Happy 50th

Our friend Danny turned 50 years old on December 19th and to celebrate, we went out on the 18th to First Avenue. We first met up with Sara and Debbie at Tony Jaro's in NE Mpls. for a quick drink and then on to First Avenue. One of Danny's favorite bands is E.L.O., or Electric Light Orchestra so it was fitting to see an ELO tribute band named E.L.nO. In addition to them was a Beatles and Van Morrison tribute band. Danny doesn't drink so we all did a non-alcoholic shot with him. Towards the end of the band's set, they said Happy Birthday to Danny and everyone in the crowd sang to him. Sara, his daughter, arranged it with the band weeks before but never heard back from them so she wasn't sure if they were going to do it or not. I know Danny had a fantastic birthday. He said he hasn't felt better in his life! Here's to another 50 years, Danny!

Work Holiday Party

On December 17th, my work had their holiday party, which was different than year's past due to budget constraints. Instead of the holiday party on a Friday night with dinner and dancing at a hotel, we had it on a Thursday, leaving work at 2:30 pm to go to Park Tavern in St. Louis Park for appetizers, pizza, drinks, bowling and cake. I bowled with two people who are on actual bowling leagues so my bowling skills looked their worst. After bowling, they had prize drawings and I won a $25 Ruby Tuesday gift card. Yay for me!

Acme Comedy Club

Our December's Quest for Comedy was at Acme again and we saw Dan Cummins on December 16th. This guy was hilarious and is one of my favorites for this year. We got to meet him after the show and we told him that we see a comedian every month and he thought that was great of course and was happy that he "won" as the comedian of choice for December. He has a couple of Comedy Central specials so if you ever get the chance, check him OUT!

Bye Bye, Jenni

Ok, so she's been gone for weeks already, but M and I went to send off our friend Jenni to the warmer climate of Florida on Saturday, December 12th. Jenni moved to Florida to start a new chapter of her life. She's lived there before and maybe she'll be back again but she joins many other family members that also live there. Jenni is my sister's best friend and has been since they were single digits. I've known Jenni just as long and we even worked together a few years ago and our parents still only live a couple of house away from each other.

She had a going away party at Major's in Apple Valley. When she originally planned the day, no one realized that the place would be packed and everyone would be trying to get the closest seat to all of the TV's surrounding the place showing the UFC fight. I don't like watching boxing or fighting but I think we all got sucked in a little bit that night. There is one thing that I hate when I watch UFC...the fighters are barefoot. I don't know why it bothers me but it does. I can't stand to watch the sight of their bare feet and kicking each other with them. I don't think feet are gross but I wish they would have shoes on. Anyways....Jenni was very loved that night. She had a great turnout of friends from high school and former coworkers. We're hoping to meet her for a lunch in Florida anytime that M and I are down there.

Don't forget to take note of the TV's in the background with the fights. There were TV's that far apart from each other all over the whole place.

Jamie, Jenni, Me

The girls and Jenni's "little" brother Jeff. I hadn't seen him for about 20 years!

That guy was so bloody. The ring was stained red afterwards.

The Best Of....

Each year The City Pages had a "Best of the Twin Cities" list, which rates various things from best pizza to best make out spot. There are usually two winners for each category...City Pages Choice and the Reader's Choice. We always make it a goal to tackle this list each year but with so many categories, we usually do a handful each year. We visited the best donut place in December....Granny Donut. While the website isn't impressive, the donuts are. I had an apple fritter. If you are over on Robert Street in West St. Paul, visit this little place. With all the retail on Robert, it's easy to miss so keep your eyes peeled.

When is the last time you saw your donuts being made? Krispy Kreme doesn't count!

Out with the Girls

As per usual, I met with the girls in December for our monthly happy hour. We met at Oak City in Bloomington. They have great happy hour specials for food but I wouldn't know about the drinks since none of us even ordered an alcoholic drink. You can still have happy hour without the alcohol, right? I love getting together with these girls and look forward to each outing with them. P.S. If you go to Oak City anytime during lunch hours until March, you can add soup to your meal for the same price as the temperature. Soup is free these days!

Joseph Arthur

M and I went on Thanksgiving weekend to see one of our favorite artists, Joseph Arthur. That is the first concert that M and I went to as a couple back in November 2004. Since then, we've seen him numerous times either solo or with a band. We prefer his solo music to his music with the band The Lonely Astronauts so we were excited when we got to see him in an intimate location, just him. The concert was at Bryant Lake Theater, which is attached to Bryant Lake Bowl, in Uptown. While I have been to BLB before, I had never seen a show there but knew the theater was small. Small?! Once arrived, it was a like a closet! It was much smaller than I thought it would be, which was just perfect for the musician we were about to see. I counted the number of seats while we were waiting for the show to start and I think it was around 75 seats or slightly less. He played for about 1 hour and 40 minutes and the show was very good. We got to talk to him and take a picture with him after the show. We had met him before years ago after another one of his shows. He audio records most of his shows and you can purchase the live show right after the concert is complete, which we did. His music can be very inspiring and depressing at the same time, but nonetheless emotional, regardless of what emotion. If you are looking for a good singer/songwriter who has battled and combated drugs and alcohol and has found God in his life, you should check out Joseph Arthur, his music and his art.







After the show, M and I headed west to Eden Prairie for a late dinner at Wildfire. We first visited Wildfire for my birthday in January and it has become a favorite place for us, despite this only being our second visit. We had filet mignon and it was fantastic. We also shared a dessert that came with my dinner that was chocolate, warm and rich. Yum!

Friday's Fun Facts

Merry Christmas!

• If all of the mercury from tainted fish were collected worldwide, it would amount to less than a drop of the highly toxic material.
• Contrary to the belief that the Harry Potter book series encourages literacy by its mere popularity, most fans of Harry Potter do not read books unrelated to the series.
• Every Republican president since Eisenhower has pronounced "nuclear" as "noo-kyoo-ler"
• The average male's hair starts to grey at the age of 32.

Snow Stats

Here in the MN, the snow is coming and will be here for Christmas. After reading an article in the paper, here are a couple stats about snow in the Twin Cities for Christmas time.

The Twin Cities has rarely seen a major snow storm on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The snowiest Christmas Eve in the Twin Cities was in 1932 when 3 inches fell. The snowiest Christmas Day was in 1945 with 9.6 inches. The 3.4 inches of snow that fell on Christmas Day in 2007 was the most snow since 1950. I can't even remember that day in 2007. Dad, can you remember that day in 1945? Ha ha!!

Enjoy the snow, my MN friends and of course, safe travels.

Techno Jeep

Check out this video!

Friday's Fun Facts

Are you done Christmas shopping yet? Have you even started?

• Gaming and probability experts predict that one of the multi-state lottery games will have a jackpot in excess of one billion US dollars some time in the next 6.24 years if the rules for the current lotteries remain as they are currently constituted
• The most-purchased item at Office Depot is a 1.69 oz. bag of plain M&M's.
• A random sample of people named Anna conducted in 2002 by the Institute for Nomenclature found that 32 percent of the Anna's were unaware or had never noticed that their name was spelled the same backwards and forwards.
• In liquid form, the entire population of the United States could fit into ten major league stadiums, filled to the brim.

My nephew

A few weeks ago, we went over to my parents house to play some games. My nephew was there and I just had to post some pictures of the little guy. He is just so cute and getting to the age where he is so much fun and interactive. He's in first grade and a cub scout and also plays hockey. I'm sure he'll be graduating from high school before I know it. I just love this little guy!

This year's school picture

His cub scout uniform

He thought it was so funny to give Grandpa bunny ears

Keith posing for me with a cracker in his mouth

Tailgating Adventures

I thought I would combine all of the tailgating experiences we've had over the past three weeks into one post. There's not much to say about any particular experience other than it was mostly cold and that the Vikings won that day. Haven't seen a Vikings loss at home all season! Enjoy.

November 22nd- Vikes beat the Seahawks 35-9. It's the first time tailgating after the Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party but we still had a nice group, including M's niece Kayla.

November 30th- Vikes beat the Bears 36-10. These dudes lost a bet and had to dress up like this for the game. Another cold day and very windy.

This past Sunday, December 13th against Cincinnati. Vikes win 30-10. This game is a milestone for M. The Bengals were the last of the 32 NFL teams that M has seen live. He's seen every NFL team in person! It was sooooo cold.

Manitou Station

It's been a few weeks already but M and I went to the highly anticipated new restaurant,Manitou Station in White Bear Lake. My friend is a managing partner of the restaurant so I wanted to check it out. We went on a Friday night with no reservations and was able to get in right away as there was an open table, but later found from my friend that they have had a waiting list for weeks. I ordered the filet mignon with salad, baked potato and broccoli. I order the filet with bearnaise sauce and it was fabulous. Everything else was pretty good except for the broccoli, which was just ok. At the end of the meal they gave us mint chocolate truffles, which I thought was a creative and delicious way to end the dinner. The service wasn't the best I've had as the time in between the server coming back and forth to our table was long, but I would go back again.

Volunteer Time

The week before Thanksgiving, the department I work in volunteered to work with the organization, Feed My Starving Children. The organization feeds children in more than 60 countries around the world. We went to the Chanhassen location to spend a few hours of our time helping to making the packs of food and then packaging them. We all chose what position what we wanted to have whether it was scooping and pouring the ingredients into the bag, weighing the bag, sealing the bag, labeling the bag or packaging the finished product. My job was to take each bag and put it under a funnel which the food goes through into the bag. I then weighed each bag to make sure it was a certain weight. If over, I would take food out and if under would add food. All the while, we got to rock some pretty awesome hair nets. During the time we spent doing these tasks, we packaged 32 boxes of food. Each box contains 36 packages of food. With this amount of food, it will feed 19 children for a whole year. It was very rewarding to me to have participated in this.

Click on the map to see all the countries marked where they have shipped food.

I'm the one fitting the bag onto the funnel

We're all pretty hot with the nets, huh?

My department

Our finished results

Friday's Fun Facts

Have a nice weekend.

• Through measurements of brainwaves, scientists have determined that cats think about sex twice as much as humans.
• In October 1994, Jeff Bezos wanted to name his new Web venture "Cadabra" -- as in "abracadabra." But his attorney convinced him that this magical moniker sounder a bit too much like "cadaver." Reluctantly, Bezos went with his second choice: Amazon.com.
• Guinea Pigs have no natural predators.
• In 2006, 8432 men were asked what their their three wishes would be if they came upon a magic genie. The top answers were: something to do with health/longevity (87.2 percent); wealth (50.5 percent) and world peace (48.3 percent). 12.8 percent said they would wish for better "endowment".

Random Schmandom

As always, I'm behind on my blog. I have a running list and multiple pictures to post but I haven't had much of a desire to. I've had no desire to get on to the computer and blog after a long day at work, but look for a lot of posts coming in the next few days to catch up. I've been much happier spending my time relaxing on the couch and reading a cooking/recipe magazine. I am planning to make some Christmas cookies this year. I just hope that I actually have the time to do it.

How was your drive today? If you live in Minnesota, today is the first day we had any measurable amount of snow since October. The real snow hasn't really even started yet with most of the snow coming overnight and finishing tomorrow morning. I live almost 24 miles from my work so when it snows, I dread the drive home. I came in earlier than I usually do to possibly avoid the traffic. I ended up getting out of work a little late and left at 4:06 pm. I pulled in the garage at 6:10 pm. At first, I thought I would get home before the 2 hour mark and that bummed me out a little. If I am going to be in the car for that long I might as well hit the 2 hour mark, right? 2 hours and 4 minutes is way more impressive that 1 hour and 58 minutes. I had my camera in my purse so while I waited in traffic, I took a picture of the traffic sign that says how much time you have until you reach a certain point. Mine showed over 45 minutes, when on a good day will show 13 minutes. This was already 50 minutes into my drive time. Don't worry, I didn't get in an accident while taking pictures and being in the car. You usually don't get in accidents when you are going zero MPH. Notice the difference in daylight in my pictures.

There is a commercial on the radio for Arby's that drives me nuts every time I hear it. Have you heard the commercials for the $5.01 combo? Different people tell you what they get for the extra penny. I can't remember exactly what the penny is for but some on the commercials will say, "My penny is for the crisp curly fries". "My penny is for the rich roast beef on my bun", etc. etc. There is one that bothers me so badly. It goes something like this.... "My penny is for the thousand island dressing that creates a flavor vacation in my mouth." Are you serious? Is this the dumbest statement ever? No one really talks like that. And even if they did, they would not be talking about Arby's. Ok, yeah, you're right. Arby's is pretty good.

M and I have been going to Buffalo Wild Wings lately on Monday nights to watch Monday Night Football and play Buzztime Trivia. We don't have cable so we can't watch it in the comfort of our own home so we go watch with strangers. We order the naked chicken tenders and share our sauces and play trivia against others in the bar/restaurant and around the country. M kicked my butt last night, winning 3 rounds of trivia against me and the rest of the players.

I changed my layout about a week and a half ago to be Vikings themed. I'm not very good at changing the formats of the blog and creating new backgrounds. I custom did the theme and it took me hours before I finally got it right and what I wanted. Then I find out that if you are using Internet Explorer (IE) as your browser that the text is showing over the Vikings logo and it's hard to read. When I look at it on my computer, it looks fine and the Vikings logo is on the left hand side column as it should be. For your computer geeks out there, is there a way to have your blog layout "static" where it doesn't change depending on the browser? Besides, it's time to change if you're still using IE! I know that I have to at work so I have no choice there but I have used Google Chrome for quite some time and I can't imagine using anything else at this point. So much faster. Firefox is good too and I do use it for the times that a website does not work with Chrome, which is very rare. So for now, you are stuck looking at a plain, black background until I get the time (and energy) to find something new that I want to do with my layout.

Ok, I think I better go to bed now. Thanks for letting me write about anything and nothing at the same time. Please come back for posts and pictures soon! Drive safe on Wednesday! I take that back. Drive safe every day!

RIP, Rick

M and I found out yesterday morning that one of our acquaintances and friend of M's family, Rick, passed away accidentally Saturday night at his Wisconsin farm. We were with him two months ago tailgating for the Vikings/Packers game. He is a Packer's fan and it was his first time tailgating. I've only met him a few times but he was fun and amusing to be around. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and his wife, Dolly. Rest in Peace, Rick.

Richard "Rick" Walton Jr., age 50 of Baldwin, died accidentally on his farm on Saturday, December 5, 2009.

Funeral Services for Richard "Rick" Walton will be held at 10:00 AM on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at Peace Lutheran Church, Hwy 63 at County Road N, Baldwin WI. Vistation for Richard "Rick" Walton will be held one hour prior to services at church, and also from 4:00-8:00 PM on Wednesday evening, December 9th, 2009 at the O'Connell Family Funeral Home in Baldwin WI. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the discretion of the family, or to the donor's choice. Services have been entrusted to the O'Connell Family Funeral Home of Baldwin WI. 715-684-3434

Friday's Fun Facts

Have a great (cold if you're in MN) weekend!

• The Vatican has a 5,000 square foot library that was sealed in 1215, with specific instructions that it was not to be opened until February 19, 2010. (Has anyone heard more about this?!?!?)
• Spider silk is an extremely strong material and its on-weight basis has been proven to be stronger than steel. Experts suggest that a pencil-thick strand of silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
• Lou Gehrig was one of thousands of people who contracted what became known as Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS). New York doctors named the disease after the Yankee slugger posthumously to draw attention to its deadliness.
• Republicans are more likely to be involved in extramarital affairs than Democrats. (I wonder if Tiger is a Republican?)

Photo Hunt #5

It's time again for another Photo Hunt from Photo Hunt Challenges. I signed up again this month, hoping I'll have time to take some photos in between all the craziness December already brings. Take a look at the list and see if you'd like to sign up too! Go to the website for more details.






Here is the list:

1. 1. Holiday Lights
2. 2. Holiday Spirit
3. 3. A Holiday Treat
4. 4. An Ornament
5. 5. A Gift-Wrapped Package
6. 6. A Window Display
7. 7. A Winter/Holiday Icon
8. 8. A Tree
9. 9. A Tradition
10. 10.Something that says Noel
11. 11. Something Precious
12. 12. Something Peaceful
13. 13. Something Hot
14. 14. Something Cold
15. 15. Something Red
16. 16. Something Green
17. 17. Motion blur
18. 18. Black & White Photo (with selective coloring)
19. 19. Any photo using an Infrared Photography Technique (in-camera OR post-process)
20. 20. A Macro Shot

Friday's Fun Facts

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

• As of 2009 Pahrump, Nevada has the most world record holders per capita of any city in the world, with 38 such records held among the total of its roughly 40,000 residents.
• One in three cars has a dent or scratch longer than two inches.
• There are 984 towns or cities in the United States that do not have at least one Main Street.
• A 2008 study by the Association of American Fence and Netting Manufacturers found that fully one third of fences purporting to be electrified are in fact non-electrified. (Of that third, 90 percent of non-electrification was due to power or maintenance issues, and ten percent due to the sign placer's intent to deceive.)