My good friends Jessica & Chris invited the gang for New Year's Eve at their beautiful cabin up north. We chased kids, laughed, played games, and ate and drank yummy food & drinks. And being the hearty Minnesotans we are, we were able to enjoy ourselves outdoors too! :)
That is one near-perfectly executed Snow Angel, if you ask me!
I thought I better get a run in before the snow! Between 10-16 inches are expected, but we'll see what actually falls.
My running buddy Ruby, as you can see, is so, so exited to go for a run. She starts barking, jumping around--usually right in front of where you are walking--when she knows she gets to go for a run. She's like, "Hurry up!" And she never thinks I run fast enough...so demanding!
So, of course I made numerous trips to the Farmer's Market During the summer and fall, I was able to explore more of the North Bay--Marin--on my bike. When the weather (fog) cooperated, I was able to see amazing views of San Francisco and surrounding cities, the redwoods, the Bay, the surfers in the ocean, the cute little boathouses in Sausalito...I could go on and on. I also ran the Nike Women's 1/2 Marathon--in which the "finishers medal" was a Tiffany's necklace!
I am currently working in downtown Minneapolis and living with my brother in St. Paul. It was an agreement with Greenpeace to "loan" me to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for 3 months. So, here I am in the coldest part of the year in MN! :) On the flip side, I have been able to see many great friends and their families, my family, hang out with my brother, and explore the area.
A really quick recap of the many months I have missed! I have been busy, as shown below with lots of photos! I went to Minnesota in May and August for vacations/weddings.
Greg, Andy, Kjirsten, Mindy and I went kayaking on the St. Louis river over Memorial Day weekend. My friend, Mia, and I were playing at Crissy Field in SF (her "mom" is a coworker and once in a while I get to dogsit and hang out with her!).
In Truckee, CA, in July, I competed in a triathlon with my friends Ariel and Laura. I love, love, love Truckee! :)
Last week, my roommate and I went to see the band Coldplay in a little town north of Sacramento. Outside of Sacramento, the drive to Wheatland reminded me a bit of the North Dakota-cross-state treks I used to make for work back in college. No trees, only grasses, the ocassional house, and herd. The venue was a fabulous outdoor stadium, which now that I think of it, may have been the town! We had really great seats. It was a beautiful night, the stars shining; we had so much fun singing and dancing and watching Chris Martin (the lead singer) run all over the stage.
Sir Flinders Petrie, a well-known British archeologist, reportedly unearthed the tomb of an Egyptian child and discovered various rounded objects, which he assumed had been used in a primitive game of lawn bowling that we commonly know now as bocce.
Lawn bowling was reportedly so popular in the Middle Ages that many kings, from Edward III in 1361 to Henry VIII in 1541, specifically prohibited “artificers, laborers, apprentices, husbandmen, servants or serving-men, and other ‘low-born’ people” from participating in lawn bowling. The peasants, he feared, were wasting too much time playing in the grass.
Croquet
The modern sport of croquet came to America by way of France and England.
Originally called “pall mall,” this target game was eventually called croquet after the French word for crooked stick. A Brit, Walter Jones Whitmore, is credited with standardizing rules. His countrymen embraced the game with such passion they formed the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in 1877. Today, we know the site better as Wimbledon, home of the world’s most prestigious tennis championship.
Frisbees
A baker named William Russell Frisbie, who ran a shop at 363 Kossuth Street in Bridgeport, Ct., embedded his name in the bottom of his pie tins. Students at nearby Yale University took to tossing the metal tins though the air — hollering out “frisbie” as they threw. In the early 1950s, when the Whamo toy company released their “flying saucer,” they borrowed the baker’s name, with only a slight modification in spelling.
Whiffle Ball & Bat
In Shelton, Conn., David N. Mullany, a former semi-professional baseball pitcher, had a problem: his 12-year-old son was constantly in trouble for damaging school property with errant baseballs. David Jr. tried swapping hard balls for tennis balls and small plastic golf balls with no avail. So David Sr. glued plastic half-balls (used by a friend for makeup cases) together and cut slotted holes on one side. The new creation, a ball that easily made batters “whiff,” slang of the day for striking out.
