the middle coaster

You cannot make me say "supper".

The evening meal is dinner. I don't care how long I live here, I'm not calling it anything else.

And that is how you will always be able to tell I'm not really from around here. 

At the rock show

It's nice to live in a city where it's only a fifteen minute bus ride, no transfer, to catch a band. In California it was always a schlep, even when we lived in the city itself (forget it when we lived in the suburbs--so much looking for parking, then so much walking from the parking, it added so much time to the beginning and end of every show).

Last night, New Pornographers with Neko Case at First Avenue. Lucky us.

Art appreciation

Molly and her auntie staging a photograph of Daisy "holding up" the cherry. 

Seen in the neighborhood:

Tiny sticker of a sailboat on a fence picket near the kids' school. Random acts of adorable.

Cabin

The Cabin was the not-so-secret number one reason we moved to the Midwest.

It used to be the only place we ever went on vacation. We went every 4th of July, a few days before and after the fourth usually, depending on which day of the week Independence Day fell. It was not optional, to the extent that in all the years I lived in the Bay Area, I never once saw a San Francisco gay pride parade, because we were always already out of town. But the whole family always gets together over the 4th and to miss that would be unthinkable. One year we even coerced our friends to join us, a plane ride full of toddlers where miraculously nobody got Home'd Alone, and which we should like to re-enact as soon as is humanly possible, only this time, even more so.

The cabin is a classic Big Deal thing in this part of the world but with real estate prices what they are, we are lucky to have a) access to a cabin, b) access to one that has nice beds and toilets that don't stink, c) access to one that is awesome in every other way that a cabin can be awesome, including but not limited to: boats, nearby bars, another boat, enough space that a person can go hide somewhere if it gets too crowded, still more boats, nearby wilderness activities year-round, ample supplies of beer, and a kayak.

Now that we are here, we don't have to focus all our Cabin Energy on the week of July 4 (not that we won't be there that week, and not that the cabin doesn't demand Full Throttle Being of its denizens at all time, focused or not, but the pressure is a little lighter). And sometimes we can even make the drive on a non-holiday weekend, which I'm sure will be a revelation, but it wasn't so bad on Memorial Day, after all.

Here's to Summer 2010, our first as Minnesotans.