Vikings vs. Cardinals

Instead of tailgating in our usual spot this past Sunday, M and I decided to park at a meter and walk through the rest of the tailgate parking lots and see what's going on.  We do this usually once a year and while we both love our tailgating parking lot and spot mostly due to how close it is the dome, we are missing some really hardcore fans in the other lots.  This post is basically just pictures of some of the fun Vikings stuff we saw while walking through the lots.  We did meet up with some of our friends and spent some time with them. We discovered years ago that a guy that I graduated with in White Bear Lake and a guy that M graduated with in Roseville were friends with each other and have season tickets together.  Oh, and I suppose I should talk about the game.  It was week 5 and the Vikings not only got their first win at home, it was their first win of the season.  Granted it was against the Cardinals but the final score was 34-10.  Adrian Peterson had a great day with 122 yards and 3 TD's which made him the NFC Offensive Player of the Week.  

Check out this blender!

I had to take a picture of the cops checking out the motor of a scooter

Some random who wanted to pose with the meat

M with his HS friend Todd

Me with my HS friend Chris

On the plaza

The frisbee dogs at halftime.  It's our favorite halftime show.

Alphabet Happy Hour

I can't even remember how long it's been since the entire Alphabet Gang got together but that happened last Thursday evening.  We met at Crave in the Mall of America for dinner and drinks.  I had a stir fry over rice that wasn't very good. If you've been to Crave, you know how much it costs. Despite the cost, it was so great to see everyone together again under one roof.  Even though we ate indoors, it was nice enough to have had another HH on a patio somewhere as we had something like 7 days in a row of 80 degrees or more. We won't have many more of these days here in MN.

 I paid $19 for this:

I don't know if the plate looks large but it was not

A big boatload of sushi

Blogger Dinner

I met with a bunch of lovely bloggin' ladies last Wednesday night for dinner.  The group consisted of myself, Ang, Kim, Kristi and Krysten.  I know both Kristi and Kim from high school and I've met Ang a few times now so Krysten was the only one I hadn't met yet and I was excited to meet her as she seems (and is) so nice and cute and has a great sense of style.  We ate at Axel's Bonfire in St. Paul on Grand Avenue which also doubled as a restaurant outing for Kristi and her Twin Cities Restaurant Blog. (Check it out!)  I had the veggie fajitas which were deliciouso.  We had lots of fun and I'm sure we'll be doing it again in the future.  The only bad thing about the night was that Ang, Kristi and myself all received parking tickets for parking on the streets off of Grand Avenue.  There was some tiny little print about permit parking on the sign and none of us saw it.  Boo!

P.S. I was of course the last blogger in our group to write about our meet up!  I'm less than a week behind in my blogs now but Ang, I'm trying my hardest to blog in real time!  :)

Photos are courtesy of Kristi

Ang, Me, Krysten- We're all lefties :)

Kristi and Kim

Kim, Me, Krysten, Ang, Kristi

Julian, Bubbles and Ricky

If you know who Julian, Bubbles and Ricky are, I'm impressed.  They are characters on a Canadian TV show called Trailer Park Boys.  The show is everything that is stereotypical of a trailer park and stereotypes in a Nova Scotian trailer park are no different than in the United States.  The series ran from 2001-2008 and they had two movies.  The show is full of drinking, drugs, illegal plots, jail and tons of swearing.  And it's hilarious.

Last Tuesday, M and I went to see Trailer Park Boys live....the Drunk, High and Unemployed Tour. The show consisted of the three main characters; Julian, who is never seen without a rum and coke in his hand (and I mean ever), Bubbles who wears coke bottle glasses and lives in a shed with all his kitties and Ricky who is considered the dumbest of all of them with tons of malaprop's (or Rickyisms like "it's a catch 23" or "get two birds stoned at once") It basically was a live episode of their TV show.  It was very entertaining and kind of surreal to see these characters in real life.  I bought tickets to this probably four months ago and we had really great seats, 3rd row on the aisle.

If your are into crude comedies, check it out!  Has anyone out there seen Trailer Park Boys before?  

Via

Before I show pictures from the show, we walked past this place on Hennepin which featured art from Dana-something.  It was creepy!  

Now for the show:

Ricky (my favorite), Julian and Bubbles

Thanking the crowd out of character

Fall Color Weekend- Accident- Part IV

We headed up scenic Highway 61 and on our way to see the leaves and we got stuck in standstill traffic.  We didn't know what was ahead but we waited and waited and inched and crawled.  We noticed there wasn't any cars going southbound so we thought maybe the road was closed.  We did finally approach a sign on the side of the road that said "Emergency Scene Ahead".  Uh-Oh.  That didn't sound very good.  We started to see some cars drive past us southbound and then there would be no more cars.  Then we could go and then stop so they were alternating traffic in each lane.  I first saw a fire engine.  I then saw a white hearse.  I then saw the most horrific accident scene I have ever seen in person.  I had to take pictures.  I wanted to remember what I saw.

As always, click the pictures to enlarge.

How you could survive that?  The car was completely burned and looked like ashes and the cab of the semi was just a cage and carcass.  We had the most horrible feeling after seeing this accident.  We were unsure of what time it happened and thought if we had been a little bit earlier, maybe it could have been us that it happened to.  The semi was facing southbound but it was in the northbound lane.  

We watched the news later that night and found out that one person had died.  While it's still terrible, I thought there would be more dead for sure. After getting home that weekend, I found the following information and explanation of what happened.

One person was killed in a fiery accident on State Highway 61 near the Split Rock River in Lake County on Friday afternoon. The crash involved a semi-truck and two passenger vehicles, the Minnesota State Patrol reported.

Heavy weekend traffic was diverted through the rest stop and Superior Hiking Trail entry area near the crash site, which is just southwest of Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. Highway 61 reopened just before 7 p.m., nearly 6 hours after the 1 p.m. accident.

According to the State Patrol, a person driving northbound in a 2005 Mini Cooper was slowing to turn into the rest area when the 2011 Hyundai trailing it struck it from behind and pushed the Mini Cooper into the southbound lane and into the path of a semi-trailer.

The Mini Cooper burst into flames, as did the cab of the semi. The driver of the Mini Cooper was pronounced dead on the scene.

A mini cooper being hit from behind to be pushed into oncoming traffic only to be struck by no other than a semi.  I don't know if the results could have been any different with a bigger car than a mini cooper or a small vehicle than a semi, but it was a deadly combination. 


After starting this post and trying to find out more information on the driver of the mini cooper, I finally found some information that hurts even more.  The driver that was killed was a 53 year old woman that lived in Vadnais Heights, which is where I grew up and where my parents had lived for 27 years and I literally live across the street from the city of Vadnais Heights today.  She leaves behind a husband and two boys.  Her boys went to my elementary school and my high school.  Even though this accident happened almost 200 miles away from both of our homes, it hits close to home. Be careful when you are driving, my peeps.

Picture and story from Duluth News Tribune 

Fall Color Weekend- Leaves- Part III

A big reason we went up north last weekend was to see the leaves which were to be at their peak.  On Friday, we drove up about 60 miles north close to Schroeder, MN and went east on one of the fall color tours.  The day was absolutely perfect with the sun shining and the leaves looked very pretty.  Some areas there wasn't much of a change an others had a spectacular colors.  Unfortunately, it was hard to take great pictures with all the shadows but here is a sample of what we saw.

 We also drove up and did another fall color tour on Saturday afternoon but it wasn't nearly as pretty.  Hardly any of my pictures turned out.  On our way back, we stopped at Viking Legends Sports Bar and Grill in Two Harbors.  It's a new bar/restaurant that's been open for about 3 months and is co-owned by ex-Viking Jim Marshall.  

I didn't photoshop the sky.  It was really like this!

We didn't see much wildlife on our trip.  I was hoping that we would get lucky and see a moose on one of our fall color tours.  I did see one cross in front of our car when I was a kid on those back roads.  I'll have to try and find that picture someday. This time, we saw a 20 lb dead skunk (HUGE) on the way up and then we saw a buck on Friday and a few deer in Two Harbors.  

We had a great time on our trip up north.  I love it up on the north shore and want to visit up there as often as I can. I love Minnesota! Of course my honeybear Michael made the trip wonderful also.  We have so much fun together and I can't imagine a different or better partner than him!

Us being goofy