Marathons and Birthdays

A full weekend for Paul! I took Friday afternoon off and headed up 52 and I-35 to Duluth to meet up with friends Wayne and Andy (actually Andy's whole family was there this year) for Grandma's Marathon and associated festivities. Friday night was the spaghetti feed (yum!) and the William Irvin 5K race. I was really surprised to get there and have the temp be 85 degrees - warmer than when I left Rochester! Most years I get there it's in the 50s down by the lake...after watching the 5K we headed out.

Once again we had the privilege of staying at Ronda's, which is so awesome because, besides Ronda being the greatest host ever, it's less than 10 minutes from the marathon starting line. We've all done this enough now where we have it down to a routine, and so at about five minutes to 7am I drove Wayne and Andy down to the starting line, then headed to Knife River to watch them go by. Andy's family and Ronda were down there already, and had staked out a great spot (it's really busy early in the race to try and get a spot to watch). We watched the first wheelchair racers go by (man they go fast) and the front-runners (man they go fast) and then waited for Andy to go by and then Wayne. I could tell the day was going to be a warmer one already, but there was enough wind going to keep it not too bad and dry.

I was driving around by myself as I was planning on leaving right from the finish line, and I managed to see both Wayne and Andy at 5mi, 12mi, and 20mi, and then Wayne at 25mi and at the finish line. I even got video of him crossing - I joked that I'm becoming a "professional" spectator - and I am getting pretty good at the process, knowing where to be to see all the good stuff. I even knew where to park to be about a block away from the Lake Ave crossing - in other years I parked about a mile away. Met up with a few other friends at the end, and after enjoying the festivities and food for a bit, I dropped Wayne and Andy off at Andy's hotel, and hopped on I-35 (which had just been re-opened at that very moment) and headed down to Isanti.

I didn't quite get to niece Keagann's birthday party on time but most people were still there when I got there, and she showed me all her presents and they saved me some cake (they all insisted on having another piece since I was getting one). The Isanti park is really nice and has plenty of room and things for kids to do. After hanging out there for awhile longer, we headed in out of the wind to Chris & Erin's house for some more birthday fun - 9 kids total still there, and grandma was managing them pretty well :) I also got to meet the new additionto the family - the pet mouse zubumbu or something like that (apparently named after a TV mouse on PBS?) At about 7:00pm the weather was looking kind of ominous so I decided I better head home. No major weather on the way back, and no big traffic problems, other than EVERYTHING is under constructions - I don't know if there's a through route through Minneapolis/St. Paul anywhere right now.

This morning I got in a round of golf with former mentee from work Jared, out at Maple Valley Golf course - the golfing was rough but the day was nice :)

Oh, I'm writing this today because the internet connection has been down most of the time since Thursday - fortunately good buddy Nate, who works at Charter, and happened to be on call today, came by this morning and fixed it. Thanks Nate! I'm not sure what all was wrong but I ended up getting a new cable modem too, the old one being 5+ years old.