Noah, we need an ark!

Thank goodness the cabin is elevated on its footings!  All of this rain is causing the water to rise and rise and rise.  We were at the cabin most of last weekend.  Dave went on Friday morning and did a lot of work on the shoreline and landscaping.  Unfortunately, we had a whole new shoreline by the end of the weekend!  I joined him Friday evening after work.

First things first, we branded the place with Jon and Mere's old swingset name plackard!  It was first put into service in 1992 at 6120 Beard Place, Edina.  Now it is in place at 16231 Sunset Trail, Pine City.

Friday night we hung out with the neighbors a bit after going out on the lake in the fishing boat.  The neighbors are interesting, let's just say.

Saturday morning the water was starting to rise already and we did some fishing right off of the backyard shoreline.  See our catch (and breakfast) below!

Dave's brother and nephew came up on Saturday night and we hung out, had a fire in the backyard, watched fireworks (apparently a popular past time amongst some of the lake dwellers - and these are pretty nice fireworks!), and enjoyed a couple libations.

By morning, the water was coming up pretty fast.  Dave's brother Steve is shown above on the pontoon.  You can see from the pictures below that the water is higher.

That didn't stop the fun though.  That is Steve and Dave on the pontoon above.  Note how high the water is on the dock.  Eventually the dock would be floating entirely.  We actually took it out of the water (lake?  It was still in water in the backyard!). 

Dave's mom, Ellie, and Steve's wife, Shannon, joined us a little later in the morning.  We all went out on the pontoon and little Josh got to try his hand at driving the boat!

Dave grilled and we ate Ellie's homemade rhubarb pie for a late lunch.  The whole gang stayed over on Sunday night.  By morning, the water was higher still.  The swingset that Josh had played on the day before was now under water too.  We caught more fish and had a delightful breakfast of fish, eggs, hashbrowns, biscuits and leftover pie. 

After breakfast, Ellie and Shannon left, Dave and Steve moved the dock (wowsa - water up to their shoulders... fun), Josh supervised and eventually Steve and Josh left too.

Dave and I went out fishing again, he asked me to marry him, I said yes, we caught another 23 keepers (for a total of 49 keepers on the weekend and about 75 caught fish altogether), Dave cleaned the up the boats and cleaned the fish, I did a load of laundry, Dave mowed the upper yard (very little lower yard existed!), we secured the place for even higher flood waters, and, eventually, we returned to Eagan.

When we left the water was approaching the edge of the deck (not the dock - the deck).  Since then, according to the government records, the water has gone up (and now peaked) about another foot from then.  That would put the water well under the deck and up on the driveway.  The house should be sound since it is on stilts.

I think we are staying in Eagan this weekend.  We have a deck to stain, a garage door to paint, some travelling baseball to watch... etc.

We look forward to seeing many of you this weekend!

Mere and I booked the hostel for our Vancouver trip today.  Now onto hammering out the sites to see.  Has anyone been out that way before?

"Barack Obama, Fiscal Conservative!" Who knew?

I'm sure that you have all heard this by now, but this appears to be a serious new tack taken by the Obama administration.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05/barack-obama-fiscal-conservative.php

I Love Pandora!

Within minutes of downloading it to my phone I was listening to Roger Whittaker.

A Little Mother's Day Follow-Up!

None of these are my pictures, but I have received them from Greg and who?, and thought I'd post them anyway!

Dave and I went up to the cabin on Friday evening and stayed until the torrential rains arrived on Saturday evening.  We went fishing on Friday and Saturday but didn't catch any keepers.  We did get further out on Cross Lake than we've ever been before.  Those are not tiny lakes!  We also mowed and trimmed up the yard and got a few other little projects done.

Then we returned to Eagan where we met Jon, fresh (after his shower) from his Tough Mudder race!  Sunday morning I jaunted over to Jiffy Lube with Jon, got his car tuned up a bit, had a bite of breakfast and he took off back to Chicago.  Dave and I hit Mall of America for a nice little afternoon of Genius Bar at the Apple Store, Buffalo Wild Wings, Barnes and Noble and Sears (we know how to live)!

I hope all of your weekends were nice!

Droid Razr, to the Maxx

I am now a critter of 4G with my new Droid Razr Maxx. I got an email last week from Verizon saying that I was eligible for $100 off any 4G LTE smartphone if I upgrade early from my 3G DroidX. After some research, I learned that the Razr Maxx rated just as high, if not better, than the iPhone, which I considered briefly. What really sweetened the pot was that the Razr Maxx had been knocked down $100 in addition to the early upgrade discount.

I knew that 4G was supposed to be fast, but I didn't realize how fast. I went back to some of those videos that Ian sent us in the email, and I was able to view them without the frequent pauses to allow the stream to catch up with the video. I went to IMDb to check out some previews of coming movies, and they were fantastic on the Razr Maxx. If it weren't for the fact that I was holding the phone in my hand, I wouldn't have believed it was being streamed...at least not based on my experience with 3G, which I used to think was the cat's meow.

Almost More Than I Could Handle

Just for grins, and considering that I had survived the walk down from the 14th floor during our fire drill a couple weeks ago, I thought I'd try walking up those same stairs after lunch.

Hey, I'd been feeling better and stronger over the past month since I've been walking at least half a mile every day to and from my car. (That's a cumulative half mile for the day, BTW, which is a lot more than I was walking while unemployed.) I've also been taking the stairs whenever I needed to go up to the 16th floor. As a result, most of the pain is gone from my knee, and I've been walking faster without being winded.

Then I walked up the 14 flights today. I had to stop twice to catch my breath, and I've been coughing frequently since I sat down at my desk. I think I'll just crawl under my desk now and let housekeeping take me away when they clean the office tonight.

 Here are all the photos I took from the cabin...

Mother's Day Weekend!

I had a lovely Mother's Day weekend.  Jon and Mere were home and we went to our first Twins game of the year.  The team even won - but only after a 2 hour rain delay.  Mere took this picture of me, Jon and Dave.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day this year!  MJ, Greg, Tess, Ian, Jon and Mere joined Dave and me at the cabin.  Here are some pictures:

The shoreline was a little flooded/soggy, so we didn't get out on the lake until after MJ, Ian, Tess and Greg took off. We went at about 5:00 though and were out for about 3 hours.  We even made it all the way over to Cross Lake!

The last picture we took as we were getting towed back to the cabin!  We don't know why but we couldn't get the pontoon started after we stopped to fish.  A nice group of men and boys offered to tow us back.  It turns out they knew the previous owners of our cabin ("I've gotten drunk in that cabin many times...").  A little odd, but very happy he showed up.

In the end, by the end of the weekend, we had all caught fish - several right from the dock or shoreline of the cabin!  We ate crappies and sunfish for lunch today!

Happy Mother's Day all!

Home for the weekend!

I just got into town this morning.  I'm still pretty tired though.  On my way to catch the train this morning/last night, I was coming across people that were still trying to sober up at McDonald's from a night of drinking.  I don't know how people do it,  I'll probably need to take a nap at some point.  Anyhow, I look forward to seeing people up at the cabin!

Finishing Touches!

So, the deck is not finished yet (staining to come in about 4-6 weeks), but we did do a few more tweaks!  I found a cool little table at Ikea for about $20 and added that to some chairs Dave had in storage and I think we have a very nice little sitting area now!  Dave and I taped and spray painted the chair seating area a bit as they had a little sun discoloration.  I am really happy with how they turned out.  We also leveled the deck just a bit and sanded down the front edge to take away any irregularity with the board lengths.  It is ready now for relaxing (note my high-class Blue beer can).

Eventually we'll add some flowers too!

Happy almost-Mother's Day all!

Another Project...

This past weekend we decided to stick around Eagan and get a few things done around the house.  It was a fairly uninspiring weather weekend (one of several in a row!), so there wasn't much point in heading to the cabin and we needed a bit of downtime.  We did the normal kinds of things (I ran, we went to the gym, we tweaked the newly installed garage door and opener a bit more, did some yoga, etc.) and we went to Fleet Farm!  I love Fleet Farm!  We decided, "What the heck, let's go ahead and buy our deck stuff for when we feel like starting that project."

Dave and I have been talking about putting a small deck on the front of his house  for a few weeks, but it wasn't really a pressing thing.  But after surviving a torrential downpour in the Fleet Farm lumber yard (as we loaded up DekBlocks and a variety of 2x6s, 4x4s, and 5/4x6s), we were kind of itching to get started.

First we had to move a few plants out of the front landscaping.  Two are going up to the cabin and the other two we swapped and moved to other parts of the landscaping.  I like the changes, even if there wasn't a deck involved!  Then we placed the blocks and, over the next day and a half, we built a deck.  I think that the entire project took about 8 hours, including getting the lumber.  Not too bad!  We still have some staining and furniture placement to do, but here is the almost-finished product:

The deck measures 5' by 11'4".  It is not huge but definitely big enough for a couple chairs and a small table. Soon we can sit on our front little porch and watch the world walk by!  Mere and Jon will get to see it (and maybe try it out!) this weekend.

We are looking forward to seeing Ian, Treetie, MJ and Greg at the cabin this weekend for Mother's Day (and fishing opener!) as well!