in Lakeside who has crocuses and tulips coming up right now.

Well that sounds hopeful. I sick of people telling me I'm moving to Siberia.

lakeside/lester generally tends to be cooler in the summer...which is nice.

Siberian references are relative, really...especially if you've read Solzhenitsyn...compared to living in a Gulag, it ain't that bad.

Actually zra, I have been to Siberia in the winter and its pretty much ... like here. Woodland is way warmer than the Hillside in the summer, and obviously (thanks Bev) in the winter this year anyway they got a lot more snow. I never knew that the lake effect worked "two ways" until the year I spent in Grand Rapids. Around there most days in the sumemr it is pretty much like paradise, but there were many times that I would come down the hill on Morris Thomas road and I could literally SEE the change in climate around Piedmont area. On the other hand, they got WAY more snow than Duluth, and the super duper cold sub-zero temps were more frequent there than it is by the lake. But ... spring came quicker there (even though it is only a wee bit further north in latitude than DLH). Spring there (that year anyway) was also a bit more sustained, unlike here. Some lifelong area residents may pooh pooh this and say 'everyone knew that about the lake effect' but to be perfectly honest, I didn't and I'm not as stupid as I look. In fact, it wasn't until I went to high school for a year or so in Central Minnesota that I learned that spring really does hit most of the state in March ... I thought that was actually a fairy tale ... Spring, I mean.

huh...hanging out @ the Gilliat Street Brewery in mid August, I thought, at least felt cooler than the home on the hillside.

Maybe it was the coolness invoked by a hop covered garage and a corny keg o wild rice pale whilst brewing on a Saturday that made it seem cooler.

I will say that it's pert near impossible to cool a wort by sticking it in a snowbank.