Norah Jones Concert
Last night Tammy and I went to the Norah Jones concert at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. It was a good concert. The opener, Amos Lee, did a great job and Norah and the Handsome Band were very good. We were totally exhausted however after riding the century earlier in the day and didn’t wait for the encore instead opting to get out and home as soon as possible to fall fast asleep.
Both Tammy and I decided that Norah Jones is a studio artist though, not so much a live artist. Particularly in a venue so large. She seemed like she wasn’t real sure what to do with all these people and all the space. I think seeing her in a small, intimate venue would probably be fine, but I don’t think her music, or style, are well suited to an arena size space.
Jesse James Century Ride
Today Tammy and I, along with John Murphy from my office rode the Jesse James Century ride. This is part of Northfield’s Defeat of Jesse James Days celebration. This is the 3rd year that I’ve done this ride, the 2nd year that John and I have ridden it together and the first time that Tammy has done a century ever!
Starting with firsts Tammy did her very first century today. Previous to this her longest ride was in the high 70s of miles but she can now add a century to her list of cycling accomplishments. She did a great job, set her pace and rode steadily through the entire thing.
John had a much more pleasant time than last year. He has dropped some weight and did more training this year than last and the results were obvious.
For myself, this is my last big training event before the Chequamegon Fat 40 this coming Saturday. Riding the century is a very different task than completing the Fat 40, but the psychological impact of just finishing a 100 mile ride is a real confidence booster going into the mountain bike race.
Here is the map of the route this year, it was modified from previous years. We rode clockwise around the map.
Public Radio does RSS
I stumbled across this on the Internet tonight. Guess I just never thought to check, but National Public Radio exposes a lot of content via RSS. Also, Minnesota Public Radio also has an RSS feed through them. Go get some good news feeds!
Labor Day!
Labor day is such a bittersweet holiday. It is always a fun time, but for those of us in the Northern climates it signals the end of the summer and the coming of fall. This year it comes with even more bitterness since we have had such a sad excuse for a summer this year. It feels like fall is in full swing. As we were traveling this weekend it was obvious that the leaves were about to change. I bet it will be full fall color season in a week or two.
Tammy and I went to Lanesboro for much of the holiday weekend. We went to explore the Root River & Harmony-Preston Valley Sate Trail. Lanesboro is the perfect place to explore this more than 50 miles of wonderfully paved bike trails. Out of here we had three days of great riding. We started Friday night with a short ride from Lanesboro to Fountain for 22.4 miles round trip. Then on Saturday we did a longer ride from Lanesboro to Houston which was 62.2 miles round trip and finished on Sunday with a ride to Harmony and back for 45 miles total. We got around 130 miles in for the three days and had some really great trails.
We stayed at the Habberstad House Bed & Breakfast. This is a great B&B! It was at the top of the list with our favorite B&Bs that we have ever stayed in. The owners, Nancy and Dave, are fabulous. The rooms are great, and breakfast was wonderful. We will definitely revisit upon a return to Lanesboro.
In addition to cycling in Lanesboro we also added a piece to our art collection. We stopped by the Cornucopia Art Center while we were there and saw some work by a Superior, WI artist named Erik Pearson that we really liked. We can’t wait for it to arrive. It’s unique and different than our other art and I think it’s going to be great fun.
We returned to the cities and a lot of rain. Due to the rain we ended up not going to the Jack Johnson concert we had tickets to and instead went to see Collateral. Good movie, lots of action. It was a bit predictable though.
On Labor Day Tammy ran the MDRA Victory 10k. I got up early and rode my bike up there to get some miles in and watch her do the run. I really don’t like getting up at 6:30 am on a holiday, but it also lets you get so much done in the day! I had a nice ride to the run and then cheered on runners as they went by. I saw a shirt for this movement called Run Against Bush. Pretty amazing how motivated our current president has made people, myself included.
All in all, a great, relaxing holiday! I put up some miscellaneous photos if you’re interested.
Site Tuning
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately tuning up our site. I’ve been able to “stand on the shoulders of giants” leveraging a lot of open source stuff and cut & paste hacking and slashing. Newest addition is linking to our photo albums with picture highlights. Huge thanks to Edo van Vliet for posting code to do this.
Satellite Radio
We’ve decided that before we go on our next big road trip we are going to take the jump to satellite radio. I’ve spent some time this evening doing searches on the two providers in this market – XM and Sirius. This is so similar to the Dish Network v. DirecTV. Aargh!
It seems like XM is better if you want premium content and more repeaters, but concerns about commercials and Clear Channel has an ownership interest. Sirius is supposed to have much better music quality (both in programming and quality of encoding), fewer commercials and importantly they have an exclusive with NPR.
Oh the horrors of making these consumer electronics decisions. Any suggestions?
Renaissance Festival
We made our 2nd trip of the year to the Renaissance Festival, this time with Tracy and Jeff. The RenFest is like a one day vacation. Great time to laze around in the afternoon, have some cheap wine and enjoy some relaxation.
Manchurian [Haliburton] Candidate
Tammy and I went to see the new version of the Manchurian Candidate last night. Much more suspenseful than the original, however lacking Frank Sinatra. Maybe it’s just my particular political views but the concept of the movie seemed a little closer to home than I would like.
Is fear of flying contagious?
I’ve flown many times. In fact, at one point I was flying about 50% of the time for work. Week in the office, week on the road. I’ve never thought that much about flying, it’s just something that you need to do. No big deal.
When Tammy told me that she didn’t like to fly I didn’t really think that much about it. That is, until we flew together the first time. As she stomped her feet and told me to stop the plane from shaking in the turbulence I realized that she wasn’t joking, she really is scared of flying. After hearing her go on about going down in burning flames and how nobody survives I find myself sitting on the plane watching the wing and wondering, is it really supposed to bend that much?
Flights I’ve been on since being exposed to her phobia have me on pins and needles. I watch the wing. I watch the cabin. Have you ever noticed how the cabin and fuselage of the plane move independently? On a recent international flight there was a good three inches of movement between the two structures. How much can it move? As I descended on a recent flight into Chicago through the clouds I couldn’t help but wonder if there were other planes out there. Is it really safe to be going 250 mph when you can’t see anything?
Cleary I need to regain my innocence and ignorance about flying and stop listening to her.
Garden State
Tonight Tammy and I took it easy and went to a movie. We decided to check out Garden State. I really liked the movie. If you enjoyed movies like Lost in Translation or Niagara, Niagara, I’m almost positive that you will like Garden State. I left the movie also thinking that it reminded me a lot of The Graduate, even though I couldn’t figure out why.
It took me a moment to get over Zach Braff. Braff wrote, directed and starred in this. I’m not that big of a fan of Scrubs, and while this movie has nothing to do with Scrubs I kept on thinking about it with him on the screen in front of me. However, given the quality of this movie and that it was his deal, I left with much more respect for him.
I’m tempted to get the soundtrack. The music in the film was perfect.