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

Fall Color Weekend- Cabin- Part II

After leaving Duluth we headed up to the cabin we were staying in for the weekend.  I'm not sure what city it's technically in but it's out of the city of Duluth but not quite to Two Harbors.  We stayed at Dodge's Log Lodges in the Evergreen cabin right on Lake Superior.  We had been there one time before for one night but it was in the dead of winter for my 29th birthday.  The cabins took new ownership last year and they've made some nice improvements.

We hung inside the cabin on Friday night, made dinner, lit a fire in the fireplace and drank wine while listening to music.

We woke early on Saturday morning so we could see the sun rise.  There were some clouds in the sky but the horizon was clear except for the exact area the sun was rising from.  It was still beautiful to sit out on the deck and on the rocks on the shore and see the beautiful colors all the while it was definitely below 40 degrees.

Me on the deck waiting for the sun to rise

Steam on the lake

Two surfers

Unfortunately, M's good friend's mom passed away last week and the funeral was on Saturday morning in Webster, Wisconsin.  M drove down to Webster to attend the funeral and then came back close to 3 pm.  While it wasn't a perfect situation for our weekend, it worked out just fine and allowed me to have some alone time at the cabin since I didn't have a car to go anywhere.  I cleaned, read, watched the news, basked in the sun, took a nap and just enjoyed the day.

On Saturday night, we had a fire outside on shore and spent over two hours out there talking and looking at the stars. It was chilly at 36 degrees but we bundled up and cuddled in a big comforter. Between the two of us we saw 10 shooting stars.  It has been so long since I had seen one but I saw 7 of them and every time it was so exciting and fascinating to me.  Some were bright and short and some were dim but had a long trail.  With the help of the Google Sky app on my phone, we located Jupiter which was shining so bright that it cast a reflection on the lake.  

We came inside, lit a fire, drank wine and listened to music again until falling asleep on the couch and then waking up in the middle of the night to go to the actual bed.  We woke up early and left the cabin by 9:15 am on Sunday morning.  

One last part to this story and that is the actual leaves!  Until next time.