A Day in My Life

This was the second weekend in a row that we left the house and went out of town. This weekend, the destination was Duluth. More specifically, our destination ultimately was our friends Kari and Per’s wedding. Originally, we were only going to stay up there for one night, but I found a great deal on a hotel for a buy one night and get one free with one free breakfast deal. That was so good there was no way we could pass that one up. So I left work a little early on Friday so that we could get a jump on the weekend travel. Once we made it past Forest Lake on 35, it was smooth sailing. We arrived in the city and checked into the hotel right around 8:00. We threw our stuff in our room and went out to grab something to eat. A couple Jimmy Johns sandwiches later, we were back at the hotel, using a free drink ticket the hotel gave us and hitting up the hot tub. Even though the tub wasn’t very hot, it still felt good. Back in the room, we discovered that we had HG TV. Since we don’t have cable at home, we were hooked! Once you start watching that channel, you can’t stop. There were many times throughout the weekend where we would say “this is the last show,” and then we would proceed to watch another two shows.

On Saturday, we woke up and went to get our breakfast in the rotating dining room at the top of our hotel. This was a pretty fun experience. I wish I would have brought my sunglasses to breakfast though. The sun was really bright reflecting off of the buildings and the lake. After breakfast and a couple HG shows, we made our way up to Enger tower.

If you’ve never been there, Enger Tower in on the top of a hill overlooking the city and the lake. It is a great location just to relax and enjoy the city. Not only is it a great tower to look out from, there are also some great gardens up there.

Across from the parking lot for the tower, there are more gardens and a great lookout place. They have some benches and a nice gazebo up on the hill so we took a load off and enjoyed the view of the city. We were really able to soak in the whole city from up there.

After resting on the bench, we packed it up and drove down to Canal Park. We had been there together before so we just decided to walk around and soak up the sun. The weather was pretty nice that day, a little breezy though, but since the town in right on a huge body of water, that is to be expected. We walked to the end of the pier and we were able to watch a boat drive though and the bridge lift for it. It was only a small, personal boat rather than a huge ocean liner, but that was OK.

That brought us to mid-afternoon so we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. We arrived at the church about ten minutes for it started so we ended up pretty close to the back of the church. Even though we weren’t very close to the front, we did have a good view of side of Sven Sundgaard’s face. Yep, he was sitting right in front of us. We expected to see him there as we knew he was a cousin of the brides. The wedding lasted right about 44 minutes. We filled out to congratulate the happy new married couple and waited to blow bubbles as they made their way to the limo. We jumped in the car and made our way over to the reception site.

The bride is a friend of Bethany’s from work which meant that I didn’t know anyone there. We ended up at a table with a couple other nurses and a few engineer friends of couple’s from college. They were all a bunch of fun people so we had a good time talking with them all. I had the walleye and Bethany had the chicken for dinner. That was the third time that I had walleye that week and each fish got progressively better. That was a big relief after I had the first fish of the week. We stayed at the reception talking with people until around 9:30 that evening. After getting some pictures with the happy couple, we headed back to the hotel.

Sunday was pretty restful as we didn’t end up checking out until about 11:30 that morning. We stop for some brunch at Perkin’s were I was able to get my French toast. After that glorious toast and a few cups of coffee, we got back in the car and made the couple hour trip back home. Since it was still nice outside when we got back home, we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. All in all, it was a pretty great weekend. Be sure to check out the rest of our pictures from the weekend.

For Memorial Day weekend, Bethany and I made the long trek up to South Dakota to visit her parents. We actually hadn’t made it up there since last August. I took Thursday and Friday off of work so that we could make it an even longer weekend. We left Thursday morning when Bethany got off of work after working for twelve hours. Needless to say, she slept for most of the ride. We made pretty good time on the eight hour drive by making it in only six and a half hours and we arrived mid-afternoon. We just bummed around the house for the rest of the day. It’s amazing how much a long drive can take it out of you.

Bethany has a dog at her parents house whose name is Sam. Sam, you should know, is a farm dog of farm dogs. He loves running around the farm, rolling around in mud, and eating whatever he happens to find. Because he is such a farm loving dog, he gets pretty dirty really fast. Bethany said that the last time she gave him a bath was when she was in high school. On Friday, Bethany decided that Sam needed to have a bath after all of these years. Let’s face it, he smelled. So she broke out the dog shampoo that was left from eight years ago and went to town on him while I just sat back and relaxed in the sun. Sam was such a sport. While I can’t say he really enjoyed the bath, he did put up with it without much of a struggle. After getting hosed off and shaking a bit, he did what any good farm dog would do, he walked right over to the driveway and rolled around in the dirt for a couple minutes. It was pretty much a taunt saying that no matter how clean you make me, you can’t change me.

Saturday we woke up a little earlier than we did the previous day, which really isn’t saying much, to head over to Aberdeen for some horse races. Aberdeen is the closest city to Eureka at about 70 miles away. We arrived at the track right about 1:00 on what was really a beautiful day. To our amazement, the tickets to get in were free and the program was only $3 so we decided to splurge for one. While we’re not gamblers, we did pick out a horse to root for each race. The first race started at 1:30 so we had plenty of time to scoop out the horses and have ours picked for the first race. What we didn’t realize after the first race was that it took 30 minutes before the next race would start. Thankfully, there were good concessions at the track for during the breaks. It was quite a fun day. What I didn’t realize though, was sitting in the same position all day puts the sun on the same side of me for the same amount of time. Unfortunately, this meant that the sun beat on me all day and gave me a nice sunburn on the left side of my neck and part of my face. Not a whole lot of fun let me tell you. Thankfully, the burn is about gone now and it doesn’t sting too much anymore.

We went to Bethany’s home church on Sunday morning at 9:00 which meant the earliest morning of the three. After church, we went back to the house and started to pack up our stuff. Along with all of our things, we also packed up a whole bunch of food. It’s hard to say no to a whole bunch of meat from a cattle farmer! That is some of the best meat you will ever have, hands down. After lunch, we loaded up the car and started the long trek back to Oakdale.

Just so you have an idea of what a good looking place South Dakota can be, here is a picture to mull over until you get your chance to visit. Be sure to check out all of my pictures from the weekend posted on my pictures page.

For those of you who were at Bethany and my wedding, you may have noticed that at that time, Bethany’s sister Rachel was currently pregnant. What you didn’t know, and frankly, neither did we at that time, was that Bethany’s other sister was also pregnant at the time. She ended up telling everyone that she was pregnant the very next day after our gift opening. Talk about adding more happiness onto excitement! She proceeded to tell us that she was due on May 15th, this coming Friday.

Well, Bethany and I were sitting at home last night just about ready to start heading to bed when the phone rang. She looked and me and said, “I bet you it is Erika and she had the baby.” I’m not kidding, she said that! She answered the phone with a “Hello Erika” and we knew there was going to be some good news. She told us that at 6:05, May 11, little Liv Isabel Klawiter was born!

Isn’t she so cute? Erika said that when she starts to cry, she has a little pouty lower lip. If you’re interested in the baby stats, she was 8 lbs 9 oz, 21 inches long. We are planning on heading down to St. Louis to visit everyone this coming June. Now we have one more reason to make it a high priority to get down there this summer. Before I was married, there were no little ones in my family. Now I am an uncle to two nieces and four nephews. Wow, what a change! I do have to say that all those little guys are a lot of fun and they have a lot of energy! Have you ever tried to keep up with a five year-old, you can’t do it. Now there is going to be one more little kid to try to keep up with, and I can’t wait to try.

Since owning my house, I have only had to make one improvement to the house which was replacing the garage door opener. My old one went out one morning before work – not a convenient time to say the least. Thankfully, one of the guys that works for my dad also works on garage doors on the side. He was able to come out rather quickly and replaced it with a used unit. Since I have already been here for two and a half years, I thought I was doing pretty well. That record was broken last weekend.

We had Bethany’s sister Rachel, her husband Paul, and their new baby Abram staying with us for a few days last week. I had noticed that the water heater had a small leak a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think that it was anything to be really worried about. I knew that we would have to start thinking about having it replaced fairly soon, but since it was only a small drip, we had some time. While they were staying with us, I mentioned to Paul that it had started to leak ever so slightly a little while ago and asked his opinion on it. He thought we should go take a look at it that night. It is a good thing we did! That thing had really started to leak. Now instead of a small drip, we had Niagara Falls on our hands! Well, not quite that bad, but it had grown significantly worse. He told me that it would have to be replaced, and soon. I gave a call to my friend Marc hoping he may know a plumber as I had never had to call one before. He pointed me towards Paul the Plumber. I left him a message that night asking if he would be available in the next day or two to replace our water heater. Paul called me the next morning and we set up a time for first thing Saturday morning.

Saturday rolled along and Paul showed up around 8:30 and jumped right to work. He had brought out a new water heater that he compared as being the Buick of water heaters. Since I’m not really a GM fan, I was a little skeptical right off the bat. He assured me that it was a step above anything that you would find at Menards, so he dove right in. He had the old one ripped out in no time at all. While doing the work, he found that the valve that controlled the water flow from the main wasn’t working properly so he put in a new value that would actually do what it was supposed to do. He also had to adjust the pipe length because the new heater was slightly taller than the old one. After some quick pipe cutting and soldering, it was ready to be installed. This also took him no time at all. When it was all said and done, he was here for about two hours. I was extremely grateful to Paul for coming on what is normally his day off. He was very pleasant and very knowledgeable. I now have no doubt who I’ll be calling for all my future plumbing needs.

I didn’t think to take a picture of what the old heater looked like. That would really have made for an interesting pic. However, I do have a picture of what our new “Buick” water heater looks like.

It seems like right when the weather starts to change for the better, it turns right back around and gets bad again. This has happened the last few weeks here in the good ‘ol state of Minnesota. That is also exactly what is happening today. Yesterday, it was sunny with a high in the low 60′s. Not quite a tremendous day to be outside, but getting there. Then we got to today. When I woke up, the sun was rising in the east with clouds from the west speedily tracking it down. When I look outside now, the sky is completely cloud covered and weatherman is predicting a great than 50% chance of thunderstorms by 4:00 and almost 70% chance by 10:00 tonight. Thankfully, all of this rain is going to be falling during the week when I am cooped up inside. Right now, the weekend is looking to be quite a bit nicer. However, I always have to remind myself that I do live in Minnesota and things can change rather quickly around here.

Currently, there is a large construction project going on in downtown Minneapolis. In years past, I would have been all for this type of construction because it would have had little impact on my daily life. Now, however, this construction is a real pain in the neck. The work it being done all along Marquette and 2nd Avenues. My building happens to be right in the middle of the two streets. While the hammering and working noise isn’t continuous, this does make getting into my building that much more difficult. My normal bus stop has been shut down because of the construction so I have to get off at the previous stop. Not a big deal, right. Oh, but it is. This means that I now have to cross construction nightmare twice just to make it in the door to the building. So not only do I get the privileged of dodging the normal cars, buses, and bicycles, I also get the chance to jump out of the way of bobcats, backhoes, and excavation trucks. Let me tell you, those excavation trucks are loud suckers! I would equate their level of decibel to that of a jet engine. I feel like I should start bring ear plugs to work so I don’t have to claim disability any time soon.

Well, that’s all for my negative sounding post for today. I just wanted to give a shout out to Corey Weber for insisting that I post today.

Hello and welcome to the new home of my blog. I really like the new look the blog has and have greatly enjoyed working with WordPress. It is such an improvement from working in Blogger. Let me know what you think of the new site. Maybe this will give me an incentive to post more. Who knows, it could happen!

Over this past week, I have played broomball in two different leagues and experienced two things I never have before. The first happened last Sunday evening. On Sunday’s, I play in the Twin Cities Church Broomball League on North Haven’s team. We are normally a fairly decent team. This past week, we were playing a team of former Bethel guys. Ironically, a lot of them are old band guys which made the game a little more fun. That night, the ice was cover in a layer of snow about an inch deep which really slowed the pace of the game. It made the game more like boot hockey than broomball being that there was a lot of kicking of the ball going on. Anyway, about mid-way through the second half, I found myself down on my knees fighting for the ball. This is a pretty normal thing for me to be doing during any given game. Except this time, the guy I was up against hit the ball away and started to run. Unfortunately for me, he ran over my stick and got it caught between his legs and tripped. The whistle blew and I got called on a tripping penalty. This is my first penalty ever and the first of the league for the season. That was my first broomball first of the week.

The second one happened on Wednesday night in the Minneapolis City league. You should know first of all that this league it a lot more intense and way more competitive. Also, the ice is always much better! We started off the first half by going up 2-1. Just as the half was winding up, John Sheehan was on right side fighting to clear the ball out of our zone. As the struggle continued, his opponent tried to hit the ball out and ended up having his stick graze off of John’s and came up and hit John right in the face. He immediately went down to the ice. By the time I got over to where he was, he was trying to sit up and was bleeding out of his mouth. When he moved his hand away from his face, we saw that he had a large gash in the middle of his top lip. Then the whistle blew to end the first half. He ran into the warming hut to try and make the bleeding stop. As the second half was starting, he came back out and said he needed to go to the hospital to get some stitches. He called Marc over to drive him there. As Marc was coming, he said that he also thought that one of his teeth had been broken. This was the worst broomball accident that I have ever seen. Marc came back for some of his things after the game and said that not only would he be needing some stitches, but dental work was also in order. I feel so bad for John. But, knowing him, he’ll be out only as long as the doctors and his wife make him stay out of broomball. I hope he has a speedy recovery.

I’m planning on playing some more broomball tomorrow morning. I hope this crazy week of broomball firsts is all over with and never to return!