World Cup Weekend - Sunday

Jeff and I started the day early on Sunday. My parents are selling our house (where I've lived since I was about five years old!) and so they're searching for a new place. Jeff and I decided to go house-hunting with them. We toured a bunch of houses, and they found one they really liked.

Around lunchtime, Brian and Emily picked us up and we headed to the Twin Cities to see the World Cup Final with Spain vs. Netherlands. We thought about going to Brit's Pub again, but we were running a little late, and when we got there, we saw a line out the door. Even though the game had already started, these crazy people were just waiting in line outside!

We decided to give up on that and go to another sports bar down the street. So we watched the game from 'News Room' (which was strikingly similar to 'Front Page' in DC.) The game was really fun to watch - and even went into extra time. And in the end, Spain won! Yay!

After the game, Jeff and I went with Paul (who had met up with us at the game) to meet up with friends at Good Earth in Roseville. Paul, Rachel, Carey, and I used to hang out together all the time in high school, so we try to get together when we're all home. Carey lives in New York now, and I'm in DC, and Rachel has a baby, so it can be a challenge to organize a time that works for everyone.

After dinner at Good Earth, we headed over to Rachel's house. She has two tiny dogs and a baby boy (Ari), so there was plenty to keep everyone entertained. :) We also watched some Futurama, and had coffee and ice cream.

World Cup Weekend - Saturday

Our first weekend in Minnesota kept us pretty busy. On Saturday, Jeff and I went to Brit's Pub in Minneapolis to watch the runner-up World Cup game between Germany and Uruguay. I'd never been to Brit's Pub before, but I really like it! It has a big roof deck with patio seating and a big grass area where they have lawn bowling.

However, lawn bowling was on hold, and instead they had a huge screen on the front of the field, and people sitting in the grass to watch.

It was a fun game with lots of scoring - Jeff and I cheered for Germany, and they won! This kid was also really happy about that:

After watching the game, Jeff and I walked down Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. We went inside the new Minneapolis library - which is a very cool building.

In the evening, we met up with my brother and Emily to go to a party at Brian's friend's house. The party was fun - we spent a lot of the time chatting with Emily, though we played some games and hung out with the rest of the group, too.

Minnesota Mid-Week

From Tuesday to Thursday of the first week of my visit in Minnesota, I mostly did work during the day and hung out with friends and family at night.

Annette came over to watch Dr. Horrible (now the third time I've seen it...) and some other shows. We watched a few episodes of IT Crowd. It's a British sitcom about three people who work in a large corporation's IT group. It's pretty funny - a mix of nerdy humor and British humor. It's on Netflix on-demand, so you can check it out!

I got together with Paul one evening and we hung out with Mike at a bar near their house. We played pool... and I was awesome. At least that's the story I'm sticking with. I still say I was just kidding about that behind-the-back-shot (in which I hit one of the non-queue balls and then whiffed twice before giving up, hitting it normally, and getting it in the pocket...)

On Thursday, Jeff came into town pretty early in the morning. We spent the day hanging out at my house and doing work. That night we had dinner with my dad at Jake's - a restaurant near my house. My dad is going to be retiring at the Postal Service at the end of the summer, and he's going to be teaching math at a high school in Minneapolis starting this September - exciting to hear about his plans. Thursday was a nice, low key day.

Friday was similarly low-key. Jeff and I grabbed chipotle for lunch, did some work, and ordered pizza for dinner at home with my dad. (This was not my healthiest eating-week.) I think Jeff and I were in bed by 10pm.

Minnesota in July!

On July 5th, I took a very early flight to Minnesota (I arrived at 8:30am!). I'm working from here for two weeks, so I can spend a bit of time with family and friends.

When I arrived, my mom picked me up, and we went grocery shopping. Mamie, Grandpa Ray, Kiyoko, and my Grandma John were all supposed to come for lunch at noon. Mamie, Grandpa Ray, and Kiyoko arrived at 10:30am. So we hung out while mom got the food ready to grill. (Unfortunately, just as the food finished grilling, it started to rain, so we ate inside.)

We had bratwurst, potato salad, and grill-out foods - very good! Kiyoko brought me a gift from DC - very pretty.

She's in the U.S. for three months on her own, and is traveling all over the country. I helped her figure out where she needs to go in New York City and in D.C.

In the evening, I showed my mom "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," and she really liked it. Then we got caught up on some Doctor Who - I've seen it all, but she's a bit behind. It was a great first day in Minnesota!

Fourth of July

Though we've been living in DC for three years, this is the first time Jeff and I have actually been in the city over Fourth of July.

For lunch, we met up with Neera and Shreyas, who were in town for a conference. It was really fun to see them - Neera lives in Illinois and Shreyas is near Toronto, so we don't see them often.

They told Jeff and I about this hilarious (and sad) verizon phone call... yikes:

To celebrate, our friends Emma and Beth came over for dinner - Jeff cooked stuffed eggplant. After dinner, we walked down to the National Mall.

The fireworks on the Mall were awesome!

Micah's Wedding

Last Saturday, Jeff and I went to my co-worker, Micah's, wedding. The service was at 11am, and it was held at Swarthmore college. They actually met during orientation at college on that same stage. Very cute!

The service was very nice. They had a unique part of the service where they did a butterfly release, so there were a whole bunch of Monarch's flying all over. Following the ceremony, there was a lunch reception in a nearby building. The lunch was nice, with lots of little eau d'oeuvres. Jeff and I sat with my previous boss (he recently left for a new job), and it was nice to catch up.

In the afternoon, Jeff and I headed to a near-by Ruby Tuesdays to catch the Spain v. Paraguay World Cup game. It was a great game, and a nice, relaxing afternoon break.

In the evening, we headed to the Brandywine River Museum for the wedding dinner. For the first couple of hours, we wandered around the museum. It was really cool - featuring artists and illustrators that were based in that area of Pennsylvania. For example, there were lots of paintings by N. C. Wyeth, who did the illustrations for Treasure Island when it first came out. We also learned that in the 1800's there was a fad to make tiny pendants with the eye of the person you love painted on them. Weird.

Dinner was really nice. We sat at a table with some of Jess' cousins. It turned out that two of them actually used to live just about two blocks from us in DC! Even now they live in a neighborhood that's pretty close to us downtown. Small world!

Karate Kid

Jeff and I went and saw Karate Kid on Wednesday night. I'm a big fan of Jackie Chan, so I was pretty excited to see it. I thought the movie was really cute! It's definitely a kids movie, and its unlikely to win any Oscars, but I thought it was really fun. I wish Jackie Chan would have had more fight scenes (there's only one), because he's awesome. Jaden Smith did a really good job - very cute. Also, though the movie is 'Karate Kid,' they do make a point of saying that they're doing kung fu, not karate.

It was also cool to see all the Beijing tourist spots - I visited about five years ago, and remember stopping by a lot of places they go in the movie - the forbidden city, the street that sells scorpians on a stick, etc. I also have climbed the mountain they climbed in the movie - so cool!