Trip to Duluth

Our trip to Duluth was fun but it was not without its miscommunications. Some of which worked out and some of which were unfortunate. We spent Friday afternoon walking around the downtown skyway, where there were NO SHOPS OPEN. Unless you wanted to mortgage a house or look up deeds--then you were in business. However, the boys had fun walking around and Annika made a wish for a pony in the wishing well. She said she was going to name her horse "Apples." The whole time, however, both Mike and Ron were home with their kids and we didn't know it. It didn't even enter our minds to call and see if they were available. Next time we will make sure we know who is going to be where when. Also, the Davis's came over to the house and they had brought PIzza, but we had ordered Pizza, too. Both of us ordered from Sammy's. However, this worked out because Marc and I ate a lot of pizza. Marc said that he's having a good time at Eau Claire, where is is on the football team. It sounds like he might go and work in Isreal for a while, too. I joked with him that Mossad is probably looking to recruit him.

After pizza Mike came and picked me up for a ride-along. He kept grabbing me to see if I was carrying a gun. I did borrow a Japanese Glock BB gun from a friend of mine as a joke, but I decided not to bring it in the police car. I believe that would be highly illegal. However, my admission that I left it in the house did not stop Mike from grabbing at me once in a while. The evening was pretty tame, but there was one incident with a fellow being detained at the downtown casino. I am interested to see how he is doing. Based on their mutual affection/respect, the guy we helped is one of Mike's regular clients.

Saturday we went to a bowling party for Kadence, who turned 4. The party was really fun, and I enjoyed showing Annika how to properly hold a bowling ball. I decided that I will teach her how to bowl based on a Bowling Coaching Guide I found online. It is meant for the Special Olympics, but it provides good basic instruction and I think it will be a good guide for showing her the stance, approach, etc... It had lots of things that I never would have thought of.

Also, I showed Mike the Annika video and I think he liked it. He said "It's on" and we basically decided that we will try to out do each other working within the short film genre. To that end, I have decided to build a video camera "steadycam" from plans I found online. The URL for them is http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/steadycam/. Now that the kids are more mobile I would like to take some outdoor shots without wobbling.