83 thoughts on “August 20, 2015: The Upside”

  2. Did we discuss yesterday? Minnesota counties are butt-ugly.

    I saw the interactive map yesterday and immediately moused over Mower, finding that it ranked in the bottom five counties in the country. I laughed, then wondered. But not enough to examine the methods.

    1. Growing up within spitting distance of Red Lake County, it's not really big enough to have a huge amount of natural diversity. Polk County: 3049/3111

      Meanwhile, St. Charles Co, MO: 881/3111...pretty sure the temperate summer rating killed us

    2. The entire Driftless Area somehow ranks not only below average, but below Death Valley, Imperial Valley and most of Oklahoma? I'm calling BS.

    3. I hoped this was about the shapes of the counties.
      I also see that they don't consider dust or other particulate matter in the air, days with 0.5"-3.0" of snowfall, or sunny days with highs in the 50s or 60s.

      1. Despite being home to a large, hypersalinated sea of botulism that is making people very sick as it evaporates and is emblematic of California's insane water policies, Imperial County is a better place to live than anywhere in Minnesota.

        Riiiiight.

        1. Wonder if anyone has ranked states/counties on niceness. Twice this last week I heard fellow workmates agreeing that CT'ers are a$$holes.

    4. From the original article: "Red Lake County, Minn. (claim to fame: 'It is the only landlocked county in the United States that is surrounded by just two neighboring counties,' according to the county Web site)."
      Really? I think it should be: "We're not actually on Red Lake! We're named after the Red Lake River (which is named after the lake)!"

      1. Teach me your ways.

        I actually looked for the pictures I (thought I) remembered seeing of your wedding. Y'all did lakefront, right?

        1. If you want a judge, the one I worked for loves doing them and I can put you in touch.

          1. We went with a judge and used my SIL's backyard. Wore my dress blues and she bought a dress off the rack. Dinner following was at The Liffey and had a picnic the next day for extended family (only ~25 people at the service). Most expensive part of the wedding was the honeymoon - rented a cabin on Lake Superior.

            1. Sounds pretty similar to J & I's wedding. Found an officiant on Kijiji, did the ceremony in the back yard of J's condo. I rented a tux (which I wore pink shoes with) and J bought a black dress and pink scarf. We had 8 guests, ordered Chinese food, and ate Dairy Queen cake. Then we all went Canadian bowling.

              Like Beau, we planned in a short period of time and spent less than $500.

              1. How does Canadian bowling differ from American?
                Did you have pink shoes for the bowling as well?

                1. The official designation is five pin bowling. Five pins instead of ten, ball is the size of a shot put, a perfect game is 450, and I think it's more fun!

                  I wore the shoes to the bowling alley, but they did not have pink bowling shoes for me to wear once I got there.

            1. I mentioned that one of my "internet friends", as she knows you people, was a Methodist pastor, but we didn't want to put the Padre in a weird position by asking him to have to drive all the way to MN for the ceremony.

              2. That might be kind of fun, actually, but I'd have to see what I'd have to do to be legally allowed to sign a wedding certificate in Minnesota. Maybe nothing, but the requirements vary from state to state.

      2. We went to the courthouse. About four hours (had to wait until sessions were done for the day) and $20.

        1. We're going for small, but not that small. 40ish people, 90% of which are family, preferably on a lake somewhere. The ceremony isn't going to be the focal point. It'll be more sorta family reunion-y, hanging out, playing games, sitting by the fire.

      1. If I did that, I'd have to just keep on moving, as my mother would be on my trail to kill me.

      3. That's what I did, it was so nice having 'where should we go for dinner' as the most stressful decision.

      1. Exactly! I think I hired the DJ. Other than that I was mostly hands off. And most of the planning came from my wife's sister who got married 3 years before us (we ended up doing the same caterer, photographer, florist, etc)

      3. My role was to go along on outings to view venues and sample from sample menus (yes, enough was going to be spent by my FiL to warrant menu sampling...) and I got to exercise a limited veto on the dinner wear pattern for the registry.

        Wedding was in a temple on East-West Highway, reception at a hotel in G'town. I may have mentioned that when we swept into the hotel lobby on way to establishing a receiving line, the Wife remarked quietly on some riff-raff standing around in torn denims and tees. Turns out it was Depeche Mode.

        I suggested to my MiL there be a keg at the reception. She demurred.....

      4. EAR and I weren't that far off in the amount of planning we wanted to do.
        We got married the summer after graduation and picked the date based on the latest of
        a) openings at Our Lady of Grace "Chapel" at her Alma Mater (St. Kate's).
        b) when I had to be out of my on-campus apartment at Augsburg.
        I checked out of my apartment at 11am on the day of the ceremony (I had through the next week to live there).

        We were both next to broke (though I was near-debtless: Presidential Scholar in the penultimate year in which that was a full ride).
        EAR got a dress off the rack and her mother paid for half because it was out of budget.
        I bought a suit (still my only suit) rather than renting a tux for the same price.
        My cousin played the piano and a highschool friend sang. Two college friends (one friend of each) took photos.
        EAR, her mother, and her sisters made the flower arrangements out of flowers bought at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market the day before.
        Our original plan was to have a snacks and dessert potluck, but then both sets of folks chipped in with money for food (not meals; it was a re, and the on-campus reception hall.
        I think we paid for beer*, chapel, priest**, some decorations***.
        In retrospect, I've called ours a "Stone Soup" wedding.

        *Keg of Leinie's Red and cans of MGD for Grandpa and Dad R, plus for when the keg went dry... which was late.
        **My high school priest from New Ulm, he got a hotel room in the Twin Cities, so we overpaid him compared to what we believed was the going rate.
        ***Frames and photos of our parents and grandparents on their wedding days, and write-ups of the story of how they met and their weddings.

        The DJ was EAR's uncle (from whom EAR's family is unfortunately now estranged). He had his own sound and light system, and had done and some DJing jobs.
        We had written down a long list of songs, and he really listened to us and what we wanted. I had to provide him with a bunch of my CDs to rip tracks from**** and added a few for what he thought was important ("Wild Thing" by Tone Lōc, some county ballads).
        Use of his system, his labor, and the burnt CDs that he used for the gig were his gift to us. By far the biggest contribution outside of our parents.
        We still have the CDs, but I want to re-burn them for focus.

        ****He took the album version of Fatboy Slim's "Rockafella Skank" rather than the radio edit. That's a long song! I don't recall which version of "Praise You" he picked, though it was less important.

        My parents gifted us their timeshare week (which we exchanged for something in Avon, Colo.) for the honeymoon.
        We had to burn two days of it, though, to get married and drive there.
        They also gave us the title to the car I'd been driving and they had no use for anyway.

        Just last week, we were reflecting upon our wedding, and I was thankful that we held off on cohabitating if for no other reason than going back to "our" apartment at the end of the night was a special event.
        We didn't have to book a hotel room or anything, and that would have been weird anyway.
        EAR had been living there for a month and a half, and I spent much of my time there.

        Overall, I think EAR and I each pitched in a grand, and we still had some cases of beer to return for cash. (Plus cans of beer left over.)
        But we couldn't have done it without family help.

        1. NBBW and I were married in Albert Lea in the same church as where her parents were married (St. Theodore's).

          The main difference was that when they were married (he Lutheran, she Catholic) the rules didn't allow them to be married at the alter.

          They did their vows in a back room where the priests hang out. Sehr nett.

          We were married at the altar (me not Catholic), and they made some noise, but consented, to having a secular song played during the service (a buddy of mine sang a Swedish song with guitar accompaniment - Uti var hage). Just found this on Youtube.

      5. I think I said "no" to two things for our wedding.

        1. I wouldn't wear tails because all men in tails look ridiculous.
        2. I refused to make it black tie because we were still young and all of our friends who were already paying for flights and hotel to NOLA didn't need to have to rent a tux on top of that since they all can dress themselves well anyway.

        Otherwise, I was just in the sidecar of the motorcycle. Sheenie's sister is getting married in April, so I'll get to see what my over the top wedding was like for an attendee.

    4. What the heck did I miss? First, congrats.

      Dr. Chop and I got hitched by a jp in a park. The most expensive part of the whole shooting match was the raft of pulled pork from John hardey's and two kegs of beer we bought to feed our guests. We had a pretty epic softball game of bride v. groom picked teams (she won...), lawn games, and a stagecoach ride (good friend's parents run a stagecoach adventure in SoDak and brought the rig unannounced, which was awesome). We spent a total of four grand including rings, airfare, and food, and we had a hell of a good time.

      2. John Hardy's? THE John Hardy's in Rochester?

        We had a branch in Spamtown for a few years before the Big Man died. My first (and still highly respected) exposure to BBQ. Mmmmm.

        1. That's the one. Dr. Chop is from the roch', and John hardey's is our go to restaurant when we're back in the state.

          1. Is she a cake-eater (Mayo), one of those awful JM people, or a benign grad of either Century (didn't exist in my day, so no grudges) or that catholic school?

    6. Why did none of y'all warn me...?
      It's like with women and childbirth. The hormones and following joy make you forget the pain so you are ready to do it all again in a few years do not convince your friends to never propose. Propagation of the species depends upon it!

  4. Traditional church wedding. Nice meal. Somewhere between 400 and 450 guests. Limo from the church to the reception, etc. The whole shebang. Under 10k, because we did it outstate.

    Clearly, that's not for everyone. But it worked well for us.

    1. Church wedding w/Methodist AND Lutheran ministers (both were friends) and ~300+h invited. Reception at the Van Nuys airport hotel (instructions to the DJ: "No Madonna"). The apple-stuffed game hen was outstanding.

      A month or so later, a second reception was thrown together "back home", with a mock shotgun wedding with classmates and a couple HS teachers participating (complete with "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck")

    2. we did it outstate.

      Just so you know, the recent* craze has dictated that it's taboo to call it "outstate" ... apparently, the preferred nomenclature is "Greater Minnesota."

      *I have no idea when this became a thing, but during recent Veterans Legislative tours, my boss and another presenter based in the Metro have been roundly criticized and corrected for calling it outstate.

        1. Yeah, I had the same reaction. I read it as "outside" first, and "outstate" didn't even register until I read CoC's comment. I guess I didn't even know it was a word to be looking for.

      2. I've been outstate for almost the past 6 years. I had no idea outstate was out. In fact, out here, it just got in.

      3. Re: "outstate" usage. "Recent" dates to at least the late 1970s. In spring 1980 I competed at the Outstate Indoor meet at the U's Fieldhouse, an invitational track meet for non-Metro schools. "Outstate" was a well-established term to reference schools and conferences outside the Metro area.

    1. Didn't he have the exact same thing happen last year? Tried to pitch through it, failed, admitted he shouldn't have. Now this year he's injured and tries to pitch through it again.

      1. It's apparently a different issue, but yeah, pretty much this exact same thing happened last year. It would certainly help if this wasn't the prevailing wisdom in the clubhouse:

        Hunter has been spotted shaking his left hand/wrist in apparent pain after taking an awkward swing or two in recent days, but he isn’t about to use that as an excuse or even admit there’s a physical problem holding him back.

        “You keep playing,” he said. “Look at (Glen) Perkins. I never knew anything (about a neck problem). He just goes out there and tries to bulldog it, and so does everybody else. That’s what athletes do. Not too many athletes are going to complain. They do what they have to do.”

        If you don't foolishly play through an injury you're not an athlete, and clearly don't want it enough!

      2. What's really concerning is he had a shot in January and it sounds like the effects "wore off" so it's like this is just masking pain and they don't really expect it to get better. This probably means surgery down the road and who knows how long that would keep him out, including early retirement. A neck problem can be very concerning. A friend of mine had to have surgery on a disc problem in his neck and the doctor told him if he didn't have surgery, he could be paralyzed.

  8. Hey guys in a couple of hours heading out to Colorado to do some hiking. Getting up to around 12,000 feet but there is a mountain nearby that hits over 13,000 that I might tackle if I'm up to it.

    http://journeyvision.blogspot.com/2012/07/sange-de-christo-wilderness-622-624.html

    I'm a little worried because I've had some back muscle issues so I haven't been able to train like I would like. Should be an interesting trip. Look for photos on the book of face sometime early next week.

    1. Happy trails!

      Edit: Upon further review, this seems weird to use in a non-sarcastic way. I genuinely mean I hope you have a good time while out on the trails.

    2. Not far from Philmont! Have fun and I'm already looking forward to vicariously enjoying it through your pics.

      1. P.S. If you take pics of wildlife, I'll do my best to ID it.
        That includes plants, fungi, lichens. (Some of those may only be to the family though.)

      2. Dang, now I looked at the pics in your link. That bowl pictured right after the columbines looks awesome. Tell me you're headed there.

    3. I look forward to the pics, and best of luck!

      If you end up in Denver at all, and want some good food, Roaming Buffalo Barbecue is the way to go.

  10. A fantasy football league I do every year with college buddies is drafting on Sunday, and I just realized that I haven't seen anything for the WGOM league.

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