Halloween 10/31/06

Halloween... A time to dress up the little ones for trick-or-treating. Soba chose this scary Frankenstein costume.


















Our little niece Sofia stopped by too, dressed as tigger. We had about 45 kids come to our door. One grade school boy was dressed as "Mrs. Clause." Makes you wonder.


















Happy Halloween, everyone!

Halloween decorations 10/29/06

It was a beautiful weekend. Sunny skies. Moderate temperatures (for Minnesota). And some fun...

Friday night we went to a special showing of a new film about the life of a very famous photographer, Diane Arbus. It stars Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. It won't be out in theaters until mid-November, but we got to see it at the Walker as part of our membership. My understanding is that it won't be in the big theaters either. Here in Minneapolis it will be at the Lagoon. At any rate... highly recommended. I wanted to see it because of Diane's talent in photography. But the movie really didn't focus on that. It was more of an imaginary journey she took from housewife to photographer. And by imaginary, I mean it really didn't happen. But you could imagine that it did. Very well made. Makes you think. Not typical Hollywood.

Today, Sunday, I took the boat down to Hastings to be stored for the winter. Kinda sad, but we didn't use it much, so I guess I won't miss it. On the way I pass a lot of farmer's fields and country roads...























When I got back we decided to go for a walk to check out the local Halloween decorations. I never knew purple was a Haloween color.













Our favorite part of the display below is the witch that crash landed into the window. An oldie, but a goodie.













Another creative one. If I think of it I'll have to photograph some of these displays at night. My guess is that's the best time to enjoy them. These two happy campers had glowing eyes and lit-up body parts.













The great pumpkin.


























Note the ghost in the ground.













Then we came upon the best one. It's on 42nd Ave. The yard and house are overtaken with spider webs.













Check out the spider in the tree.


















I'm not sure, but I think he caught a muppet. No, wait, it's a baby doll upside down.













There is another spider on the house (not shown). They even covered the wall of the business next door with web.


























And then we continued on to our favorite coffee shop for no, not coffee, but hot chocolate and hot apple cider. Very tasty on a fall day. One the way we passed this place. It made me laugh. Click on the picture to view larger...












And finally, our puppies were quite tired when we returned. Gnocchi now has his own bed to sleep in while we're in the office. I think he likes it.

Spider webs and tako yaki 10/22/06

Normally I'd start this post by talking about our day or our weekend. However, something important has come up. Kana needs to know what a Gummi Bear is. They are chewy artificially flavored and colored bears that come in a bag. The Gummi Bears in this picture came from the local supermarket. Hiroe normally gets them from Starbucks. But it seems that the Starbucks supply chain can't keep up with the demand of her daily purchases. So she had to look elsewhere.













And now, our weekend. On Saturday I woke up with some odd pain in my right elbow. The bad news is the pain, but the good news is that Hiroe insisted I not use that arm. That left everything to her. And I watched a TV movie for the first time in I can't remember how long. It was a Chuck Norris hijacking thing. I didn't see the end. The commercials became too much. Meanwhile, Hiroe made some oishee Tako Yaki for brunch on Sunday in our cool pan from Japan.














































She also worked on decorating for Halloween...












O.K. so those decorations were out before last weekend. And the pumpkin dish has twice been filled and emptied of Lindts Halloween chocolates. And the pumpkin below has been out for about a week now...


















... and this little light thing too. If I had waited a little longer after turning it on to take this picture there would have been bubbles in the glass tube.


















But outside the decorations are new. Hiroe decided to become a spider and string web around the house. I believe the purpose of the web is to catch the candy bags from little trick-or-treating kids.





































Then to finish off the weekend the ignition lock jammed on my truck in the Rainbow foods parking lot and we had to take a cab home. I had it towed this morning. What was interesting is that this guy took my completely immobile truck (stuck in park with the front wheels turned) and loaded it on his truck in less than 15 minutes. 5 minutes under my car and he had disconnected the drive linkage. He could then freely push it where ever he wanted. He then backed his truck under mine because my front wheels were turned. And he never had to get inside my car. So much for factory theft prevention.













Oh, and the problem was fixed by the dealer in about as much time as the tow guy spent loading my truck.

Last weekend I went up to the cabin to get the boat. It had been up there since before we went to Japan. It didn't get much use up there either.
Of course, I had to have some fun on the way up there. As part of my photography classes I am to take a picture with a large depth of field, where everything far and near is in focus. I have some great pictures from Japan that I could use, but due to a nasty hard drive failure I have lost the high resolution versions of them. Hopefully that problem is temporary - as I try to recover the data. Anyway, I decided to try and capture the photo for my class in the fields of Wisconsin. I don't really like the photo below, but Hiroe thought it might be interesting to people in Japan. So here it is: hay bales.













This one is a little more interesting. The fall colors were pretty much done for the year, but there were nice shades of brown and green.













Soba came along on this trip. She always likes the cabin. For me, it's just o.k. bringing her along because she's constantly wandering away and I have to call her back. I don't yet know what would happen if I didn't call her back. That's probably what happened when she ended up at the Humane Society when we first saw her.
But once at the cabin Soba and I set about on the first task - the boat. I told my dad to pick me up at the ramp after about 45 minutes. That would give me a chance to play with the boat for, unfortunately, only the second time this year. The gas in the boat is over a year old now.
Soba rode "shotgun" during the trip, except for the brief time that the treat bag had fallen under my seat and she jumped at the chance to have a snack.












I headed off to an island on the south part of the lake. On this island is an old house that always looks well maintained, but not ever inhabited. I think it would be a nice little retreat.












Then I stopped to shoot some photos of boat houses on the lake. It's not legal to build one now, but maybe 40 years ago it was. So no one wants to take them down since they can not put one back up again in it's place.



























This one was my favorite. Not sure that's I'd want to spend much time inside or keep the boat down below.












On the way back I saw this and kind of laughed. One could make up many stories about what's going on here. Truly a mobile home.












Lastly, there was a nice pumpkin and squash stand on the side of the road on the way home. I always like to see people trusting the honor system.

Sunday 10/8/06

Today I went to the Minnesota Center for Photography. They had an exhibition on pre-Katrina New Orleans that I wanted to check out. It was pretty cool. As I left I saw this funky place across the street. No doubt an artists home. Sort of a DeLorean feel.



















Then I came across this sculpture park, or should I say sculpture storage area. The artist is Zoran Mojsilov. Everything I took a photo of was apparently for sale.


















Hiroe wants this one for our backyard. It'll look great right next to our future pond and waterfall.


















Each of these pieces was huge... this one was probably my height. Obviously not a coffee table conversation piece.




























































Work in progress. Maybe I'll stop by later to see what becomes of this piece.













This nifty rocket must be 6-7 meters tall when upright. It had three levels, and it seemed you could climb into all of them from the bottom. Not sure where this came from or where it's going. Maybe there's room for this too in our backyard.













For those camping types. However, I'm not sure why you'd take an 'A' camping.













Next I headed off to find Bassett Creek. This creek has an element of intrigue for me because it flows from the western suburbs of Minneapolis then goes below ground and under the city, eventually exiting into the Mississippi. I first learned of this creek in high school, when my friend's mom moved into the Itasca building. Part of the renovations included opening up the floor in a common area of the building and covering it with glass. You could see the creek through this new window. When the building was renovated, I heard that some of the workmen took a canoe through the creek - exploring. The last time I was at the Itasca building, the window was gone. I've since found web sites of other people who have ventured down this underground waterway in a canoe. It sounds pretty cool. There's actually several urban exploration groups in the cities that explore underground tunnels and abandonded buildings. Something I've been interested in, but never done.
So, where was this story going? Well, I just wanted to find the point where Bassett Creek goes under the city. It was rainy today, so I didn't spend too much time exploring, but I did find the creek. Next time I go there, I'll see if I can find the point where it "goes under." Today, this is what I saw. I like this picture in Sepia tone better than color...












The bridge in the above picture is a railroad bridge. The entrance to the bridge looks like this. Seems someone has a problem with those pesky trains.













Or maybe the sign was an indication of what's to come. This was what I found further down the track. Yes, a stop sign on a railroad is odd, but it was even more strange that the sign was after the crossing railroad track. At that point, it's really too late.













And now I come to our evening. Hiroe made up these wonderful bento boxes for dinner. Totemo oishikatta. :-)