Election Day 2012

The first Tuesday in November arrives and with it another cloudy, overcast, glum sort of day. The sun came out for a while during lunch and I took that as a sign to go vote at my neighborhood polling place. There was a short walk and when I arrived there was no line. I talked to a woman on the way in who had already voted absentee ballot and was just going to the polling place to get her "I Voted" sticker - white text on red background. I think she was able to talk the responsible poll workers into giving her one.
 

The voting place for my precinct is at Linwood playground. I cast my ballot, fed it into the vote counting machine, got my "I Voted" sticker, and walked home feeling like I had fulfilled my civic responsibilities. Like Jack Davies, a law school teacher, once said, "the world is run by those who show up."

Now I'll wait around to see which of the pundits and prognosticators has the right stuff. It's often pretty good television watching democracy creak through its mechanisms.

And finally, a picture of a cute cat, taken Sunday at the Como Zoo cat house.

It's raining in St Paul.

The day after the ides of March

The strangely warm March continues. Today broke a high temperature record for March 16 by 7 degrees, reaching 79 in the Saintly City. And tomorrow promises more of the same for St Patty's Day, a big event in St Paul where there is a big parade and nearly everyone claims at least some Irish ancestry.  I'm not complaining about the warmth yet. If this is indeed global warming, this part of it is welcome in these parts.

Because it was a really nice day, and because the girl from the north country (GFTNC) was in town, we took the opportunity to circumnavigate Como Lake. We were joined by a large number of the diverse population of the Capitol City. The lake has not lost quite all of its ice, but what's left in the central part of the lake is really just slush with maybe a few chunks. The ice out date is very near at hand.

There is a new feature at Como Park, a charging station for electric cars. It's solar powered and thus will not be connected to the grid. The charge is free for any electric cars in the area in need of a charge, paid for by the tax payers of St Paul. No need to thank me. You are welcome. I guess the idea is to encourage people from a fair distance to come to Como without fear of running out of juice for the ride home. I'll be watching after it opens (next week sometime) to see if it's being put to use.

There is some cycling content in today's blog. As we were walking near the pavilion, I noticed an object about 50 feet from shore. After some examination, it appears to be a bike seat. It doesn't seem to have a bike attached to the seat, but I could be wrong. I wasn't about to walk out onto the ice to see what's attached.

Does it or does it not look like a bike seat?

Not bicycling but at least cycling content. It was a nice enough day to attract a guy on a unicycle to come out and repeatedly circle the lake. He was getting exercise or maybe just showing off, but it was a nice addition to a good people watching day by the lake.

And I played some tennis inside today at Ft. Snelling with three other codgers. There are indications that we may be moving the game outside next week, but only if this string of beautiful warm days continues into next Wednesday. The weather creatures seem to think that it is well within the realm of possibility.

Not Rainy Season

We are living through a drought in the Twin Cities. It was supposed to rain yesterday, but we managed only about .1 inches of moisture. I wouldn't complain, but I'm forced to water my "garden" nearly every day. I have harvested three tiny, but very sweet cherry tomatoes as of today from the "garden." Also several leaves of lettuce, some basil, and some rhubarb.

I took this photo of River City today from very near the High Bridge. It was a coolish day in the 70's and pretty windy, but the beautiful blue sky was in evidence.


And these yellow beauties were in the volunteer garden at the overlook by the bridge and I took their picture, too. My blog needs photos and this is one I liked.


And this is the tennis court that St Paul can't finish. This is from a different angle than usual, but as you can see, there are no nets on this court. They started the job on the Linwood Courts in May. Maybe they'll have it ready for Halloween.


So I played tennis at Marie Park again. The nets there are functional and the lines, although fading, are in place and doing their job. The GTA members were there for the competition on one of the windier days that we've had for tennis. There was much mis-hitting and the gnashing of teeth. We finished two sets in an hour and a half and went home to think about something else. 4-6, 6-2. There will be more smacking of tennis balls again in the morning.

At the Supreme Court confirmation hearing today, Al Franken asked the soon to be first Latina justice if she knew which of the multitude of cases on the Perry Mason TV show was a loss for Perry. It seems that Sonia and Al were both fans of the show. Perry only lost the one case in his TV career - episode 185, it turns out.
The Episode is one that I hadn't remembered, but neither did Sonia or Al. Perry actually lost the decision early in the show and rallied to win on appeal. The information was acquired thanks to my favorite search engine - google. Useless information perhaps, but sort of fun to ferret out.

St.Patrick in St. Paul

I went to another parade today. It was the annual St Patrick's Day Parade in the Saintly City. It was somewhat cooler than the Tampa Rays parade in Punta Gorda and there were more people in attendance, but a parade is a parade. A bunch of bands, local politicians, and a lot of people who want to be seen in a parade showed up. There were people giving away cheap green necklaces and penny candies to kids. They were mainly marching with their families and clans, which is pretty cool, but parades get boring pretty fast. The mayor of St Paul, Chis Coleman, an Irish guy was there wearing his green. This parade had something that the Punta Gorda event did not. Guys wearing skirts. Well, kilts.


I got to the parade by parking near Harriet Island and hiking across the Wabasha Street bridge. The warm weather has melted all the river ice, but there was a pretty brisk wind on the bridge to remind me that it is still March, still three days before the vernal equinox. On the way home I took a photo of the Mississippi River looking upriver towards the High Bridge from atop the Wabasha Street bridge. Most of the green in town was being worn by the Irish folk and there wasn't much left for the bushes and trees, but their time is not so far off.
It was a day of rest from the interminable tennis wars.

Winter Carnival Snow Sculptures

Every January the city fathers have a celebration of ice and cold to distract the citizens from the ice and cold that permeates the environment. There has been a snow sculpture contest the last few years. This year the snow creations were done at the state fair grounds, a few blocks south of Larpenteur Avenue. Because the weather has softened some and the temperature reached into the low double figures above zero (12), I ventured out to see what had been created by the artist geniuses of the great northland. I was rewarded.

A snowy tree. Well formed and woodless. (Second prize winner).


Snowy mushrooms. Large and showy. Not very tasty.


Snowy dragon head. The body must be below ground. (Third prize winner)


Snowy castle. Like its cousin the sand castle, beautiful, but ephemeral.

I spent maybe fifteen minutes at the site. The sun was bright, but the wind was blowing and the windchill was below zero. My camera stopped working because of the cold and I went to find some warmth in my trusty Matrix parked on the street. There were some other hardy souls about, all bundled against the wind, and probably all native Minnesotans.

My tennis tidbit for the day. The Australian Open Tennis Tournament is reaching its final days. I watched Serena Williams win her semi-final match against Russian Elena Dementieva, who won the Olympic Gold Metal last summer. Serena is a beast. She hits the ball very hard and keeps it on the court most of the time, but the best part of her game is that she knows that she's going to win and then makes it happen. She is hugely confident; 6-3, 6-4, to get to play Marat Safin's little (? she's six feet tall) sister, Dinara, in the finals this weekend. I'll be playing some tennis myself, but without as large a crowd or with as much money at stake, at Fort Snelling Tennis Center. I'm hoping for low gravity days.

Hookers and Blow

The guy in the middle of my photo in the blue shirt and tie is our U.S. Senator and one of my neighbors, Norm Coleman. He was a two term mayor of the Saintly City. Norm had a speaking role at the convention tonight. He welcomed the conventioneers to "his" city. Norm is in a tight reelection battle with Democrat, Al Franken. I walked down Norm's block this week and counted the lawn signs. There were nine for Al Franken and one for Norm Coleman. This is a very blue city, but that's being out numbered by quite a lot. Norm used to be a Democrat, but became a Republican some years ago, while he was still mayor. There are those who haven't forgiven him.



The convention is going on at the X and I hear by the news that the anarchists are back on the streets, doing what they did yesterday. Stirring up commotion and getting arrested. That's how one gets on TV these days. I understand that a lot of the people arrested yesterday - almost 300 - are in jail until noon tomorrow.

One of the RNC parties last night was entertained by a musical group who calls itself Hookers and Blow. And the beat goes on.

Three Degrees

I was out for a while in the "heat" of the day. This photo of downtown St Paul from Harriet Island features steam from the central heating facility that warms the downtown and a river that is nearly frozen over. It was still 3 degrees when I took the photo, but with a little wind, I decided against an extended trek. As I write the temp has slipped to eight below zero on its way to colder.



Indoor tennis is still planned for tomorrow morning. The building is heated.

The Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament is being contested in the summer that is Melbourne. Andy Roddick, the best American man, was upset yesterday, which left 3 US men in the hunt.. Serena and Venus Williams are the only US women left and are seeded seven and eight. Roger Federer and Justine Henin are the top seeds and favorites to win.

Pearl Harbor Day

It was a clear cold day. I had a plumbing problem to deal with, so I didn't get an early start on the pursuit of full spectrum solar radiation. It was probably a good idea to start later in the day. By the time I found this large pile of snow in a parking lot somewhere north of here, the temperature had rallied to 12 degrees. The sky was a pretty blue and the wind calm. My outside exercise didn't last very long, but it was easy to find the light. It is now about six above zero. I guess we are going below zero on the thermometer overnight tonight. I'll probably be inside for most of that time.


The day has shortened to 8 hours and 54 minutes at this latitude and we are 18 days from Christmas.

There was tennis last night. One of the hardcore girls, Barb, was ill so we had a sub. The scores were 6-4, 7-6, so the tennis was still competitive. I had to do a lot of running, but I think that that is one of the goals of this particular pastime. There has been a lot of conversation about USTA tennis rankings, mostly because Jerry and Becky were both promoted to level 4.0. It was expected because they went undefeated and went to the nationals, but it means that they will have to play on a different team in a higher league next year. There was some gnashing of teeth.

Nagasaki became St Paul's sister city on this date in 1956, 15 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Garden at Como came about because of the sister city relationship. It has now been 66 years since Pearl Harbor and our relationship with Japan is so good that my sweet daughter has spent the last 26 months there. Times have changed for the better, at least in some ways.

Sculpture

On my bike journey, I came across one of the 13 new rock sculptures recently placed around St Paul by the Minnesota Rocks project done at St Paul College a couple of years ago. Unky Herb and I visited while the sculptures were being created. This one is called "Overlook" and resides at Prospect Boulevard and Strykker overlooking downtown St Paul. It was created by David Wyrick, a St. Paul artist with a studio in Lower Town Artist District. For more info:
http://www.minnesotarocks.org/
I plan to track down the rest of them and may include photos as I find them. Two are on Mississippi River Boulevard, one at Como Park, another at Lake Phalen. A map of sculpture locations is on the linked page.



Mostly a tennis day today. I played for an hour plus at Marie Park, just ground strokes, net play, overheads, and some serves. It was about 80 degrees and windy, but a beautiful May day. There were a couple of young ladies there playing a plenty good level of tennis, but otherwise the park was empty. The French Open is nearly upon us - nine days out.

Gas is only $3.399 at the stations I observed. The gas suppliers are getting ready for the holiday drivers and the guaranteed income.

Harriet Island and St Paul

It was a beautiful day in St Paul today. A high of 71 degrees required time in the great outdoors. I rode across the Mississippi River on the Smith Avenue bridge and took this photo of downtown St Paul from a vantage point above the river valley. The foreground is Harriet Island. I spent quite a bit of time just roaming around West St Paul, then down Ohio (notice not up Ohio. I have not ever ridden up Ohio) then down Water Street along the river to Lilydale, across the 35E bridge and home (up Benhill Road) - 15 miles.



I also had an hour of hitting those yellow tennis balls at Sibley HS. It was very nice, little wind, and Wilson was comfortable in my grip.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will be as nice. In the meantime I'm getting ready for Roland Garros on May 27 - ten days hence. Allez Serena. (Rusty French, learned in high school from Paul Bouchard 46 years ago.)