More Shreveport comes to town

It seems a bit ironic for a picture of a photographer to come out so poorly. But this cell phone picture did, and it wasn't taken by a professional photographer anyway.

Dave and I had lunch with a few Shreveport alum, Shane who was a photojournalist at the Shreveport Times and his lovely wife Fran who worked at the NWLA Food Bank. The two are now living a happy life in Tulsa. Fran has family in Minnesota, so we might even get to run into them again. We hope so.

We reminisced about what we miss from Shreveport--the food, Mardi Gras, and the people or friends we left behind....and didn't dwell too much on what we didn't miss. Salut in Edina is fast becoming our go-to spot to meet out-of-town couples. They have the best french fries known to mankind.

Parents On Vacation

Sent from somewhere in Rhode Island on a Blackberry:

Dear Children,

We've spent your inheritance on this yacht and we'll be leaving on a trip around the world as soon as we can figure out how to start it.
Love,
Your Parents
PS Please send gas money.

Oh ye misguided...

Somewhere in NYC there are some seriously misguided folks:
Thanks for the picture, Ross!

The Lions come to town

The Lions Club has descended upon Minneapolis-St. Paul for their annual convention. There are more than 15-thousand people here, which makes it the largest convention of the year. You can tell there are more people around when you drive downtown in traffic.

I got to go down to see the big parade and cover our local group, the Brooklyn Park Lions Drum & Bugle Corp as they proudly marched between Portugal and Romania. They did great.

The parade went on for 5-6 hours and was pretty spectacular. I would venture to say it's the most impressive thing I've seen so far in the Twin Cities--it really reminds me of the parade of nations during the Olympics. Who knew Nigeria or Pakistan had so many Lions? I was most impressed with the Dutch, who marched the entire way in wooden shoes.

Here are New York State Lions marching--without my favorite Lion, Pa Schwartz. Hmm... seems you passed on a great excuse to come to the Twin Cities? This could've been part of your daily walk! But hey, I picked you up a Convention Pin so you can be the envy of all of your local Lions, so that's okay.

You can have a flag from Pakistan too, if you want. I got that too.

The switch to Apple...

I am now the owner of a Macbook. As an online instructor, I've been watching the laptop sales and promotions for quite a few months as my laptop is a throwback from 2001, which is a dinosaur in technology terms. I've spent hours at coffee shops and libraries making the class work--so my student's excuses of 'my computer went down' never quite flew with me. Find a way.

Dave and I drove back and forth from a big box PC store to Apple on Friday, and we came home with a Macbook Pro. The video editing capabilites ultimately won us over. I was also impressed with the address book that should make Christmas Card labels a snap. (It's the little things, right?) Dave was more impressed with the free I-Pod Touch that came with the education discount, which he commandeered.

On the drive home, I was honestly more nervous than I was on my wedding day. What if we spent that much money on something that we can't use very well? What if it's too hard to use? What if it doesn't last that long? We'll see.

Parade number 2

It's Brooklyn Center's turn for parade # 2 with the Earle Brown Festival and Parade. This day was a scorcher of a day, and of course the entire production and set took place on a black, asphalt parking lot. Talk about hot! I had more than one person ask me if I the heat and humidity reminded me of home. One person wound up passing out.... so for you Southern naysayers, yes, it truly was hot. Don't we look like Charlie's Angels or something here? I had light duty for the day... handing out prizes and helping coordinate.

Here's Jen doing an interview during the parade. This photog, Skylar, runs up and down the route with the reporters. It's a hot job.

I'm not sure how Dustin got the assignment to always drive in the parade. He's a talented photog, and has a brother who is a talented photog at KUSA in Denver.

Here's Lisa with the Grand Marshall...and again in a hot dog stand.

The events crew and production staff were in the coolest place... the production truck.



We have three cams that work the parade and three more that tape the show. Here's the "birdie" shot and our fleet. Next week, two in one week.

He's good enough, he's smart enough

and doggoneit, he's finally Minnesota's senator.

It's hard to believe Stuart Smalley or Jack Handy or whatever witty SNL character Al Franken played will now be representing Minnesota in Congress. It's been 238 days since election day, and the crowd was more than jubilant today at a Franken rally at the state capitol. Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled to support Franken's 312 vote victory.

In his quest to become a senator,Franken has stayed away from SNL jokes and paraodies during the campaign. I understand, but I think they would've made some great campaign ads. The ads and overall race was pretty nasty, and I think all Minnesotans are glad the race is finally over. He did make a few quick jokes during his speech today, which gives hope that he'll be an interesting politican to watch and interview.