Civic duty still boring

The jury duty has not gotten any less boring. I still have not seen anything but the assembly room. The good news is that I will not have to report to the courthouse tomorrow.    

Civic duty is boring - so far

I served my first day of jury duty today. Very uneventful. You are sitting in a large room that is too well heated with 112 of your closest strangers and wait. You wait for a person in a suit to come out of his office and announce your name to go to be part of our government. Well, I get to go back tomorrow - maybe he will call my name.

Statue found

I will post the location after the trivia weekend.

Trivia is driving me crazy

Can anyone identify this photo? Private e-mail preferred to avoid other teams finding the answer on the net.

Appetizing?

Saw this sign when visiting a local fast food recently. Sounds yummy!

Aaron's birthday party

We have been wanting to see my nephew's house for a while. We used his birthday as a good excuse to invite ourselves over. The candles for the cake were forgotten, so a tea light was substituted. Aaron has posted photos from the party on his blog.

Trivia Weekend approaching

I am now addicted. I will be participating in the upcoming trivia weekend. I received copies of the visual trivia yesterday and have spent at least 10 hours already researching the information. I won't post much about them here since I don't want to give away anything. I can't wait for February 10th - the start of the contest. Check out the contest website at www.kvsg.org

More theater involvement

I have been recruited as the Production Manager, Production Assistant, Production Secretary, whatever you want to call it, for the upcoming production of Jesus Christ Superstar at my church. This should be an interesting adventure. The cast is split between adults that have to work all day and high school kids that have to worry about school and homework and jobs. We have only about 2 months of prep time before the shows in mid to late March. Auditions were held on Sunday and the call backs tonight. Thursday is the big day - first rehearsal and the time that the cast finds out what roles they will be playing.

Night at the Theater

I just left the Guthrie Theater at intermission. The play, The People's Temple, was plodding along and did not seem to hold much hope for anything except more of the same in the second act. Maybe I just was not in the mood to hear about Jonestown. Part of the reason to leave was technical. For most of the first act there was a disturbing buzz or hum in the sound system. It was bad enough that I was tempted to leave during the show and complain a couple of times. I guess the old theater is starting to fall apart with only a couple of months left.

This is a boring night. It is only the cats and me in the house. Oh, yes, I forgot the beta too. I will be feeding the fish right after this blog entry.

I think I am starting to show signs of the flu that everyone else got at Christmas. Might be a good night to head to bed early.

Job search has officially begun

The official start of my new job search was today. I went to an orientation meeting at the outplacement firm. This is going to be a whole new experience for me - the branding of ManOfWy! It should keep me busy for a while. Maybe by the end I will know what I want to be when I grow up.

Design to sell - the saga continues

The wall in the main bathroom is not smooth and it never will be. We looked at using a faux finish on that wall and were advised to leave it alone. Many potential buyers will be turned off by it and most will be looking at repainting anyway. The good news is the bathrooms are now all completely painted! There are now rooms that can be checked off as complete (all need cleaning yet but that is phase III).

I was able to have a nice lunch with my sister at Norman Quacks. They seem to have decent food and atmosphere there and it is not like going to one of the chains in Forest Lake.

Design to sell

The ongoing project to update my parents old house for sale continues. The light fixtures have now all been updated. The clutter at least consolidated. The bedrooms are all repainted to neutral colors as are the bathrooms, kitchen, living room, and family room. Still to go is the hallway, stairway, and dining room. The skylights also still need to be painted. The carpets can then be replaced in the bedrooms and the rest of the house given a good cleaning. We set a goal today to have it market ready by the end of the month. I'll post some pictures soon in case anyone is interested in buying a lakeshore home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities.

Morning rain

Rain in January! This is Minnesota not California. At least it has now stopped and most of the roads had enough traffic to dry out.

The buck stops here

For the first time we spotted a buck in our front yard. I was alerted to his presence by our ever vigilant cat, Neko. The deer had arrived from the direction of Bald Eagle Lake a couple of blocks from our house. He stopped to nibble on the foliage directly in front of the kitchen window. We have lived a couple of blocks from a nature center for over 20 years and never have seen deer in our yard before. Wish I would have grabbed a camera.