A place for our thoughts
This weekend our friend George once again hosted a gathering at his photography studio to coincide with the Target fireworks show that concludes the local Aquatennial festival. We had a great time visiting with Mitzi, Barb, George, Bill and Julie, among others. We had a little fun teasing Bill’s friend (just ask who’s cuter) and then of course, had a great view of the fireworks show.
Thanks Stevie for taking the time to come and visit this weekend for my birthday. It was great to see you and to just hang out for a while. I can’t believe you’re headed back to France soon. I know you’re looking forward to being home. Please keep in touch!
The 1/2 marathon wet well despite the tough course — Lots of bridges to crosss back and forth over the Mississippi and a lot of steep hills. My finish time wasn’t too shabby, but next year will be better.
Otherwise, we FINALLY got around to staining the deck – I’m sure the neighbors are thrilled. It looks great – we’ll see how long a 5-yr deck stain lasts in MN.
As has become custom with my flying club (Club Cherokee), the Thurdsay nearest the longest day of the year was once again time for the annual Thursday Flyers trip to East Gull Lake airport. Since I’m bumping up on accruing the maximum vacation I can bank and I haven’t been flying as much as I’d like, I decided to leave work a little early and participate in this year’s trip. I have gone a couple of times in the past and really enjoyed it.
I took the whole afternoon off. I wasn’t current to carry passengers and needed to get a couple of take-offs and landings in if I hoped to actually pilot on the trip. So I got to the airport around 3:00 where I found a couple members already there. Although it was a bit warm on the ground, I decided I should go ahead and take the plane out for a couple of times around the pattern.
They had already started some construction at the airport, and the winds were moving around enough that I got a little excitement during my practice. I even got some additional excitement when suddenly the pattern got a little busy, tower changed the landing runways, and another aircraft entering the airport didn’t quite follow their directions. But it’s always nice to know that I can handle improvising with the tower controllers when something like that happens.
Finally it was time to head back in. By the time I got back to the hangar, all the other aircraft were out and much of the gang had arrived. It turned out that the aircraft I was using wasn’t going on the trip…so I turned around and moved it to the back of the line. After finding another plane and a partner, it was decided that I’d fly out, and he’d fly back.
We couldn’t have asked for a nicer night for flying. The wind already seemed to be waning and the air was much smoother than it can be during the summer days. The trip up went fairly quickly. Although we were the first to taxi out, we were in the Warrior, so we weren’t the first to arrive! (However we weren’t the last!) And although the approach can be tricky and it had been quite a while since I’d done a soft field landing, things went really smoothly. (And thank goodness, because everyone already there was watching!).
We shuttled over to Cragun’s for a nice dinner and chance to all visit with one another. We had a new member along and it was great to meet him as well as catch up on some pilot stories from many of the other members. Then it was time to head back to the strip and get ready to make the trip home. This time it was my buddy’s turn to fly, so I got to look around. We were off the ground well before sunset, but it seemed just after a front was passing through. Off to one side we saw a great rainbow, and to the other, well…it’s views like this that make it all seem worthwhile:
No, I’m not referring to the 1990 movie featuring Molly Ringwald, but rather our very own cousin’s nuptials this past weekend! Betsy and her husband Nathan already had had an intimate wedding earlier this year, but wanted to share the event with friends and family, so they had another one! Jeff and I made the journey back home to attend the service as well as to visit with family and friends.
We each took Friday off to make a 4-day weekend, which we each really needed. The weather on Friday was great and it allowed us to each get some things done around the house before heading out of town for the rest of the weekend. Jeff got some running in, and I got some outside chores taken care of. The pressure washer came in handy to rinse the dirt off of the front of the house, and I finally opened the Mr. Clean car-washing gadget I bought last year and never had used. I used it to wash Jeff’s Jeep and I have to say I was really impressed with it! The Jeep washed up quickly and dried with no water spots!
The drive on Saturday was fairly easy once we got outside of the metro area. We took a quick stop for lunch along the way and ended up in Appleton late in the afternoon. We had arranged to visit with our friends Mike & Jerry, who had offered to let us stay with them. It was a great treat to catch up with them after a few years, and they were wonderful hosts. They grilled a dinner and we made a Brazillian drink called a Caipirinha made with a rum-like liquor called cachaça that was quite yummy! We brought the Nintendo Wii along on the trip, and so we enjoyed playing Wii Sports and Mario Kart.
The weather has been less than summer-like, but a fun wedding and an upcoming race are getting me in the mood. Last weekend we went to Betsy and Nathan’s wedding in WI and had a great time visiting with everyone
This coming weekend I’m running the downtown 1/2 marathon. It’s been tough getting ready during allergy season, but I think it’ll go well, but the ‘post run’ brunch will be the best part.
Here’s a few shots from the wedding–
 
 
 
Nearly a week has passed already but still fresh in my mind and soul are the fond memories and wonderful experiences of our visit to Telluride, Colorado. Since mid November we have been planning our mountain get-away, with high hopes and expectations that it would provide a much needed respite. We anxiously awaited this trip because for us it signified several firsts. It would be our first visit to Telluride, Colorado…our first participation in a Gay Ski Week event…and our first group trip taken with a travel/tour company. And as it turned out, it did not disappoint!
We started early Monday morning, and after a close call at the MSP airport, we managed to make a smooth connection in DEN and arrive in Telluride by 10:30a.m. We arrived to emerging sunshine that glistened and danced on top of several inches of fresh new snow. Although our official tour didn’t start until that evening, a short stroll down the quaint Main Street of Telluride was all that it took to make us realize we simply couldn’t wait until the next day to get on the mountain! We checked into the beautiful Hotel Telluride and opened our luggage like kids with their presents on Christmas morning! The mountain was beautiful! Fresh snow, bright sunshine made us forget all about the possibility of altitude sickness. We were in heaven as we warmed up for the coming week.
Equally exciting was the meet-and-greet reception scheduled for the evening. Having never attended a Gay Ski Week event before, we had decided that maybe it would be best to go as part of a packaged trip, and found that OutWest Adventures seemed to have the perfect solution. Rather than spending the entire week like two needles in a haystack, OutWest offered the chance to meet and bond with a group of about 16. This was the night we would meet the other group members, and start forging what we hope will be lasting friendships.
It’s that time of year again! The holiday season is upon us once more, each and every year it seems to come a little more quickly. Normally I’d be pretty stressed right about now, but this year things are going a little bit better. Perhaps it’s because we’ve made some changes in my family this year, or perhaps it’s the fact that I have actually been home this year, as opposed to commuting weekly to Utah. But I’m certainly not complaining :) Now if I could just win a stocking from Derek & Romaine I’d be all set!
The tree is up, the cookies baked, the shopping is nearly finished and the last of the cards are going in the mail in the morning. I always like to save wrapping for just before we go to visit the family. This year we’ll be fortunate enough to visit with both families during the holiday season!
To those of you who are visiting our site for the first time, welcome!   You can get some highlights of our past year by reading other articles. We will try to write more often as the mood strikes in the coming year, so please bookmark us and come on back!
Meanwhile, we wish you peace, health, happiness and prosperity in the coming year, and we look forward to seeing and hearing from you soon!
Yes, it was a busy summer. A quick quick recap? Let’s see….
…Kevin’s parents and aunt Mary visited from WI for a weekend, painted the bathroom, got new kitchen counters installed, went to Chicago for the True Colors tour, went to Milwaukee for Ken’s 40th birthday, went to South Carolina to visit my family, saw Spamalot, helped a friend move, misc summer parties, visited friends in Seattle, finished the wood floors in the last room upstairs —
Oh and training for my 10 mile race, which by the way, I did very well in this past Sunday despite the unusually warm weather.
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I was chatting with my friend Chris and somehow the topic of this web site came up. I knew I hadn’t posted to it in a while, but gosh…I didn’t realize it was Memorial Day Weekend! Here it is well after Labor Day weekend already! The summer has absolutely flown by! Let’s see if I can recall where it went??
In June I had one more trip for a week to SLC for work. I haven’t been there since, and it has been quite an adjustment to be home. I miss the people there both in and out of work, and I miss the chance to work out at the local 24Hour Fitness (we don’t have them here…and if we did it would be insanely crowded). But it is really nice to be home.  Oh, except for that trip to San Jose, California for 3 days.
That month we also took a quick mid-week trip to Chicago to see the True Colors Tour at the Auditorium Theatre. We met up with my friend Stephen from Nice (who is now working in Chicago) for a nice dinner on the Miracle Mile and then headed to the show. We were treated to performances by Cyndi Lauper, Erasure, Debbie Harry and several others. It was a great show benefitting the Human Rights Campaign.
I also completed my horseback riding lessons that month.
July marked my first month without travel since maybe September of 2005. It was simply wonderful to be home. We didn’t really do a lot that month, but we did get new kitchen countertops, sink and faucets installed. After an exhaustive search and many changes of mind, we settled on DuPont Zodiaq in the shade of Smokey Topaz. We had a new under-mount stainless sink installed, and selected Price Pfister faucet. A bonus feature (and not without installation agony) is the under-sink water filter with dedicated faucet. It’s so nice to have freshly filtered water available any time. A new quiet disposer polished it off. Thankfully my parents and my Aunt Mary came for a weekend visit, as per usual, Dad’s help was much appreciated with the projects. We ended the month with another concert treat, this time seeing Erasure for a rare appearance in Minneapolis! It was a great show again. Anyone who hasn’t heard my band lately needs to check them out on their web site.
August was relatively low-key as well. I decided I’d been home enough that I could manage to drive to Milwaukee for my brother Ken’s birthday (ha ha…I’m not the only one in my 40’s now), and we had a nice visit with the whole family. Near the end of the month I started to catch a cold, which I still have.
And that, technically, was the summer! Over Labor Day weekend, we finally attacked the last of the nasty blue carpeting. We had the stuff on the steps going downstairs replaced with a nice mocha-brown color low pile. And in the upstairs guest room, we ripped out the last of it and applied hardwood flooring once again. I guess by the 4th room, you get pretty good at it, because it went fairly smoothly. And we had just enough flooring to finish the room. And I mean just. We cut the last board to put in the last row in the closet!
When it came time to put furniture back in, we’ve decided that the room isn’t going to be a guest bedroom any more. It is so rarely needed for that purpose. Instead we’re making it a little study. We found two cute new chairs at Slumberland’s Grand Opening sale, and a lamp and some bookshelves at Target, and a rug at Pottery Barn. It’s not quite done yet. So photos are to come.
I guess that’s it for now. I promise I’ll post updates and thoughts more often.Â
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