A long night at the ballpark

After the vacation, the kids and I have been getting reacquainted, sometimes more than others since Cate has been working a lot this past week. And when an opportunity to get four Twins tickets dropped into my lap pretty late in the week, I decided to take them out.

Colleen had never been to Target Field and we hadn't been to a baseball game all together since last year's incredible trip to Wrigley Field. We had the ability to get there really early, as well, as it was the start of a holiday weekend, and do some things none of us had been able to do at our new ballpark.

We've always had the opportunity to look at this wonderful glove sculpture just outside the ballpark but never had a chance to get pictures taken with it because the line is usually pretty long. But not when you show up at 5:15 for a 7:10 game.

Robert forgot to put on his Joe Mauer jersey, but in the end, it didn't matter -- Mauer went 3-for-4 and Robert had a great time. But that came much, much later.

Robert and Elizabeth filled Colleen in on one of their Target Field tips: the great chicken fingers. So they had chicken fingers and fries while the Brewers (boo!) were still taking batting practice. I have always looked longingly at the Kramarczuk's stand, selling locally made brats and sausages, but they are very popular and the line is also usually long. But not that early in the day, so I had the best ballpark bratwurst I've ever tasted. Also, somehow by the luck of the draw (how do we keep meeting people at Twins games?) I saw a former co-worker walking down the concourse while we were eating and recognized him, although neither of us could remember the other's name.

About 30 minutes before the game, they pulled the tarp out to cover the field, prompting groans and boos. But Robert had already pointed out the clouds approaching, so we were prepared. Our seats were under the overhang, lower deck, left field, but we decided to move back anyway and wait out the first wave of rain.

The second wave (like white-out, Elizabeth says) was stronger and we walked out into the concourse. Robert and Elizabeth both asked when we could go home (my response: when the game is over!) but Colleen just rolled with it, sitting on my lap. We had fun communicating with a little girl standing in front of us -- I asked Colleen if she thought the girl was four, Colleen thought five. We were both wrong. I caught her eye and held up four fingers to her with a quizzical look on my face, but the girl shook her head and held up three. So cute!

We'd been at the ballpark for about four hours before the game finally started at 9:11, two hours late. And Robert made a friend, too -- a man in his 20s next to us chatted with Robert all night, showing him stuff about the game, telling him about the Brewers, chatting about nerf guns, the Brewers' stadium roof and the like. I thanked him profusely for putting up with Robert, and he said he coaches high school cross country, so he's used to it. I'm pretty sure there's a big difference between a 14-year-old and a 9-year old, though!

Colleen the 6-year-old at a game was a bit different than Robert the 6-year-old was. But she was very into whatever everyone was cheering about. Admittedly, with three kids with me instead of one, I didn't give her as much individual attention as Robert got at our ballgame around that age, but she certainly screamed loud at appropriate times, sang every word of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and only once asked me when it would be over. But late in the game, she put her head on my lap and went to sleep for a while.

So it was a late night, but thankfully the Twins won. We got to see Jim Thome hit his 594th career homer. In fact, as Thome came up in the bottom of the first with Mauer and Michael Cuddyer on base and two out, I was thinking, "We better score here, or we might not score all night." As Thome's ball went over the fence, I saw the guy next to us, a Brewers fan, shaking his head. When I asked him about it later, he said it was because, "there are only three hitters in the lineup who can hurt us, and they just did."

Final: 6-2 Twins. We walked in the door about 12:15 a.m.

How many days hath November?

30 days. And December had 31 but we missed them all on the blog. So I'll do a quick recap with photos if I can dig some up.

November was full of Nanny. She planned a nice long visit and it went beautifully, capped off with Elizabeth's birthday and Thanksgiving at Neil & Alicia's new home. Elizabeth was trilled to receive a Kindle from Aunt Jeannie and Nanny. Her first purchases for the Kindle were a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and sequels). She was blessed with many thoughtful gifts from loved ones near and far: antique pins from Aunt Claire whose relative also had the initials EGC, a new poncho hand-knit by Nonna with crazy pom-pom gloves to match and Star Wars pancake molds from Cousin Amelia (soon to be a Big Sister herself).

December was cold but that didn't stop Nonna from taking the kids on special trips. She took Robert to see a production of Robin Hood at the Children's Theater. Elizabeth accompanied Nonna to the Guthrie Theater to see A Midsummer Night's Dream, which happily prepared her for recent study of iambic pentameter in school. Colleen and Nonna had a great time together at the Nutcracker ballet. Also, Colleen and Amelia visited the Macy's Santaland display at Macy's downtown. The cold (rather the 20+ inches of snow that fell on Dec. 9-10) also contributed to the infamous Double Sleepover. Robert was sleeping over at Nonna and Da's while Colleen was with Amelia on Friday night. We weren't able to pick them up until Sunday and even then it was rough going on the Minneapolis streets.

That brings us right up to Christmas and post Christmas. Christmas was wonderful, low key and fun (kids looking happy/wacky on left). We did a small gathering at our house on Christmas Day, possibly the first time we've hosted but I'd have to check the record (aka ask Patrick). The next day all available Colemans gathered at Pat and Donna's. Then Patrick and I happily abandoned our children for a trip to Las Vegas :) Here we pose for a photo with the Hoover Dam.

Sheesh -- so cold!

It's been below zero essentially all week. When we get down into the minus-teens (and it was minus-20 this morning), some things tend to change. Some tales from the cold:

I drove the car this afternoon. Had it parked out in a sunny spot so it could get the maximum non-frozenness possible, not that it helped much. Most of the winter I could start the car and get out, scrape off the windshield while the car ran and the engine came up to speed, but not today. While the engine cranked and turned over without incident, I couldn't put it in neutral without it killing.

With a minimum of warmup, the gear shift was pretty stiff. Combine that with the stiff feet in the cold and it's not a great drive.

Amazingly, even at minus-10 degrees, there are still patches of water on the streets in the mid-afternoon in spots. Making a note so I don't drive down those streets after it refreezes.

Went through the drive-thru teller at the bank. Rolled down the window -- with some hesitation -- to talk to the teller, and she asked, "How are you today, other than cold?" I answered, "That's pretty much it, just cold."

Last night I walked to choir practice, two and a half blocks away, for this very reason. I figured the car wouldn't even begin to get warm or the stick get unstuck. I felt great about the decision at 6:15 p.m., walking there. Walking back at 8:30, however, was a different story.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to get above zero. I'll probably work from the office instead of home. But we'll see.

Feel the chill

Yesterday I should've listened to my instincts and stayed home. I'd told myself at the beginning of the winter that I would take advantage of my ability to work from home if it was cold out, and yesterday it was on the verge of being really cold. But I knew that it was only going to get worse, so I decided to suck it up and drive to work.

I was immediately regretting not asking for a spot in the garage the night before, since one was open, and was cursing scraping off the windshield.

I got about 10 blocks from the house when my back windshield basically shattered. It left a hole over about a tenth of the window, with the rest of it hairline cracked. I got out of the car (it was at a stoplight), looked in the hole and saw nothing that might have been thrown through it or could have fallen from a building. The guy in the truck behind me had no idea. (And he wasn't holding a rifle or anything.)

All I could think of was that the glass was simply tired of being heated and frozen twice a day this winter and gave out from the stress.

Turned around and limped home on back streets at about 20 mph, while the glass fell into the back seat piece by piece. (Commuting to work, no kids in the back seat, just my lunch.)

Today, new glass, and 15 degrees below zero when I left for work. (Yes, that's Fahrenheit.) Felt the moisture in my nostrils freeze within about 10 seconds. The car hesitated once but turned over. The thing has 110,000 miles on it and has been outside all winter but has yet to fail me on startup.

The trick today -- after starting the car and cleaning it off, I went back inside to trade off for a dry and warm pair of gloves. Much, much better.

Cate drove the kids to school today so they didn't have to wait for the bus. At least they start at 9:30 instead of 7:30.

Finally fishing

Robert has been waiting for this day for a long time, and I wouldn't have pictured it would come in the dead of winter.

Ever since we got here for Robert and Elizabeth to visit Nonna and Da in August 2007, he has wanted to go fishing. And today, actually, was the easiest way to get it done.

The annual kite festival was held on Lake Harriet this afternoon, with just enough wind to provide for a spectacular show but not so much that we froze our faces off. We took a horse-drawn cart ride up the west side of the lake, had some hot cider and Robert took part in a scavenger hunt.

There was also ice fishing, but I don't have the patience for it. Robert and I made it a little further into the day than Elizabeth and Colleen did, but we didn't fish for ice. And that really bummed Robert out. He trudged all the way home, about five blocks, upset and not really interested in my suggestion that we would go fishing when it was warmer.

But Da came to the rescue. He was willing to take Robert back down and do the whole ice fishing thing.

And since Robert had waited about a year and a half for this moment, he made the most of it.

They had about 25 holes drilled in the ice, and kids had been fishing those holes all day long, with poles and bait provided by the Minnesota DNR. So the odds were pretty long that he was going to come up with anything. But he sat, and waited, patiently, watching the bobber, for about 45 minutes.

No luck. But he wasn't discouraged. He came home and told us all what a great time it was.

And an hour later, his cheeks were no longer red.

Home, sweet home

Ahh, this is nice!

It was a happy holiday

I had planned about waxing much more poetic about Thanksgiving but time never really developed for me to do that. So I'll just scale it back and say we had a wonderful time at our first Thanksgiving in Minneapolis since 2003. I had grown to accept turkey day with Cate's family in Pennsylvania, and at times possibly even enjoyed it, but it just wasn't the same.

Mom entertained 33 people, Neil made great gravy, the kids had a great time with their cousins and kids of family friends and the like. I don't remember specifics of getting the food on the table from previous years but it seemed like with three grown sons things got a lot easier.

Mom may disagree, who knows.

Plus, we survived a mix of family that could well have been fraught with disaster.

Turkey, mashed potatoes, two types of gravy, stuffing, Mama Stamberg's cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, wild rice, more pies than you could shake a fork at ... and a professional, or at least experienced meat carver. (Bob, at right, who is not related. Nor is mom's friend Nancy.)

There were two kids' tables, delineated by age, with the littlest ones by themselves. Somehow that didn't turn out to be a disaster. Elizabeth got to sit with cousin Matt's two younger kids, who are in the 10 and 12 range, and a neighbor who is her age as well. I'm sure that was an interesting conversation. The photo above shows only the grown-up table.

Fun facts about the cold

It turns out Sprite Zero freezes at a higher temperature than Diet Coke or Caffeine Free Diet Coke does.

I have some of each in the trunk of the car. Weather chills it too well now.

A Coleman Halloween

This is a notable Halloween for many reasons. It's our first in Minnesota, our first without Cate (unfortunately) and the first one where Colleen truly gets it.

I have two good friends who each have kids who got invited to last-minute parties. Neither is a big fan of Halloween this year, and I can't say I particularly was either. I much prefer staying home and handing out candy, letting Cate and the kids come back with all the stories and maybe taking whichever children are old enough back out for a second round after the youngest are too tired to continue.

So I was dreading it, a little bit. I'm not a big fan of chaos and this is a day rife with it. But for those who know me, I'll have you know, I kept my cool all the way through.

Cate did a great job of laying the groundwork before she went out of town, and mom has a great archive of costumes to choose from. Colleen's pumpkin and Robert's devil are Coleman classics. Elizabeth is a vampire witch. (The cape is apparently the vampire part.) She didn't want to wear the hat, but I asked her if she would wear it for the group photo and she ended up keeping it on most of the night.

And in addition, it was incredible weather for trick or treating. There were a ton, just a ton of kids out there tonight. We went to a party at the local park, where they had a few activities for the kids that kept them occupied for perhaps a half-hour. One of the rooms had been converted into a space ship having landed on a foreign planet, and upon learning it didn't have a name, Elizabeth dubbed it Xzandorf. (Google this word later. Currently it's not in the database at all.)

So the plan (and it was Cate's, and it was a good one) was to trick-or-treat on the way home. Robert picked out a particularly interesting-looking house on 43rd Street and walked up. This is Colleen's first full-understanding experience of the event, and the porch was a little scary. (Flash lit it all up here, so not even nearly the same atmosphere.) Red lighting, a skeleton, and a spider that crawled down from the ceiling. But she stuck it out, got her candy and even said thank you most times. Though sometimes she was off message, with you're welcome. Or pumpkin. Or trick or treat.

There were a lot of really interesting houses, but only one which Colleen wouldn't go near. Neighbors up the hill had a whole setup, with people sitting on the lawn next to the stairs ready to scare you, a horror movie-masked person on the sidewalk, someone with a microphone hiding in the trees describing who was walking by, a fire pit, etc.

The strangest thing we got? Probably the Cool Ranch Doritos. Lots of mini Snickers, Baby Ruths, and the like. Missing from our youth, the red hots, the candy corn and other loose items. There wasn't a single apple, no popcorn, no Now & Laters, very few Smarties.

And we had another meeting of the generations. The old Coleman rule was you could eat whatever you wanted on Oct. 31, to the point of getting sick, and that was it. Cate and I favor the kids being able to get to bed, so we limit them to three things tonight ... and we'll figure out how to parcel out the rest as the days go by.

I thought Colleen was going to give me trouble with the three pieces rule. She couldn't decide which three she wanted, or more accurately she would decide and then change her mind. So she would start to grab something else, and I would ask her if she wanted to trade one of her three pieces for it. She was always willing, though, and didn't complain too much when the contents of the bag went away for the night.

They will get help disposing of it, no doubt. Even Elizabeth, who went to the trouble of taking an inventory of her haul. I told her that was only going to make for trouble later.

I can only hope our friends had nights that were as good as this was.

More pictures, on my Facebook page (public).

It's snowing!

The day has finally arrived -- the first snow flurries of winter. And the kids are excited, at least a little bit.

As Elizabeth said: "It was cold, and it was wet, and there wasn't really a lot of it."

Obviously, the flurries aren't accumulating anywhere and there won't be any sledding or snowball fights today, but at least it's something. The kids were all standing at the kitchen windows staring, then had a sudden interest in playing outside, for some reason.

As I write this, Elizabeth has gone back outside to document it. You may have to click on the photo to get the larger version to actually see the snow coming down.

The little things

I opened up Google Maps this afternoon to plot out a potentially crazy trip for a D3football/D3hoops weekend in November and had to smile -- the default location on that service seems to be a little hit or miss but it remembered who I was today and displayed the satellite image of our neighborhood here in Minneapolis.

It reminded me, also, that I have this list of adjustments that I've had to make (or try to make) over the past few months now that we're not in Northern Virginia anymore.

Such as one that's pretty basic: remembering to dial 1 in front of 703. Definitely not a local call anymore. I think I finally have this down.

Going up and down the creaky stairs from the main level of my parents house to the upstairs. They creaked back then and creak even more now. Only now I'm worried about waking up the kids rather than waking up mom and dad.

Driving at what's considered a normal pace out here. And keeping my hands off the car horn.

Remembering that shows start an hour earlier. Or that 4 is CBS and 9 is Fox rather than NBC and CBS.

Remembering to call the Interstate around here I-94, not I-95. This also took a long time to adjust in the other direction, when on the east coast.

There's a whole new round of remembering what's east of me and what's west of me. In Connecticut I had the same problem, since New York City had been east and north of me for so long that it was ingrained in my head that way. Except getting on 95 ... err, 94 ... err, 95 in Connecticut, NYC was always west and south. Here it's getting away from the thought that Minneapolis is west of me, or north of me, 100 percent of the time. I've confused Cate probably a dozen times already.

But I'm not going back on one thing. I'm going to keep calling it soda. It seems like everyone knows what I mean.

In limbo

I keep having dreams about boxes.

In these dreams, I'm still packing. We have a house full of stuff that needs to go into boxes so we can move.

In real life, all that is done. It's the unpacking that hasn't started, because we don't have anywhere to put it.

I thought we were packed appropriately -- that things we needed were in the right spots in storage so that we could access them. But we shuffled things to make them fit, and we're nowhere near getting into a house with winter fast approaching.

I had to go out and buy clothes today because I don't have nearly enough winter clothes to get me through the winter. We were able to get to the winter coats, not that I could find any other coat of mine, and the kids will all be wearing new clothes instead of hand-me-downs for a while.

We would love to be home buyers in this market. The problem is we can't seem to sell anything. We are probably going to take 406 off the market for a while, because, let's face it, why have the listing out there getting dusty in such bad economic times?

I do know full well that we could be in a much worse position. For that I am indeed thankful. But that doesn't mean limbo is any fun.

E's ticket to ride

As we've written before, Elizabeth has gotten a lot more confident with her new bike. I've been dying to get out and ride with her, but the number of daylight hours where we're both home and I'm not busy with my fall endeavors is really limited.

So this afternoon, with a temperature in the mid-60s, Cate and Robert off to the children's theatre, Colleen playing quietly and mom and dad home, I looked at the clock at 1:30 and said, "Elizabeth, let's go for a ride!"

I have not been on a bicycle since we got here. (No worries, still maintaining my goal weight, going on more than six months now.) And I know Elizabeth has been out biking with her PE class. They've gone around both Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun in one trip. So she's maybe even in better shape to ride than I was.

We went all the way around Lake Harriet, then up the west side of Lake Calhoun to Lake of the Isles, back down the other side of Calhoun to the house. Grand total of 8 miles. And Elizabeth kept up with me the whole way, though I took her smaller wheels and the fact that she is riding in fifth gear most of the way into account.

I can't wait for next spring, when we have good weather again and a lot more time.

I took this photo with my camera phone, hoping she was in the frame and trying to keep the phone steady. I showed the picture to Elizabeth at home and her response was, "Oh. That's what you were doing!"

Being social

Sunday was a banner day for us being out and about. Neil, Alicia and Amelia came over for brunch, which Cate and Elizabeth assembled this morning. (Some yummy leftovers for me to take to work.) Neil and I watched the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Vikings game with Robert while the female set went for a walk/bike ride.

In the evening, we met neighbors. A woman around the corner who has kids at our bus stop took note of the fact that there are a lot of new families in the neighborhood with young kids and invited us and three other couples over for dinner. There were eight kids playing in the house (and upstairs, and outside on the trampoline) as well as two newborns who mostly slept. It was nice to actually meet some other people, all of whom are going through or have recently gone through some of the same things we are: moving into a new neighborhood, picking houses, scouting out schools, etc.

We may emerge from our shell yet.

Local climate change

Clearly, we were aware that it would be cooler here than in the Washington area, and that it would get cold sooner, etc. As we pull out the long-sleeved shirts for the kids ... and the rest of us ... it seems to be turning cooler even sooner than one would expect.

Case in point -- this week I am beginning to get my fall allergies. (Or my fall cold, perhaps.)

Usually I get them in mid-October.

So for this week, I'm a bass. Or a baritone. Cate isn't feeling well either. In fact, she fell asleep early and since I was at choir practice, Elizabeth (bless her) put Colleen to sleep.

Take that!

I realized this afternoon that I still have the weather button on my Google toolbar set to pull the current temperature for the 20164 zip code.

I chuckled when I saw the temperature in the 20164 was 91 degrees. Here in the 55410 it was a cool 62!

Going to school

One of the first things we (read: Cate) did after we got here was get the kids enrolled in school. I think we knew that coming into a new school system in August was going to leave us behind the 8-ball; we just didn't realize how far behind.

But we got a piece of good news yesterday, and parlayed that into a second piece today: The kids got into our No. 2 school choice here in Minneapolis.

First choice was a magnet school, and we knew that was a long shot. But there's a perfectly good school about nine blocks from us, that we thought we would get into. Instead, that school had a waiting list in both fifth grade and first grade and we were assigned to a school three times as far away, with a bus pickup time of 6:47 a.m.!

Chew on that, InsideOut!

But Tuesday afternoon, Cate got called by the placement office and offered us a spot for Elizabeth in our No. 2 choice. After a phone call to mom's friend who works in the school system and some researching online, we felt pretty confident. Cate toured the facilities and deemed them acceptable. And we got them to take Robert as well. Spanish classes, computers in the classrooms, etc.

And classes there start at a more reasonable hour.

I never saw the school that so turned us off, but let's put it this way: On their tour of the other school, Robert rattled off three things that he liked about Forest Grove Elementary in Sterling and asked the principal if this school had them. They were 0-for-3.

If the 6-year-old knows that the school isn't as good, what else is there to say?

Happy anniversary, mom and dad

Mom and Dad celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary Sunday afternoon by inviting the whole parish over to hear a local folk duo. So Neal and Leandra played and the children drunk lemonade and about a hundred people came out to listen, on a beautiful day, inside. (The adults had champagne.)

In all, a great idea. We were asked to save the date back when they sent out their Christmas cards in February. And it turns out we were here a few weeks ahead of schedule.

Mom and Dad spoke briefly before the concert. Somehow Dad kept his prepared remarks below 20 minutes, Cate was very impressed. Mom related a story: she was talking to her mom one day about a year after they were married and she said she couldn't imagine being together for 35 or 40 years. And Nanny said, "the first five years take forever. And then the next 35 just fly by."

I could manage to agree with that assessment. Cate, sitting at the laptop next to me, says she is still waiting for the flying. "I was promised flying by!"

Below, Dad is wearing The Wedding Coat, which he wore to many summer weddings in the ... '70s, I would assume from the looks of it ... and became part of the family lore. He's recently been able to wear it again. (I added this later, ran out of juice last night, both in the brain and the laptop.)

Many people that I hadn't seen in years, obviously. The Schroeders (John and Dana) from a few blocks down the street jokingly took some credit for my career in journalism, but I told them they were definitely entitled to some of it. They ran a newspaper in rural Minnesota in the '80s and came to our neighborhood when I was in grade school. They helped St. Thomas put together a student newspaper and I was the photographer. (That was the only way I wanted to be involved in journalism, yet I ended up on the word side in college.)

Ann Marie Kotre, who was my parents' realtor in Michigan, was in town. Didn't recognize her, of course, but remembered seeing one of her sons play Tony in West Side Story. Always wanted to play that part, but couldn't dance well enough or sing low enough.

Our cousin Kelly was in from out of town, as well as friend of the family/godmother to Colleen Jennifer. And the family repaired to the family domicile afterward for dinner.

Great time had by all.

I just wrapped up a big D3football.com project, so this is my first chance on the blog in a while. Thanks for your patience. More photos on my Facebook page.

Generation next

The cousin crew got together last night, for the most part, with my cousin Rachel in town with her four boys. (Soon to be five!)

The Lahr cousins were absent, but almost all of the second cousins were there. We only lacked Amelia, who apparently has a more important social calendar. Grand times were had, not necessarily including this group portrait. This is one of the images that didn't include Connor doing the rabbit ears on one of his cousins, Daniel crying, and has Grace actually in the photo. (Alexander facing the camera never quite happened.)

Elizabeth is the oldest of this group, and always will be, of course, as she is a month older than Grant. Grant at 10-1/2 is five feet tall (a few inches short of his mom!) and Elizabeth is about 4-9. Robert and Parker are about a year apart.

Mary Catherine Coleman's great-grandchildren, from left to right, if I remember correctly: Connor Reed, Daniel Reed, Parker Linder, Colleen Coleman, Elizabeth Coleman, Michael Reed, Alexander John, Robert Coleman, Augustine Linder, Grant Linder, Matthias Linder, Grace John.

As I commented to Rachel, now I have to put some effort into remembering which Reed kid is which. Before, seeing them every couple of years, they would change so much in between visits that it wasn't worth trying to retain. The Reeds are 9, 7, and 5. Rachel and the boys are heading up to Duluth for the Hon family reunion and eventually have a 25-hour drive back to New Hampshire next week.

Mom said something to Elizabeth and a couple of the others about winning the prize for attentiveness. Predictably, Elizabeth asked what the prize was, and I told her that when she and others look at these photos in 2047 she can gloat about how attentive she was. Colleen and Grant were good photo subjects as well. And I can bet that Amelia's absence will cause some head-scratching years from now. (Was she born yet? Wasn't that after we moved to Minnesota? Did we still have the blue car? Robert, we never had a BLUE car!)

I won the bet

Not quite a year and a half ago, Jennifer bet me I wouldn't be living in Minneapolis within five years.

Five years? How could I not take that bet?

No, a steak dinner wouldn't have been enough for me to move for all on its own, but still, why bet with someone who can solely influence the outcome?

About a year ago, a project manager working with us at work told me he thought that it would be possible for me to take my current job and do it from anywhere, once the site was up and operational and moving smoothly. Which was a relief, because these days, jobs with the Twin Cities newspapers are hard to come by. The site took a while to become operational, let alone smooth, but my boss graciously agreed to let me take my family and job here. I now work out of a corporate office in Minnetonka. (Where, by the way, there are no giggling coworkers.)

Jennifer also lost a weight-loss bet to me last fall (a bet I am still winning, in crushing fashion) and has sworn off placing wagers with me. Which is unfortunate; I always welcome free food.

Which brings us to today's photo -- a dinner remembrance in true Another Delco Guy fashion. Enjoy. It's a Stella Artois for me and ... uhm, some sauvignon blanc for Jennifer. Seriously, I don't memorize wine.