… plenty of busy, that is!  Friday was actually pretty chill.  Karen and I had been detoxing last week and Friday was our first day off, so we went to Town Talk for a quick dinner – it ended up being more grease than our fragile and recently cleansed systems could handle and we both regretted the decision.  But hey, hard to resist going when you know you can get a seat at the bar with the coolest bartender in the area.  We crashed early that night because Karen had an event the next morning requiring her to get up at 5:15!!

Scotty Fun Day
Our good friend Scott is leaving in a few days for Colorado to take some sweet acting classes which will hopefully segue into a masters program next year.  Before his flight from the cities, Karen and he made an informal list of must-do activities to do locally.  Starting things off would be a river ride in a Padelford paddle boat, followed by Italian pig out at Cosetta’s in St. Paul…

… as it happened, Padelford doesn’t do public tours until June.  So we (plus Sierra) headed to Lake Calhoun and rented a sweet 4-person paddleboat and hit the chain of lakes!  Fun!  Only, instead of a nice relaxing saunter down the river in a powered boat, we quickly discovered that moving a paddleboat of this size took quite a bit of leg power.  It was suspiciously like exercise.  Still, the weather was beautiful and the lakes were gorgeous, and despite a nearly calamitous rage blackout by yours truly about which direction we were drifting, the ride was quite enjoyable.

It turned out we were more in the mood for drinks than Italian pig out after our ride, so we altered course to Chino Latino in Uptown and made short work of a few martinis and margaritas.  Karen and Sierra kept things moving with a big "bowl of drink" — I can’t remember what it was called, but that’s what it was.  Whoa.  A few shared dishes later and we were all moaning about being stuffed…

A short hour or two recoup at DuoTeam HQ and we were off again!  We had a quick drink at Nye’s, regaled by the sound of Ruth Adam’s polka band.  Quite the place, I can’t believe I’d never been.  Next to an art opening organized by one of Sierra’s roommates in a warehouse gallery in NorthEast.  Fun, but full of hipsters and artists — great as individuals, but a roomful of them together sort of seems to turn into a big out-hip contest.  Ah well.  Some of the pieces were pretty cool, especially one demonstrating sound waves moving through non-newtonian liquids.  To me that belongs more in a Maker Faire, but hey, it looked as much like art as some of the other pieces.  :)

Then one last drink at the Kitty Cat Klub by the U, and finally home to bed.  Whew.  Scotty can now leave the cities happy.

Sunday Plants
While walking Bruno, Karen had made friends with some neighbors with a bunch of native plants who subsequently offered to give some to us.  Today was the day, so after cleaning the house all morning we headed over to collect some plants – and by some, I mean "a ton".  The rest of the afternoon was spent adding to and creating little spaces on the periphery of the yard for the new plants.   We used logs from the tree we cut down last year to create visual dividers between the lawn and the new plants, I think it works pretty well – especially with the new mulch in the pic at right.  Ahh, something about a fern with dappled sunshine on it just makes me happy…  :)

We somehow still had some energy so we invited Justin and Juliana and Scott and Cody over for an outdoor wok-on-the-grill stir fry!  I’d never done this before but I’m happy to report it went very well – the trick is to tie the wok base to the grill face to keep it from sliding.  For dessert I brought out a very special purchase – local organic ice cream made with Surly Furious!!  YUM.

What a weekend.  Good times, good times.  And tonight is opening night for the St. Paul Saints — Cody’s first official game as announcer!  I’ll be there cheering…

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