Got Sisu?

I went up north this past weekend with Kate to run in the 26th annual Brimson Sisu run. This community race to help raise money for the local fire department was supposed to be a respectable 4.4 miles. The course changes each year, and therefore the mileage waivers slightly in order to include or exclude certain points of interest. Just my luck, this year's run netted out much closer to 5.5 miles. I managed, but have been paying the price the past couple of days with sore legs. Guess my goal of running a 10k this year just became that much more attainable.

Into the Wild, well, sort of

So I'm heading out into the great white north tomorrow for my first-ever dog sledding trip. If I don't lose a finger or part of my nose I'll consider it a successful adventure.

Supposedly there's an opportunity to take a polar bear plunge of sorts at the end of the trip. I'm posting that now so you, my faithful readers, hold me to it and will rip on me in case I wimp out.

Hoping for some exciting pictures to follow. I'll see you in a few.

I'm a Nobody

I volunteered at the Minnesota State Fair today for MPR's The Current. I thought it would be a great people watching opportunity, and not to mention a free ticket into the fair. Part of my job was to go up and greet anyone that approached the booth, talk to them about the fair (eat anything on a stick?), MPR, and hand out various freebies (buttons, magnets, etc).

One family briefly stopped in front of the booth and I knelt down to ask the little girl if she'd like a button. The mom started to walk away, pulling the girl behind her. The little girl looked up at her mom and asked, "Who was that?" Without looking back, the mom flatly said, "That's nobody, honey."

Sweet.

Minnesota Majestic

I watched my friend Matt play in the Minnesota Majestic this weekend (never mind the outdated graphic, but notice the semblance to the Masters logo).

It wasn't his best tournament, but it was still enjoyable on my end. I'm a decent disc golfer, but watching pros makes me feel like fool. I'm pretty sure the top pros can throw nearly twice as far as I can.

Minnesota = Golf

I played golf tonight with fellow blogger Bradley. About halfway through the round I came to the realization that the game of golf is a lot like Minnesota, particularly Minnesota's weather.

Golf can be a very frustrating sport. You can play for 4 hours straight and hit 4 hours worth of bad shots. But then you have that one shot that just simply feels right. I mean, it was perfect. All of a sudden you forget about your prior frustrations. You think to yourself that maybe golf isn't so bad. Not only do you enjoy it, but you feel like you're pretty good at it too. You can see yourself playing golf for a very long time.

Minnesota can be a very frustrating state to live in. You can have 5 months worth of winter and be ready for spring 4.5 of those months. But then the ground thaws, the geese return, and the weather is just simply perfect. Suddenly, you find yourself loving Minnesota. Why wouldn't anyone want to live here? The winter wasn't so bad after all, was it? You can see yourself living here for a very long time.

When Mimes Go Sledding

This past weekend was not only my wonderful parent's 35th wedding anniversary, but it was also the Subway Bed Race for Bridging event. The concept, although a little nuts, is very straightforward: Assemble a team of four, dress up in random costumes, hop on a mattress, and race down a snow-tubing hill.

Due to the last-minute assembly of our team, we only had a day to plan. Somehow, we decided to go as a team of mimes. We were welcomed throughout the night with numerous side comments such as "Nobody likes a mime", and "Mimes don't talk". It was great.

In our first heat, we smoked the competition. We easily beat the next bed by 30 yards. My face nearly fell off from the extremely cold combination of wind and snow blowing in my face the entire way down the hill, but I didn't care. We mimes were going to kick some butt.

Our second run was a complete 180. We got stuck in the slowest lane out there -- so slow in fact that we got stuck twice on the slope. Our bed racing dreams were over.

I wish I had taken more photos, so I'm hoping someone else in Flickrland was at the race (I did find a YouTube video, which is decent if you skip to about 2:30 in). The winning costume award went to a team of giant silverware. The topper was that one of their members was Asian, and he dressed up as chopsticks. Everybody loved it.

Snow Snow Snow

Minnesota is finally living up to its name. The snow just simply will not stop.

How much is it snowing do you ask? Enough that around 12:30 today we were notified over the PA system that we were allowed to leave work at 1:00 if desired. I couldn't believe it.

Doe, a Deer

Just got back from cross country skiing at Theodore Worth Parkway with Robbie(bus). It was a perfect Minnesota day for winter sports -- cold, but sunny -- and it was a good first outing for the season.

At one point we stopped in front of a small bridge that crossed a stream and waited for a better skier to pass. The skier stopped as well, and at first we wondered why. Then a few seconds later about 10 deer slowly approached from the other side, looking at us with as much curiosity as we held for them.

After cautiously crossing the bridge they took off in the snow, performing the most elegant and beautiful bounding leaps I've ever seen, as if they were bouncing from cloud to cloud. Needless to say it was pretty cool*, and it made me feel like a clumsy idiot with two fiberglass sticks strapped to my feet.


*My 11th grade creative writing teacher would be appalled at such a terrible use of a non-vivid verb and adjective.

Room & Board

I decided to check out Room & Board's outlet sale this past weekend. They open at 10am on Saturday; when I showed up at 10:14 the parking lot was so full I had to park a quarter of a mile away. People in Minneapolis are serious about their furniture.

On more than one occasion I overheard a well-dressed, attractive young couple next to me mention, "this would look great in our lake house", or, "this would be perfect for the cabin". If you're unaware, Room & Board is nice stuff. As in, I would feel spoiled having it in my primary residence, let alone my second home. Apparently Minnesotans are also serious about their lake homes.

Cotton Balls are Falling!

There was a lot of commotion at a window near my cube (yes, I love the fact that I'm surrounded by 3.5 neutral-colored temporary "walls"), and so I decided to get up and look for myself.

It literally looks like someone far up in the sky is shaking an enormous bag of cotton balls. I've never seen such big round flakes in all my life!