Bill's Blog

Summer is Ending

It has been a quiet summer in the Midwest. We have enjoyed being with family. Our granddaughters are quite a joy. We saw brothers and sisters; we saw nieces and nephews. We got together with aunts and cousins. We visited with friends. All in all, it was a very pleasant summer.

The weather was great. The big difference this year was all the rain. It was one of the wettest summers in many, many years. June and July were cooler that normal, but I love that weather. August brought the typical heat of the summer with more than two weeks with highs in the 90s and dew points in the sweltering 70s.

One of the most fun days of the summer was what we ended up calling Cousin's Day. The daughter of my nephew, Bjorn, is Annika. Anika came for a visit this summer. Before she left town, we hosted a get together for her and her cousins and second cousins. Brian, Annika's grandpa, brought her over along with an ice cream cake. Aricka brought her children, Eva and Ebin. Birgitta brought her girls, Johanna and Lucy. My sister, Gay Lynn, came over too.

In mid August, we went to a birthday party for Carol Olausen. I really enjoyed that day.

I like to stay busy with things that I love. We planted a garden of our favorite vegetables: sweet corn, tomatoes, sweet and picante peppers, green beans, and summer squash. Betty planted herbs. Her favorites are rosemary and basil. We picked strawberries and raspberries, plums, pears and currents. We planted annual flowers and we cut fresh flowers for the house all summer long.

I love to work with wood. I built a beautiful cabinet for a flat-screen TV. The doors are made of slats and with a screen behind them so that we can use the remote controls on the TV, Tivo and amplifier. I also made and old fashion workbench with a hardwood surface and a heavy duty wood vise. The bench can easily be moved on its casters. Finally, I made a professional style router table. Hopefully, I will put these new tools to use next year. I also refinished four straight oak chairs that I bought a garage sale for $5 a piece. I bought some leather to use on the seats. I gave the chairs to my granddaughters to act as set with the old dinning room table that I refinished last year.

We went to the Edina Art Fair and the Uptown Art Fair. We saw my old friend Steve Palmer at the Uptown fair. I think that he is one of the best glass blowers in the region. We went to the Minnesota State Fair a few days ago. We saw a lot of movies. We are going on riverboat Jazz cruise next weekend. I am sure that I left a lot out of the story. I hope the photographs from 2010 at my Flickr photostream make up for any omissions.

Finally, I should mention our plans for the rest of this year. We have wanted to visit Europe for the last two years. Autumn airfares are twice what they were a few years ago. That is what stopped us last year. Car rentals have gone up too, but not nearly a much as the airfares. While it may not seem related to this story, but it is, I was not all that happy with our Scion XB. It came to me after viewing a number of ads in the paper, that we might buy a Volvo and take European delivery. Shortly after considering this, we stopped at Volvo booth at the Uptown Art Fair. Yes, the art fair is a strange place to showcase cars, but there it was. We visited the dealership the next week and before you know it we had bought a new car that we will get in Sweden in less than two weeks. We plan to drive down to Portugal and Spain, while stopping along the way to visit Belgium and parts of France. We also plan to visit friends and family in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and England.

You can expect to see regular reports from Europe, starting in three to four weeks.

Pig's Are Part of the Art Landscape in Minnesota

Posted by bill at August 29, 2010 07:33 PM