Black Friday

Black Friday, the consumer spending holiday is also known as Evacuation Day (there is also a Daily Show video) and Buy Nothing Day.   I, personally, did not participate in the shopping blitz, but I did manage an hour's walk around the neighborhood and later ninety minutes of Fort Snelling tennis.  The walk was pretty pleasant for the 25th of November.  The temperature peaked at 52 degrees - not a record, but pretty exceptional for this late in the fall.  The Governor's Mansion on Summit has decorated for the Christmas season in a simple, understated, but premature manner.

 Christmas decorations are up at the governor's mansion.  There is still a little snow on the lawn, too.

The walk continued along Summit and past the law school until I discovered a previously unpictured bench next to the Steppingstone Theatre on Victoria.  The bench is a little off the beaten track and not easily accessible, but seemingly well constructed.  It's getting so I can't walk by a bench without snapping off a photo.  It's only memory that I'm temporarily using.

Another pretty nice public bench with freeze dried flowers (roses?) in the foreground.

Tennis went pretty well, and then I came home to try to make a dent in the mountain of Thanksgiving food still resident in the fridge. I'm not yet tired of tacos made with lefse, Turkey, dressing and gravy. I'm thinking about adding a new series to the bench, cute cat and barn series that sporadically show up here and on other related blogs. How does non-rectangular windows sound? A new series might come in handy during the November blogging marathon.

Pretty Things

It was a nice day, especially for November 11. I went out looking for some pretty things to photograph. I came across a large bunch of native grass on the grounds of William Mitchell College of Law on Summit. It reminded me of the environmental interests of my dafter in Japan (MDIJ) and also of some months that I spent in the library at the college in 1979-80, the year that Herb was born. The sun was shining, the camera was with me, ergo, a pretty scene captured in silicon.


Not far from the law school, in fact, just north of it on Victoria, a new theater is being created in a space that used to be a church. It's going to be the home of the Stepping Stone Theater, with the grand opening to occur in December. There is a mosaic sculpture just outside the entrance called "Princess Amaradevi". Another pretty scene.


The Minnesota Vikings lost to Green Bay 34-0 in Wisconsin today.