Oktoberfirst (Oktoberfest + October first)

 

Sue bought a laser pointer to drive the cats crazy.  She always rewards them with some treats after they frantically run around for five minutes chasing a red dot.

 

Sue was looking for some pictures from our 1999 China trip for someone at her school.  Here she is scaling the ‘wild wall’ section of the Great Wall of China.

 

Tiananmen Square with Mr. Dictator Mao Zedong looking on. . .

Fahsai turns 17 on Wednesday, October 1st!  Before her school dance on Friday, three of her Thai friends from school came over for dinner and cake and then they came back after the dance for a good old fashioned sleep over.  We hauled Fahsai’s mattress into the basement so they could all sleep down there.

Coincidentally, all three of these friends live in or near Bangkok and here in Minnesota, they live in St. Paul, the west side of St. Paul, West St. Paul, and South St. Paul.

Fa, Pimm, Patsy, and Fahsai.

Oktoberfest, 2014 – this is my church’s trombone quartet known to many as “Posaune in the Highest”.

There were a lot of people at this annual brew-ha-ha.  We drank, we ate, we opened a fortissimo can of ein Prosit.

Today, for family day, Fahsai, Sue and I toured the James Hill mansion on Summit Avenue across from the St. Paul Cathedral overlooking downtown St. Paul.  I’d been there before but never taken the full, 1.5 hour tour lead by a really good tour guide who knew what he was talking about.  There is a rotating Minnesota art exhibit in the gallery.  We told Fahsai that our neighborhood will look like this very soon.  It is hard to say this convincingly when it is 80 degrees outside on September 28th.

the formal dining room

We felt like we were touring the set of Downton Abbey with all of the servant’s quarters, back stairways, dumbwaiters, and drawing rooms.  The house was finished in 1890 and was built with railroad money.

 

Fahsai said she had a good time.  Next time, we’ll tour the St. Paul Cathedral.

Twins

Sue and Nigel on a beautiful fall Sunday

Bike ride on Warner

We’re going to need some oregano advice here. . .

We had a quiet weekend around here.  Sue and I went to Jeanne’s father’s funeral on Saturday.  We also went running yesterday and today.  In the adult forum after church today we were talking about the healing powers of nature.  I thought of us watching our cats stalk the innumerable squirrels busy at work in our yard eating and hiding chestnuts.  We bought the cats some new fancy stripped collars (which you can’t see in these photos) which make them look like teenage boys dressed up for church. 

OK, I did use the vivid color setting to highlight C. Nigel’s orangeness.

Fahsai went to the mall again yesterday and did not come home with a winter coat.  Then she and Sue went to Kohl’s Department Store and came up empty.  Where does a gal have to go to get a coat around here?  Maybe I should clarify: a not outrageously expensive coat.  Our family activity today involved making dinner.  Fahsai shed a tear or two while cutting up some red onions.

And then she browned the ground beef.

That looks like lasagna!  Here she added the first of two spinach layers.  Sue was standing by as an Italian spice consult.

This Saturday is my annual Oktoberfest gig/party at Jack’s house – Jacktoberfest as it is known to some.  Here I can be seen practicing drinking an Oktoberfest beer while playing my trombone.

Here is the the finished product.  We used the lasagna recipe from the back of the lasagna noodle box but we did make several substitutions.

Voila!

This was both the first time Fahsai ate lasagna and the first time she made it!  Good job!

Nephew Nathan

 

Look who scored a touchdown last night! Oak Creek Senior Nathan!!

 

Mexican dinner

Inter-oper-active Art

 

I was in Milwaukee from Monday until Thursday visiting my parents.  Mom, Diane and I golfed.  Mom, Dad, and I went to the Opera, or rather the Milwaukee Symphony performing Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni.  They did it in a semi-staged fashion but they performed all three hours of it.  It was very well done and actually the first time any of us had seen this opera in its entirety.  The next day on my drive back to Minnesota, Don Goivanni was playing on my Sirius XM radio.  I could have killed three hours of my drive with it but I also had to stay awake so I pumped up the jam tunes.

Mom and I went to Shorewood on Wednesday for their Art Festival in which you could watch and talk to 60 artists around town all painting scenes from Shorewood.  This guys was painting the front of St. Roberts church, the place that our friends Pete and Katie got married back in the early part of this century.  When we walked up to him I think we startled him into making a mistake because he spent the next minute or so wiping away a big smudge.

On the last day of the five day festival the artists submit two of the paintings they have completed for a judged competition and art show.

We went into the church’s rose garden to see what the first painter’s wife was up to. . .

. . . as it turns out, she was also painting.  She was a lot more talkative giving us a mini master class in painting in which she talked about “painting the light” and using her best artistic license to add more roses in her painting than were actually in the rose garden.

I think my mother really enjoyed this fun activity on a beautiful September day!  I know I enjoyed it!

Before we went, I said “now you can question why they are using the wrong color!” and my mother asked this artist why she was using magenta to paint green trees.  Her answer had something to do with green being opposite red on the color wheel and this was just the foundation, etc.

I think this was one of those university research boats anchored out a bit on Lake Michigan.  Later we saw the police boat pull up probably to give him a ticket for “loitering with inquisitive intentions”.  On a really bad day you can see the state of Michigan (I’m kidding, you can’t see anything out there).

I just noticed the sign here in the Stone Creek Coffee shop on Oakland Avenue near UW Milwaukee: “Geeks won’t break your heart”.  Hmmm.

This was Mom’s favorite: a guy painting a guy painting the Milwaukee River.  I artistically “piled on” by taking a photo of a guy painting a guy painting the river.

All of the artists were talkative.  They all spoke of “painting the light”—this must be what they teach you in painting classes.

One guys was starting to paint the left side of the tunnel with the trees.  If he wanted to paint the right side, he would have had to include my car.  Other trip highlights:  I saw Sunanda and my brother on his

51st

birthday.  We ate some La Perla Mexican down on 5th and National.  We drove around the south side a lot.  I went two wins and one loss against my mom in Scrabble. It was a good trip.

Family Fun in Three Parts

 

 

The cats are good.

Yesterday after repairing our thermostat problem with expertise and efficiency, I did some window cleaning to wipe away the summer’s collection of cat nose prints.  We changed thermostats last May and it worked just fine with the air conditioning.  I had to change the setting from “oil/gas” to “heat pump/electric” for the furnace to recognize the thermostat.  I guess when I installed the thermostat, I assumed I should set it for the gas system that we have and not the heat pump that we don’t have.  I was wrong.  Now, our furnace will help us keep the chill out of this place.  We still don’t have the fireplace working but we have an idea what the problem is.

Part one of today’s family fun was a neighborhood walk.  Fahsai, who is 27 years younger than us had some difficulty keeping up.  She admitted that she doesn’t exercise very much.

We walked around on top of the river bluff before heading home for part two of family fun. . .

. . . yard clean up.  The flowers are not yet ready to be chopped down but we did . . .

. . .pick up the sticks.

And finally, part three of our family fun was an introduction to American Football, aka, football.  We watched the second quarter of the Vikings loss to the New England Patriots.  The game is not over yet but we’re fairly certain of how it will end.

Nigel’s head poked out from under the couch.  He was chewing on a tag he found affixed to the bottom of the couch.

Sawatdii Khrap from Sawatdee the Restaurant

 

Susan and I used to go to a Thai restaurant called Sawatdee fairly regularly in downtown St. Paul.  Well, they closed down and reopened at 9th and Robert higher up the hill in downtown St. Paul.  I think they’ve been at this location for several years and we finally paid them a visit. Here is Fahsai studying the menu looking for her favorite dish. . .

Pad See Eew, a chicken, green vegetable, and wide noodle dish with very little spice.

Me, I had the tofu green curry that had three chilli peppers next to it on the menu.  Sue had the Panang curry which is more of a yellow-red color and also spicy,

 

Notice, I took off my jacket as the spice kicked in.

And then I reached for the water.  “We’re going to need more water here!”

Yesterday I made an attempt at cooking kale, the green vegetable that is all the rage.  Mike from work brings a bag of kale in with him every time he works so I thought I’d give it a go.  Apparently he has a big garden.  I sauteed it in olive oil, garlic, and green onions from our garden.  Then I threw in some mushrooms and a Roma tomato from the garden for some color. Voila!  it was pretty bitter and not entirely edible.  I think it needs to cook longer to cook the bitter out of it. We had it as a side dish with the beef tips and noodles from Let’s Dish.

We saw a few houses today on the parade of homes.  This one is between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, literally the city of lakes.  It was nice.  It wasn’t big just to be big but well laid out and functional and very swank in its finishings.  Fahsai and I took some bootleg photos.

There it is on the left at the end of a brick pedestrian walkway.  The finished space included three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, living room, den, dining room, and a kitchen.  There was a detached garage facing the alley and a nice deck on the front and the side of the house.  The price?  $1.8 million.  Sue sent a message to our realator friend Judy asking her to “draw something up for us” with a link to the property. 

After looking at two other houses we stopped in at the sculpture garden next to the highly pretentious Walker Art Museum.  This is the spoon and cherry that Minneapolis is known for.  There was a temporary tent set up behind it spoiling the view of the cherry with downtown Minneapolis.

Along with the sculptures there are a lot of flowers.

The girls with the foot bridge that connects Loring Park with the Sculpture Garden.  The foot bridge takes walkers over 16 lanes of traffic making up the Hennepin/Lyndale/I-94 commons.