My lawn and my neighbor's lawn were the last two on the block that hadn't been mowed since the spring weather started. The rest of the neighborhood was clean and trim, with freshly planted pansies and petunias. Our yards had become foot high jungles housing creatures from the black lagoon. Today a three-foot long garden snake wove his way through the thicket and slithered right up to my husband. No joke.

It was clearly time to deal with this situation before the neighbors banded together and cordoned off our yards with police tape.

I've always been amused by pocket cultures - the cultures of very small groups. For example, the culture of a family or an office or a particular group of friends, or even of a town. (You can't live around The People's Republic of Davis and tell me that it doesn't have its own subculture.) It's the little inside jokes, language refinements, and social rules that makes a group of people unique, that make them belong to each other in some sense.

It seems like everybody has that one attempted holiday meal that they never live down. Once at Thanksgiving my Uncle Steve put too much milk in the mashed potatoes. We all graciously thanked him for bringing the Cream of Wheat amid peals of laughter, and not a Thanksgiving goes by now that we don't recall this event as we pass around the mashed potatoes.

My spectacular blunder shall be known as The Coconut Chicken Cake Incident of Easter Dinner, 2005.

On Saturday morning I woke up to dreary light. I rolled over and stared at my alarm clock, willing the numbers to come into focus. After a week of early days at the office, I'm not quite sure where I'm supposed to be just yet. 7:00 am. Field work today? Think think think. Slow moving gears turn and click. No. Saturday. Sleep in? Think think think. No. Ballet this morning. I smile.

On Saturday my coworker left a message on my machine. She said we'd been cleared for field work on Monday, so please show up at the office at 6:30 am and to call her if I had a problem with the time. Maggie and I are friends. She knows all too well that I have a problem with anything before 8:00 am, as a general principle. It's not her favorite time of day either. I grimaced and set my alarm for 5:40 am. Ug.