On Sunday Sue and I had a three part date day starting with a hike/walk at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan. This park is probably 15 minutes from our house and we’ve only been there once before and to a different part of the park. Apparently the Nordic skiing trails are pretty nice here.
The nature is pretty peaceful with the exception of a low drone of traffic on Cliff Road and the steady stream of airplanes landing from the southeast on parallel runways. Sue was resistant to being photographed.
After our walk, we headed over to the Lake Harriett Band Shell to hear some live Jazz. The group was Someone And His Blue Eyes Band. (I can’t remember who the someone was) They played some Sinatra and some originals that sounded like Sinatra. One of their tunes was “Luck Be A Lady” from Guys and Dolls. When Johanna sang the lead role in this musical we told her how she was participating in Americana because the music from Guys and Dolls permeates our culture. Later Johanna would tell us the various places she had heard music from Guys and Dolls – on an airplane, in TV commercials, played by a community band, hummed by a host father, etc.
During this concert, there was a steady stream of airplanes landing from the northwest on parallel runways. We even saw a DHL plane—I thought they were not doing business in the US anymore.
After the concert we dropped in at the Black Forest Inn outdoor beer garden and restaurant where we enjoyed some Americanized German specialties. I had the Sunday pork special and Sue had the wurst platter. The food was washed down with half liters of Hacker Pschorr Weizen.
In Esslingen, Max, Jojo’s brother was surprised to hear that Americans call bratwurst “brats”. He said In Germany they call them “Wurst” (always capitalized of course since all German nouns are capitalized). I didn’t point out that maybe the reason we gravitated towards “brat” over “wurst” is that “wurst” sounds the same as “worst” as in bad/worse/worst. For a similar reason, this is the reason I avoid using the German article “die” (pronounced “DEE”) within English because it looks like I’m speaking of death.
Anyway, this photo is from the elevated viewing platform on the hill next to the Capitol building. In the foreground you can see the light rail tracks. This will be our second light rail line when it opens in 2014. It’ll connect downtown St. Paul with the U with downtown Minneapolis. They’ve been working on it for what seems like forever. The second tall building in the background on the left is Christoph’s skyscraper formerly known as Galtier Towers and more recently known as Cray Plaza. His school, St. Paul Prep is on the first three floors of one corner of the building.
I think we’ve got a couple of full grown cats. The boys are almost a year old so Sue started feeding them some adult formula soft and dry food. Ravel is still much faster than Nigel but his aggression has waned a bit thankfully. Now we’re as likely to see black chasing orange as we are to see orange chasing black.
Today I’ll try to put the screen back in our bedroom window. Readers will recall that Ravel was either pushed out of or jumped out of the second floor window at the beginning of summer. The screen wasn’t damaged then but it was when the wind blew it loose a few days later and it fell on the ground bending the frame.
We are pretty much all set to have our vinyl floors removed on Monday and the tile put down the rest of the week. Let’s declare this house a disaster zone once again!
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