Minndemo 23

I went to Minnedemo (#23) downtown on July 14.  It was at the Pantages Theater in downtown Minneapolis.  I wasn't so sure I wanted to go because it was closing in on RAGBRAI, but I finally decided I enjoyed the presentations enough I'd make it work.

Presentations included Toursler, which is a cool use of virtual Google-map style functionality to allow tours of high end houses synced to floor plans.  The dev presenting is obviously into the tech as he was already playing around with VR and demo-ed how they'd used a bit of machine intelligence training to get the computer to identify rooms by aspects of the photos (toilet = bathroom) so they could eliminate a lot of the manual tagging. Gave me some ideas I need to explore.

I found Townsourced less interesting.  The point of a local board, such as you find at your coffee shop, would seem to be that it's local.  By allowing individuals to cross post to multiple community boards, that breaks the metaphor (in my opinion).

Genovest is a stock analysis (but not purchasing) tool.  I think the crux of it is visualization meets investing.  There's a lot of math under it as well, but the output seems to give you visualizations you can use to investigate.  This got me to wondering whether there are investment tools/games for kids.  There does appear to be an official app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stock-market-game/id702878174?ls=1&mt=8 - although I haven't used it so I don't know whether it does some of the same visualization tech that's part of the newer app experience.

HabitAware is AMAZING.  You can smell the clever idea w/o significant complexity in their application.  They've taught a bracelet to record gestures.  Then, when you repeat that gesture, the bracelet will give you a warning.  Don't like a particular way you gesticulate, you'll get warnings.  More importantly: nail biting, skin picking, hair pulling.  The inventor created it to help his wife who had constantly removed her eyebrows via plucking.  Now she has eyebrows.  

DiviUp - you buy a coupon/deal and you get savings, a charity gets a cut, and the business gets a little more business.  Groupon with a conscience.  It's a good idea, but those sorts of coupon/rebate/deal apps wear me out.

Kinetic Data.  Well...if you understand this diagram you get it.  It simplifies a lot of backend processes with an easy UI.  We considered variations on the same process for some contract handling work I reviewed.  Their reference to Salesforce and LDAP makes this very much a similar architecture.

And the best...Chicken Scoop AI.  These two came out on stage and gave a presentation on training cameras to identify chickens and present charts/data/visualizations on their activity for purposes of tracking the chickens' behavior, eggs, etc.  Very interesting where they pointed to a chicken that was probably dead (yes sad, but interesting from a data tracking perspective).  Here's a slide that gives you a small sense of their humor.

MST3K Reunion

End of June Eryn and I went to the MST3K reunion event at the State Theater downtown.  I sponsored their Kickstarter reboot and they had sent me a notice it was coming, but I hadn't thought about it until I realized Eryn might want to go.  The MST3K t-shirt she owns and frequently wears should have been a sign.  She encouraged me to buy tickets, so we made it a daddy-daughter night.

It was an excellent venue.  We could see (and hear) well, despite how far away they were from our seats.  We didn't sit here.  We sat inside.


Eryn's not always pleased to have her photo taken.  As Mean Mr Mustard said, teenage girls seem to want to be ironic about everything, even if they're having a kickass time.


Inside the theater.  That guy in front of us snuggled with his Tom Servo rather than his girlfriend for the whole show.  Although Tom's head came off at one point, so I wonder if he was full of hard liquor.  The real Tom would probably approve.


The pre-show trivia was excellent.


In the outer area where you could find a snack, there was a costume contest going on. I wasn't sure if this guy was supposed to be Mike or Joel.  Crow wasn't subject to the same confusion, although he didn't talk, so who knows which version he's representing.


Dr. Forrester.  He had the look down, but I didn't get the sense he had the attitude down.


Our closest seat neighbor.  I'm not sure where he had these hidden the first half hour - you couldn't buy them - but at some point he pulled out his plushy Crow and Servo.


Eryn, a little less grumpy at having her photo taken.  Sleepy looking though.  The show consisted of alumni riffing on shorts.  We saw Mike, his wife, Joel, Dr. Forrester, TV's Frank, Pearl...well, all of them, including Jonah Ray who will be the new castaway.  It was a busy show. They covered several shorts, but our favorites where: Industrial Accidents (don't stick your arm in a great big metal moving tube), Is it Corn? (we can't be sure...but it's good for art), the perfect 50s kitchen (housewives manipulating their husband to procure large appliances, starring the dad from A Christmas Story).

Eryn laughed like a maniac.


We parked several blocks away at the hotel I usually park at. It was a good walk and we saw this painting of Como, which I don't think is nearly as good as the photos I framed for Ming.  And we saw a piano on the street which confused us, but apparently it's art: http://www.downtownmpls.com/pianos

Catch Up - Part V - Cedar Riverside

One last catch up.  Goes all the way back to August of last year.  Kyle and I visited our old apartment complex at Cedar Riverside on a historical tour.  I've mentioned I lived there a number of times, and I'm often in the neighborhood, in part because Theatre in the Round is right up the street, but I haven't been back inside the building since I lived there in the late 80s slash early 90s over a quarter century ago. When we were there it seemed to be primarily low-income white and Hmong with Ethiopian immigrants just starting to move in.  My understanding is it's mostly Ethiopian immigrants now and the building manager (who was the building manager when we were there) noted that they tend to stay longer because of religious no-interest-bearing loans restrictions which can keep them out of houses.  But the flip side is they're very nice to their apartments because they're there for a long time.

The sign sort of freaked me out because it didn't really occur to me when I moved in that it had only been there about 13 or 14 years.  Kyle and I lived there in the first 1/3 of its existence.



I craned my neck to look at this view more times than I can remember.


When they repainted, they kept the colored panels because there's a lot of nostalgia about them.  Brighter than what I remember some of the older pastel-ish pinks being, however.


At one point they took us to the roof of McKnight where they used to allow residents to go.  Kyle and I must have missed that opportunity by a few years, so it was exciting to get up there.  McKnight is 39 floors high.  Kyle and I lived on the top floor of D, facing Cedar Avenue, which was 21 floors.  That was so high fire truck ladders couldn't reach you, so this was WAY up there.  If you click through to Flickr, some of these are nice in a larger resolution.  I particularly like this one.



Looking at the nearby highways.


The University of Minnesota.


I think we're looking at the new I-35 bridge here.  That tall apartment building to the right of the bridge is where my Arthurian studies professor lived with her older (also a professor) husband.  The windows on the decks were removable, but her husband was too old to handle them, so one class assignment was to swap out the windows while we talked about our Arthurian projects.  That bluish building is Theatre in the Round.  The white building in the foreground is where my wife once got the red bean paste Good Wife cookie she had to spit up in her hand.  To the right of it, with the green awning is the Acadia where Kyle and I went for lunch  Beneath my feet are the Wienery from the post referenced above and the Cedar Riverside Cultural Center.


The new stadium going in.  Much further along now.  As of this week they were working on siding and glass/windows and moving the Star Tribune folks to new digs so they could use their building as a park.  Kyle sent me an article about Jon Bream's 25000 record collection being sold off as part of the move.



You'll have to go zoom in on this one.  Not much point to a tiny panorama.
Larger panorama



They also took us on a tour of a room. These look EXACTLY like the single bedroom Kyle and I shared for two years in college.  More than a bit of deja-vu.  This is the room we slept in.  Kyle had the left side of the room


I slept right next to this window, except 21 stories up.  I loved waking up to the full wall drop off every morning.  Definitely gets your brain going.


This is why we didn't have parties at our place.  Obviously we could have let some of them hang out in the bedroom, but still a bit crowded.  This picture does highlight that we had a pretty nice one bedroom apartment in college.  It's plain, but the fact that these tourists all fit with room to spare shows just how much room we had if you include a separate kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.  Not to mention it came with cable tv, close circuit cameras for the front doors, sprinklers (after year one), a/c and heat and water shared communist style across everyone, and more (like one of the few apartments at that price with a dishwasher).


Speaking of shared a/c and heat, they took us for a tour of the bowels of Riverside Plaza.


Hard to see it in this picture...


...but the equipment is enormous.  This was just one of the rooms.  At the time, I was just happy for heat and a/c.  I never gave much thought to exactly how big the apparatuses were that kept me happy.

Catch Up - Part II - Mrs. Kelly's Teas

In December (December 6 to be precise), I talked Eryn into going to Mrs. Kelly's Tea's annual tea tasting.  M.A. Rosko from Channel 9's morning news had talked about it during the week - Eryn and I watch the news together in the morning and although Fox isn't necessarily in line with my political sentiments, they have a good local morning show here in the Twin Cities - and Eryn is a pretty serious tea drinker.

I think we tried almost 30 teas each.  We got there early enough to lock in a little table and two chairs, so one off us would go off and create three tea bags and bring them back with water, we'd spend a few minutes talking about our first sips, and then the other one of us would go find three different teas.  It was a tea assembly line.



There were several areas to fill your tea bags with a theme to the areas - fruity vs. black vs. oolong vs green.  This was one of several areas.  You just grabbed a few open-topped bags and scooped a plastic spoon of tea into each one to put in a small styrofoam cup.


Water stations were in the hallway so you could refill your cups.  While it might seem very un-eco-friendly to have all those styrofoam cups, it did make for less of a mess and Eryn and I were able to reuse the six we had (our 3/3 rotation cups) for everything we drank and there were collection and recycling spots all over the place (although I'm not sure if you can recycle styrofoam cups yet).


So here's our official set up with our tea list and cups.  We tried:

1. Africa Fruit Bowl
2. Cozy Chamomile
3. Fairy Tisane (smells like grass, the fresh cut outside kind, not the Colorado kind)
4. Tisane (Hibiscus)
5. Peach Mango
6. Spearmint
7. Honeybush
8. Strawberry Fields
9. Sunrise Surprise
10. Vanilla Orange
11. Strawberry Surprise
12. Cherry Green
13. Citrusnap
14. Chamomile (not cozy)
15. Gunpowder (weird)
16. Jasmine Pearls ($40 a bag and looks like little rolled flowers)
17. Jasmine Ginger (ewww...tasted like vasoline)
18. Emon Green (? or something like that)
19. Minneapple Green
20. Pear
21. Butterscotch
22. Creme of Raspberry (tastes like a scratch and sniff from my childhood)
23. Chocolate Mint (ick)
24. Spiced Orange
25. Banana Foster
26. Assam
27. English Breakfast
28. Russian Smoky (tasted like Bacon)
29. Peach Oolong
30. Holiday Decaf
31. Holiday not Decaf
32. Malted Chocolate or something like that

There might have been a few others.  Both Eryn and I were reeling from caffeine overload by the time we left.  Holiday, Vanilla Orange, and Minneapple were the three we took home, in addition to some gourmet chocolate and a bracelet for my wife from a custom jewelry boutique, Azra Jewelry.  We also doubled down on everything but the jewelry for my mother for her Secret Santa gift.



Here's Eryn before the caffeine hangover kicks in.


A few of the teas including Banana Foster which we snapped a picture of for my sister who refuses to talk about how she once made us Bananas Foster as a dessert.


After Mrs. Kelly's we did a neighborhood tour - this is right next to the warehouse Mrs. Kelly's abides in - and found some lunch at Maeve's Cafe and some books at the local used book store.  Eryn picked up a novel based on Halo, the video game, and I just this week found her three others at the library (although she's currently in the middle of Mort(e)), so our tea and book experiences are still front and center 4 months later.


Maeve's was a nice place to slowly unwind over iPad Fluxx and get some food on top of all that liquid.


I particularly liked this painting, although for most of our visit I thought it was a chalkboard you could write on without damaging the picture.  Fortunately, there was no chalk so I was saved from inadvertent vandalism.


Maeve's also had a wall of poetry, some of it an homage to squirrels.  I wonder if there are tulip bulbs in the sun (XKCD)?


And finally, this has NOTHING to do with the trip to Mrs. Kelly's directly, but it's part of Eryn's tea mini-obsession.  When my wife and I went to The Lagoon to see the animation Academy Award nominations recently, we wandered around Kitchen Windows ogling all the shiny coffee makers and toys.  We left with little for ourselves, but picked up this manatee tea steeper for Eryn (she has a thing for manatees after our first trip to Florida, and a stuffed manatee named Sally).

Bicycle Film Festival

I spent much of the last four days at a movie of some sort.  Thursday-Saturday I was at the Bike Film Festival in Minneapolis.  Thursday for two shows with Kyle and Ming.  Friday for two shows with Kyle.  And Saturday for a show with Kyle, my wife, and daughter.  A lot of bike movies. Sunday I topped it off with the last Harry Potter movie in 3D. We had to go for a convertible ride to the art park north of Stillwater on Sunday just to make up for all the weekend indoor time.

Contrary to Ming's contention that sexism in the bike shop industry seems to be a made up problem, I really enjoyed Dudey Free Zone at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  Even though they shut it down two minutes early because the museum closed.  The two things that stuck out were how almost every woman complained about men taking tools right out of their hands.  And the woman at Sunrise Cyclery who said some guy lifted the back of her pants to check out her calf without asking.  Her humorous observation that she'd ventured beyond the no dudes zone behind the counter was proof to me that it wasn't a bitter, made up, problem, but something being faced by people who were tired of it, but still had a great sense of humor.  Ming and Kyle had an extensive discussion about it on Facebook, and I chimed in today that it reminded me of the uproar around the Flashbelt conference in 2009.

Labor of Love, earlier that night, about a woman doing the Race Across America was amazing.  Caroline van den Bulk's 3000 mile trip, where she timed out only about 55 miles from the finish, but went the distance anyway, was an amazing look into what happens to someone who only sleeps 12 hours in 12 days while otherwise pedaling constantly.  It should come as no surprise that a complete emotional meltdown is part of the charm, although having your coach mock cry at you would come as something of a surprise (he did apologize to her on a tape recorder in the car after she finally got going again).

Some other notables. The Bilenky Junkyard Cross:


I liked Le Tour De Kagawa, a search for Udon shops, although that was primarily about the personalities of the Udon eaters/bicyclists, and not the riding.

I've blogged about My Commuted Commute before (thanks to Mean Mr. Mustard), about the bike lane in NYC.

Mark Ronson's Bike Song...excellent music video:


And the Tom Schroeder cartoons about bicycling stories in MN were wonderful, both Bike Ride:


And The Bike Race:


Sunchasers, about disabled cyclists, should have been better, but the editing wasn't very good. So you were often faced with long parts that weren't illuminating of the characters of the women involved.

Sunchasers Karissa Portrait from Irvin Coffee on Vimeo.

Eryn enjoyed how at one point the video started skipping during the credits, and the audience would clap. And stop. And clap. And stop. In time with the skipping. The Bike Film Festival audience is an extremely good-natured crowd.

Lots of Things to Do!

It's shaping up to be a busy month. I'm pondering this as my itinerary:

• It's already too late for Minneapolis Oktoberfest, Kielbasa fest, and the Granite City Oktoberfest. Next year!
• Friday, September 17. Devil, by M. Night Shyamalan, just so I can ruin it for Ming by telling him the plot. I have part of the work day reserved to go. Anyone interested?
• Saturday, September 18, breakfast at Junior's followed by board gaming at my house. Primarily Eurogaming as Troy won't be around. You're all invited. To both events. Gaming at 10:00 a.m. Breakfast is usually around 8:30.
• Sunday, September 19, breakfast at the Capital View Cafe. I have $6 off. You're all invited. I'll spread the $6 amongst the guests. Probably as a tip.
• Sunday, September 19 again - Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter Oktoberfest...Kyle? Is this kid friendly, do you suppose? Eryn would probably enjoy traveling to Wisconsin to an Oktoberfest. Wait...what sort of lame Oktoberfest is noon to 6 p.m.? An "all ages welcome" Oktoberfest. Woo hoo! I can take the family and drink. Twofer.
• Friday, September 24 - the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins at CTC.
• Saturday, September 25 - Tater Tour, NHCC - you're all invited. I'm doing the 25 mile version
• Saturday, September 25 - Decadent Weimar Republic Kabarett Night at the Black Forest with Le Cirque Rouge.
• Sunday 26 - Mom's birthday, better send her a present
• Tuesday 28 - Home Brew Night as part of the Oktoberfest at Black Forest.
• Saturday, October 2 - Chilifest - you must be 6'2" or taller to attend. I will be attendings this rather than the Dallas, Wisconsin, Oktoberfest: http://www.vikingbrewing.com/ofest.htm
• Sunday, October 3 - Drain the Keg night at the Black Forest.
• October 8 or 9 - Twin Cities Oktoberfest at the State Fair grounds. The important part is the coupon for a free beer: http://www.twincitiesoktoberfest.com/index.php/admission.html. And the beer server with the large chest and small outfit.
• October 8 or 9 - Gasthoff Oktoberfest in north Minneapolis. This is an either/or with the Twin Cities Oktoberfest. Maybe. Could always do both in one night. That would be some serious Oktoberfest-ing.
• October 22 - Soap Factory Haunted Basement. Ming's going too. CRAP! That's the same day as the CTC Robin Hood play. Grr...that's what I get for not sending myself all the dates ASAP. We'll have to move the play.
• Saturday, October 30, Rosemount Halloween Haunted Trial as Eryn wants to go to something sort of spooky. We might visit Ming and his neighbor for a spooky garage as well.
• Sunday, October 31 - Halloween! Someone might be going as Hermione Granger again this year.
• Somewhere in that mix, I need to schedule a geocaching day with Kevin. Maybe a week day, as I have a lot of vacation left.

Peculiar Fashion Choice

When I dropped Eryn off for camp at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on Tuesday, there was this guy standing outside as I left that had on a white shirt, overalls, and a severe bowl haircut, with everything below the bowl shaved tight. It immediately brought to mind Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder as Simple Jack. I found a picture of Simple Jack just to be sure I was remembering it correctly, and except for having slightly darker hair, this is how the guy was dressed, and this was his hairstyle.

Based on his location, I wonder if they're doing Simple Jack as a play for the Children's Theater in 2011.

Given the whole "full retard" controversy this created when the movie was out, this is a bold move by the CTC. I hope they know what they're doing.

Tropic Thunder : Film Clip - Nobody Goes Full Retard - watch more funny videos

Rock the Garden

LissyJo was very nice and took Eryn yesterday for almost 9 hours while Pooteewheet and I went to Rock the Garden at the Walker (at the Sculpture Garden) on two tickets I won at work (yep, Twins tickets and Garden tickets. It was a good week). Particularly nice as my brother in law was out of town and she already had two girls and a sushi date.

The event was great. There was Retribution Gospel Choir, OK Go, Sharon Jones and DAP Kings, and MGMT. The last one was the one I was excited to hear, although I really enjoyed OK Go as well, and the others were just fine to listen to on a sunny day in the park. You'll have to excuse that last post about the New Pornographers. Apparently I was on a previous year and had a mixture of bands in my head that suit my disposition.

OK Go doing a bells number. The women in my hometown Methodist church had a bells group that used to tour the state. Good to see it's gone mainstream. I did enjoy the secular version considerably more than the religious version.

Sandal Summit! Built in coasters. The ability to get Summit EPA was wonderful.

Stupid sunglasses guy. Maybe he has an ailment? I hope so. There was also stupid dancing girl near us. She was a teenager, so she probably deserved a bit of slack, but there were two teenage sisters sitting next to us who were incredibly amused, so she doesn't deserve too much leeway. I asked one if she was amused and she replied, "No. Confused." Later their mom told us they were referring to her as the Elaine on Seinfeld dancer. I have video, but it was too dark for it to be amusing enough for publication.

His glasses from another angle.

Pooteewheet's ex, from junior high that is, and his wife Ginger. I don't think they'd seen each other in 20 years or more. Luke is a cofounder of The Nerdery, which is cool. A brush with local geek fame. He does indeed have two beers and a dixie cup of heavily vodka-ed juice. He was riding the bus home, so he didn't need a designated driver.

Some videos from the bands that were playing:
MGMT Time to Pretend:


MGMT Electric Feel:


MGMT Kids:


OK Go, Here we Go Again, for Pooteewheet who has never seen their treadmill video.

OK Go, This Too Shall Pass - Luke was commenting on their Rube Goldberg video:


Sharon Jones and The DAP Kings, 100 Days and 100 Nights:


Retribution Gospel Choir, Hide It Away:

Art a Whirl Kiltastic

At the Art a Whirl in North Minneapolis the weekend before this one. This guy and the woman who asked me if the microbrew coop served free beer were my favorite characters. Unbeknownst to her, it was serving free beer, but only because I had a growler of Town Hall IPA I was pouring out to anyone who asked for a glass.

A closer picture. I can do this look. I'm not saying I can pull it off. but I can do it. I have my sport kilt for getting into bicycling shorts in public. It's red you know. If we were to stand side by side we'd look like a bad Scottish Christmas card.

Not as funny, but I think it's amusing that it ended up being a picture of Chef Hack.

Minnedemo

Friday night I went to Minnedemo with Erik. I've been a couple of times and space is always tight. This time it looked like there might be fewer people in the Intermedia Arts building. However, we straggled a bit getting a last beer, and the next thing we know, the place is full back to the edges of the bleachers in the standing room only area. Looking back over our shoulders at empty space, we wandered back into the entry way where there was a wall projection, assuming Minnedemo would display there. After ten minutes, we realized it just wasn't going to happen.

This was the first time Minndemo had an annex, so we bailed, figuring paying for a few beers was a small price for watching on a screen that was actually displaying something. When we got to the bar, there were about eight to ten other people (more much later)...and an open bar. Comfortable chairs. A sofa if you wanted it. Appetizers. Sake nuts (Developer: "Are they called sake nuts because they're dipped in sake?" Waitress: "Um....no. They just go well with sake."). (Free) Surly Furious and an offer for a sake martini we passed on because of the volume of Surly Furious. And a large screen playing the event that was easy to hear and that you could talk to the developer next to you over without being rude. Best Minnedemo ever.

Here's the whole event, courtesy of Tech.MN, although you have to pay for your own Surly. I thought PedalBrain and MinuteBids were both intriguing.

MinneDemo

On Friday night I went to MinneDemo with Erik and Ming at the Intermedia Arts theater. I'd never been to a MinneDemo before, and if you haven't either the rules are that the presenters have to present on working software, have approximately seven minutes to complete their presentation, and cannot use a PowerPoint slide deck.

In addition, there's tons of networking with developers from around the Twin Cities. We bumped into Alan from work there, a friend of Erik's who used to work at Thomson, a guy from SAS who said I looked familiar (e.g. I look like my brother), Ed Kohler of The Deets (a real pleasure to talk to), Peter who used to work at Findlaw and was at CodeFreeze, and some guy who was sort of dressed as a poor man's ninja with a straw hat. For some reason that last guy focused on Ming, so the rest of us didn't have to deal with him. I'm not sure if he's the reason Ming snuck out later without telling us goodbye.

There was also free Surly. A lot of free Surly. I had the coffee and the Furious. The beer alone makes it the best developer event I've been to in a long time.

The presentations were good, at least the first four I saw. There were so many people at MinneDemo that only about 3/4 of them fit into the little auditorium. Even for the first four I was sitting on the stairs. There was a big screen in the entry way, where Erik and I stayed for the second half so that someone else could get a shot at the seats, but it was a bit fuzzy and impossible to hear. Fortunately, you can see them all at Minnov8. Re-searchr looked particularly interesting, albeit a bit slow. But they were streaming the presentations to the entry area, so it might have been a bit congested.

After the beer and the presentations, Erik and I went out for a late dinner at Fuji Ya Sushi on Lake. When we bellied up to the sushi bar, the place was packed. Two hours later we were completely alone. I hadn't been to Fuji Ya before and I strongly recommend the tuna flight (six pieces) and the tobiko wasabi roll that left little fish eggs all over the place. We were there long enough that the sushi chef prepared us a pineapple/strawberry/chocolate-raspberry sauce dessert as a free treat. Just a great evening.

Busy Days Off

I have this week, and almost all of next week, off to stay home with Eryn while she's on Christmas vacation. I thought it would be relaxing and, for the most part, it is. But so far we've had our family pictures taken for a few hours at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Had lunch at Macy's followed by checking out the Christmas exhibit - a day in the life of Santa's elves. Took a trip to St. Peter to visit Klund, his wife, and kids and drop off a 15 year old espresso maker that I probably could have had shipped to his house for cheaper than the gas to get it there. But Eryn and I had fun visiting the murder of Klunds (or is it a pod?), and we can't do that if we send things by mail. To put icing on the trip we sang along to Christmas songs on the radio for 2.5 hours and managed to stop at the stoplight in Burnsville right next to this:

"Some residents of the Burncliff Apartments will be allowed to return home this afternoon after fire destroyed one building and forced the evacuation of the other at the complex. Nearly 200 people were left temporarily homeless, but no one was injured."

When we stopped, fire was starting to shoot out of the eaves in one area, and by the time the light changed, there was a great big fire shooting out of the roof. Eryn was particularly worried that one of her teachers, who said she lives in an apartment, might live in that apartment (complex) as it wasn't too far from Tesseract.

And then this morning we got up at 6:15 a.m. to head downtown and have breakfast with Erik at the new Hell's Kitchen digs. They're quite the step up from the old restaurant, and the art with the guy trying to push his way out of the wall fascinated Eryn. Not this guy. A different, faceless, scarier guy. It was a great morning for bison sausage and lemon ricotta pancakes topped with mixed berries. I drank caffeine despite my no-to-little caffeine rule that's supposed to keep the restless legs issue lessened, because who wants to have a gourmet breakfast and drink decaf?

I think we're now officially resting, however. Me typing blog posts and working on a novel. Eryn playing with Microsoft Word, Crayola Model Magic clay, and Santa Clause 3 on Netflix instant streaming. Both of us waiting anxiously for the first round of presents tomorrow.