10 Questions About…

Sunday the girls and I went shopping with Grandpa at Rosedale. Mostly we tried to get out of Patrick’s way so that he could work on his PhD. I’ll be glad when he gets that done. (It’s not for a while.)

We had a nice dinner at some place with a revolving door – that was kind of the highlihgt for the kids.

Saturday night Patrick and I went to Forepaugh’s – they recently updated the whole place. It will always be the sort of place that Patrick likes more than I do – but it was very nice. We started with bacon-wrapped shrimp – so how can you go wrong.

After that we went to a show called Hot Ink at the MN Museum of American Art in St Paul. It was all comic books and graphic novels. I thought it was cool. Two of the artists were older than me, otherwise it seems as if they were all born in 1985. So not only is it fun to see the art form but it’s fun to get a feel for what people who are (slightly) younger are thinking about the world.

Lily got a “how to draw cartoons” book out of the library last week so I thought she would enjoy this and the themes weren’t too adult. We’ll see how long the show is there.

On Friday night we went to a party for Failte Minnesota at the Ford Union Hall in St Paul. My only wish was that there had been more people. The last time (the other time) I was at the Union hall was for a wedding and this felt like a wedding too – in a good way.

The food was great. The beer was cheap. The music was fun. They got people out on the floor to do a haymaker’s jig. Aine signed up right away – she was the only one from our family to sign up. Luckily she’s not shy and the dancers all helped her along. Naturally her partner ended up being a grandpa-age guy who was well over 6 feet tall.

There was a quiz on Ireland and it was tough – but Patrick got the most answers. Shocker! He was not the only Irish person there but he knows a lot. He got 4 wrong out of 20 or so, which meant he guessed wrong each time he guessed – because he knew the rest.

On Saturday night we had two of the event planners over for dinner – Mary Sue and Jim Brooks. It was fun to hear their perspective – but really I thought they had done a great job.

So we had the Election on Tuesday. It took me 15 minutes to vote – There was a line and that’s unusual in my neighborhood but 15 minutes isn’t bad. If I had waited until 10:00 I think I could have walked right through.

Throughout the campaign we had no phone calls and no door knockers contact us about the Election – until the last 48 hours. Then we had several door knockers, all for Obama.

The girls and I went to Grandma and Grandpa’s for the results. We started watching at 6:00, which is when the polls our East close. It looked like a close race for the first 2 hours. We got some emails from Ireland, which was fun. You kind of forget that people are watching from afar.

Nothing had been decided when I took off with Kathleen and Sheila to the DFL headquarters downtown. First it was fun to go with Kathleen who knows everyone. I knew a few online reporters but she knew everyone. Second it was fun to be with a big group when they called the winner.

One funny thing – the kids did nothing related to the Election at school. No mock debates, no mock votes. They were told that votes were secret, which I guess is true. I hope that the older kids did something. I’ll have to ask a babysitter. I think they missed an opportunity – but then my own alma mater made the same mistake on a much larger level.

So I had planned to see Kings of Leon on Saturday night, but they were sold out. So I looked around and saw that the Beastie Boys were playing at the Roy Wilkins. So I got tickets. What I didn’t know was that originally this show sold out in 3 minutes. I must have caught Ticketmaster at just the right time and they must have released tickets on the day of the event. (It was the Rock the Vote concert. So by the time they planned the event the big places in town were booked.)

So we got to go! The Roy Wilkins holds about 5,500 people. We were on the floor! And we got progressively closer to the stage as the bands progressed. So the video I got of Beastie Boys is better than Tenacious D. That being said, it’s still not the highest quality.

The Roy Wilkins is an amazing place to see bands because it is so small.

All of the bands were great –t he highlights were the Under Pressure cover by Ban Harper and Tenacious D and Sabotage by Beastie Boys – or maybe No Sleep Til Brooklyn. What was great was they prefaced the song by saying if you know who Rod Carew is, you’ll like the next song – making us old guys feel cool.

After the concert we went to a party and that was fun too.

And if you want to see more, here’s a link to my playlist from the show:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=24124269A3F88C3F

Halloween was a big day of fun. Everyone got to wear costumes to school. It was an amazingly warm day, which never happens in Minnesota. I am sure that this is the first time it has been above freezing when the girls have been trick or treating here.

We went to a fun pizza party at a neighbor’s house and then everyone took off for the houses. Lily got 125 pieces of candy. I think she’s the only one who counted them all out.

So they were out for about an hour from 6:30 to 7:30. We had trick or treaters to the house pretty much over the same span of time. The last trick or treaters came at 8:30. At 9:00 we turned out the lights.

There were tons of parties going on – but I stayed home and worked. It wasn’t a lot of fun but it was nice to get caught up on a few things. Work has been amazingly busy!

Once again I’ve fallen down on blogging from home. Part of the reason is because it’s just not as exciting to talk about visiting every park in St Paul, which is a lot of what we’ve been doing lately – but I’ll try to come up with a few posts that are more specific.

On Saturday we ended up at the Halloween festivities on Grand Avenue. Those Grand Avenue events are always fun. The kids got their faces painted at Wet Paint, got flowers and candy from Johnsons Flowers and then we headed to Ramsey Junior High. We were just in time for the costume contest and Aine got to spend a lot of time in the bouncy castle. The weather was perfect!

Last Sunday we went to get our pumpkins with Grandpa. We went to Apple Jack’s in Delano. Unfortunately we went on the crappiest day of the year. It actually snowed – not snow that stays on the ground, but cold snow nonetheless.

So we were pretty quick about picking out our pumpkins. We also enjoyed some apple pull-aparts, which are really good. Then we went back to Grandma’s house for lunch.

Sunday night I went to book club. Luckily no one really read the book, so I didn’t have to feel bad. Kate, the host, made a super amazing meal, which ended with homemade bread pudding with caramel.

On Sunday we had a shower for Anita – who is expecting a baby on November 18. It was fun to see my some of cousins for the first time since we’ve been home and it was fun to see Anita’s family. Here are some pictures:

On Saturday night we went to see Tyrone and Ralph at the History Theater with our neighbors Mary Sue and Jim Brooks. It was opening night – so that was fun. It’s the show about the building of the Guthrie Theater; Ralph Rapson was the architect.

So the play was right up Patrick’s alley. Joe Dowling was there and Patrick was able to talk ot him. The show was fun. It might seem as if the topic is pretty specific, but that’s the History Theater. Last year we saw the play on Baron Von Raschke at the History Theater with my family.

I won’t say which show I liked better – they were both fun.