Warm Weather Weekend

It has been an absolutely gorgeous April so far here in Minnesota. The weather has been warm but not hot, sunny but not quite yet drought, and there have been plenty of sunny, blue-sky days to enjoy.

A couple of people have come to help us enjoy this warm weather. Becky Dernbach came back to temporarily live in our house on Thursday and has been exposing us all to some of the recipes that she learned while in Mexico.

Rachel's parents also came down over the weekend because her mom was taking some photography classes in St Paul. Most of this visit was spent in the usual fashion- us eating well while we enjoyed their company. Rachel also got to go to a Twins game over the weekend in some sweet seats at their new open air stadium. We also went to a storytelling performance over at the Black Forest Inn (a great place in town to get authentic German meals and beer... like the two are any different!)

The foremost reason we went to the performance was to see our friend Kathrin Glover perform. She's been in the theater world and in particular telling stories about her amazing life for a while now and is really, really good. Somehow she always manages to bring up yet another cool, interesting or shocking tidbit about her life, and I'm beginning to wonder if there is an end at all to the number of stories she can bring up at a whim.

This night's theme was High Maintenance, so her story was about a time early in her college career when she decided to focus solely on her music practicing... which became so intense that it caused severe trauma to her hands and arms. So much so that she had to rely on others to do simple tasks like tie her shoes for her. Her other compatriots on the stage added their various tales, all in very good form, including such juicy tidbits as:

• slam poetry on why he needs to be able to use the & in his poetry and why it makes a difference, thankyouverymuch
• a woman's reminiscence of her first marriage to a man who was pretty on the outside but just not what she was looking for on the inside
• a guy who sang a folk song about not liking a person's name. He didn't like the name so much that he instead used a name of an audience member instead of the other name.
• the purchase of a brand new, stainless steel refrigerator, and how it reflected on the rest of the storyteller's life
• and many more.

It was a great evening, and I even managed to pick up Kathryn's book, The Diary Theif. Haven't read it yet, but that's mostly because I've been saving it for later.

That's not all for now, but I'll let the various news bits dribble out like a good blogger. Look for more postings this week.

Until next time...

We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea. Fine sunsets seem to be rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are soft, sensuous, lovely --they are exquisite, refined, effeminate, but we have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.
- The Innocents Abroad