The Fair, eh...

On Sunday we visited the famous Minnesota State Fair. If attendance is an indication of anything than it is clearly worth writing home about. I'm pretty sure we saw about 20% of it and even that was somewhat over-whelming. I think I would prefer a Tuesday morning if I were to go again. One of the more exciting things we saw was the Ron Paul booth. We wanted to buy a T-shirt but evidently a permit is required to sell T-shirts. Figures. Otherwise there was an abundance of fried food on a stick, farm animals and random booths selling...eh, stuff.

August update

I figure it is time for my monthly blog. I've been really behind in updating because, and I know most of you won't believe this, I've been really busy! First, work has been long and draining. It probably wouldn't feel that way if I'd been working more than I had been at my last 2 jobs and hadn't taken a 4 month "sabbatical" last year but 50+ hours/week is gettin' me down! I do feel like I'm learning a lot in different professional aspects. We do just about every type of procedure here that can be done so I won't be deficient in my experience as a perfusionist and with such a large and "diverse" group of people in the department I am learning what it is like to handle, or at least listen to, the difficulties in managing people. The opportunity in Dublin to run the department meant that I had 1 employee and quite a bit of latitude in running things. Not so here.

Enough with work! On Friday night we attended a lecture at L'Abri. The house is less than 2 miles from downtown but feels like it is completely isolated as it sits on a hill surrounded by dense forestry. It kind of makes me wish I was a student again so I could take a month or even a semester to spend in an environment where you can work on life. The lecture was on Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion which was presented in true Schaeffer fashion, from the author's perspective, then dissected and rebutted. There was a pretty good crowd of people and from what I could tell about 8 students currently living in the house. It is part of a series that includes a talk by the Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale on "How to think morally about healthcare." That should be interesting!

Finally at home. Dana is the "idea" person in our family. She sees things and comes up with all sorts of possibilities for making it awesome. I just see junk! Take for example this bottom section of a hutch that she found at Savers thrift store.

I see a veneer piece of junk. Dana sees this...

After humming and hawing I make it happen, and I must say...I'm impressed with myself! We converted the drawer to a shelf, replaced the "wood" inserts with copper on the doors, added some talavera knobs and painted. Viola!

Here are our hanging chili peppers. Dana tells me what she wants, I make it happen. That seems to work alright for us. We have a couple of other projects that are in the works. I'll post those photos when they're done.