I'm Back!

Ok, internet is back.  Now time to catch up on the past week's adventures.  After my sister's surprise party last Saturday, we went to St. Paul to The Nook to watch basketball and Goby's for some darts, pinball and a drink.  I had so much fun playing the Family Guy pinball machine.  

At Goby's playing darts.  See our darts in the air?

I had so much fun playing pinball

This is my game face when playing pinball

On Sunday, we woke up and went for a 10 mile bike ride from our house around Lake Phalen and back.  The distance didn't bother me but the whole ride is very hilly.  Out of shape Dana had a hard time keeping up with "I'm training for the MS150 (150 miles on a bike over 2 days) Michael" who finds this to be easy.  Even so, I think I did keep up pretty well.  My legs (or butt) weren't even sore the next couple of days.  That's probably because I had already gotten over my sore leg phase earlier in the week as I took MANY days to recover from my personal training session at the gym.  Anyways, there is a hill, which we call Arcade Hill (Arcade Street) right by Gervais Lake that is of course fun to go down but I dread going back up it.  M goes about 30 mph on his bike down it while I get a little scared and am about 22 mph.  After getting up, we took pictures of us.  

Here's what M looks like after the climb:

Now here's what I look like:

We then went for a more relaxed ride, a motorcycle ride for a good portion of the afternoon.  We went down to Stillwater to Brine's so M could have his favorite Bloody Mary and we could eat. We bummed around Stillwater taking in the beautiful day and scenery and then headed through Lake Elmo to St. Paul.  We ended up on Grand Avenue stopping for ice cream at the Grand Ole Creamery.  The line was out the door and no one seemed to mind because the ice cream and the cones are so delicious.  We headed back to the house and crashed for an hour, until we got ready to go to a concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis.  Ok, so we went to see a band that I didn't really want to go see but M did, which after you find out who it is may surprise you.  We went and saw Third Eye Blind.  Remember them?  If you listened to any radio station around 1997, chances are you know you some their songs.  I've never really been into them but can tolerate some of their songs and actually like a few too.  I honestly thought we would be two of a hundred or so people at the concert and that it would be an intimate show.  Boy, was I wrong.  Both M and I were very surprised to see the place was jam packed.  I seriously wondered (and still am) how this could be.  I realized even more after this concert that I am a definite music snob.  I'm still open minded about music, but I just know what I like.  The concert though, was good.  They really rocked, a word I would not have used to describe this band before seeing them live. And considering the singer, Stephan Jenkins will be 45 years old in a few months, he performed as though he was in his 20's.  Ok, enough analyzing the night and the band because I could do it all day because I am still amazed by the phenomenon of the band and their ability to engage the crowd and the fans and their loyalty to this band. 

That famous Bloody Mary

This is what I got very excited to see when we were downtown.  Click on the picture to see the Twins sign as part of the new scoreboard at Target Field. 

Third Eye Blind