What I Did On My Summer Vacation, er, I mean Life

  This summer has been a busy one for Eric and me. It was the first full summer in our new house and that left us with plenty of outdoor projects to tackle. The garden ended up being enormously successful - almost too much so, as we had to fashion extra tomato cages and twine and stakes to keep the plants standing upright. As a result, we've been gorging ourselves on several different varieties of fresh heirloom tomatoes - they just might be my favorite food. That and cheese.

  We were also able to finally get our first gas grill, thanks to my parents chipping in on it for Eric's birthday. It is probably my favorite thing ever. Next to my iPhone. I expect to start grilling pretty much everything we eat now - can you grill spaghetti? :) 

   Also this summer I was able to spend a weekend in Memphis, where my parents now live as well my sister, her husband and their four children. Three of my siblings and I flew in to Memphis as a birthday surprise for my Mother - and the look on her face as she encountered us in the middle of Costco was priceless.

   We also took an amazing 3,500 mile trip out to Utah and back for my youngest sister's wedding, managing to stop through many state and national parks on the way to and fro. Although the intent was to camp each night, the weather had other plans and we were only able to camp one night of the trip - although the gorgeousness of the Tetons more than made up for that.

    But our camping desires would not be vanquished, so for Eric's birthday we went up north to Minnesota's border with Canada over Labor Day weekend for a few gloriously perfect days of solitude. I say solitude because we were practically the only ones at Zippel Bay State Park. But we didn't mind that one bit.

    Other summer adventures included concerts (Patty Griffin, Amos Lee and Brandi Carlile), many trips to the Farmer's Market, bike rides, making jam and pickles, and celebrating Spain's World Cup Victory with Eric and my parents for my 28th!!! birthday.

    Over the last week, the weather has started to cool off a bit, which means the imminent undertaking of an extensive (and expensive!) furnace replacement project. It seems after 61 years of chugging along it's time to have it replaced. But hopefully the Fall will also bring with it more campfires, more tomatoes, more family adventures and especially more grilling.


P.S. Check out my latest contribution to Finance and Commerce HERE.
P.P.S. And for my latest experiment chronicling my life in daily photos, check out The Day-ly View.

Day-ly View

I'll admit it. I've been totally lax in updating this blog. My apologies to all. 

Since I am now 28!!! I am going to try to get back in the habit of writing, and that includes writing on this blog. The last year has been one of the most eventful and crazy of my life and my goal in this 28!!!th year is to refocus my attention on the things that I love and that make me who I am.

Why all the !!!s behind 28!!!? All I know is that my fingers keep finding the exclamation key after the 2 and the 8 come together. 28!!! See? It happened again! 

Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be 28!!! I have thought of this age as a magical and wonderful age where things would really fall into place and happen for me. Yes, this sounds a little hokey, but I think we can only judge that in retrospect. Maybe this really will be the year that I look back and say, "Man, when I was 28!!! things really fell into place and happened for me." Will I say this because it was inevitable or will I say this because I made it happen? Who knows, but either way it works, right?

As part of this 28!!!th year, I decided it would be interesting to try to capture at least one picture a day. For this initiative I've started a new additional blog called 'Day-ly View' (http://daylyview.blogspot.com/), where I will post these pictures. I've invited Eric to post photos there as well, so it should be pretty interesting. If you'd like to part of this experiment as well, let me know and I will send you the email address where you can publish photos right to the site. The more the merrier!

Anyone else have any ideas on how to make 28!!! the best year EVER?

Twins On The Brain

Eric and I went to the second-ever Twin's game at the new Target Field a couple of weeks ago. And even though it rained almost the entire game and even though the Twins lost in a heart breaker, we had so so so much fun. I finally get what everyone was saying about part of the magic of baseball has to do with being outside.

The view of downtown was incredible, the food lived up to the hype and I don't remember the last time I saw that many people so happy to be at a losing sporting event. We've officially caught the Twin's fever and these days even Harper is sporting a Twin's bandanna around his neck. Go Twins!

And on a related note, here's my latest contribution to Finance & Commerce:

Finance & Commerce

Association update: Stadium game not over yet

by Patty Day, Minneapolis Builders Exchange, Guest Commentary

As Twins open beautiful new stadium, Vikings, Saints still vying for new home

With the long-anticipated opening of Target Field and the start of baseball season, Twins fever is in the air. Water coolers are abuzz with baseball chatter and residents are flocking to the new stadium with a new sense of pride for the beautiful (and earth-friendly) sports venue. Other local sports teams are attempting to cash in on these feelings of good will by pitching their own visions of new sports arenas in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Read the whole article HERE.

And if you're still hungry for more about the Twins, you should definitely watch this:

Latest Article

Click here for a link to my latest Finance & Commerce contribution, which was published March 30th.

P.S. Work on the house continues - updates and photos coming soon!

2010 Winter Adventure

Here's a few photos from Eric and my trip up to Alexandria, Minnesota, last month for a dog sled ride. Enjoy!

Pants-On-The-Ground Monday

I can't get enough of all this "Pants on the Ground" business. How about you?

P.S. Go Vikes!

P.P.S. Sorry Jeff.

Still Writing...

Since I've been asked recently whether I am getting the chance to write at all these days, I thought I'd post a link to my latest writing efforts. At the moment, I am getting the chance to write an article every other month for the one of the big business newspapers in the the twin cities. It's been fun to test out my writing chops a bit, and I'm really looking forward to doing more of this type of thing in the future.

Here it is!