Minnesota

Last weekend Maryanne, Sarah, and I went to Minnesota. One of Maryanne's roommates from her college days at Viterbo, Kim, was getting married, and it also made a good excuse to see Jenny, another roommate, as well. We left on Friday, almost a week ago now. Maryanne had taken the day off, and I got off work early. The logistics of it were planned well, though there was something lacking in the execution, as there was over an hour delay in the time I was ready to get off work and when Maryanne actually picked me up. The drive to Minnesota went fairly smoothly, and we arrived in good time.

The wedding was on Saturday, and the weather was hot and humid. We made the drive into the Twin Cities (I don't know if we crossed the bridge that collapsed), and for once Minnesota let me down: on all of our previous trips there dealing with road construction, detours and what not had been clearly marked -- this time parts of I-35W were closed, with no detours marked at all. We stopped for directions, though, an arrived at the wedding's venue, a Radisson hotel, on time. The ceremony itself was small, held in a courtyard at the hotel. The reception was larger, though there were still a few empty seats in the banquet hall. The food was adequate, and there was an open bar which we didn't really take advantage of.

Now Kim, the bride, is Laotian, as was the band hired for the evening. They called themselves Moonflower, and they were decent. All of the "slow" songs were Laotian, though, to which the Laotians in attendance danced some kind of circle dance. I didn't get the opportunity to dance with Maryanne as I had promised her.
One of the bright spots, though, was that there was plenty of eye candy: plenty of attractive Asian women, often dancing with each other.
Besides Kim, the only people Maryanne and I knew there were Jenny and her husband Gene. The table we had chosen to sit at was the one occupied by the photographers, a husband and wife team, so after dinner everything was pretty much downhill. I kept waiting for a song that Maryanne and I could dance to, but when ten o'clock rolled around and we still hadn't heard one, Jenny suggested we return home.

Sunday started a bit anticlimactic as I packed up our stuff and loaded the car in preparation for our departure. We left around one, a little over an hour later Maryanne got a call from her friend Andy who reported that I-90/I-94 East towards Madison was full of traffic. We decided that once we reached La Crosse we would take US-14 to Madison instead. We stopped in La Crosse to feed Sarah (she didn't eat much), visiting an A&W, before following US-14 the rest of the way to Madison. It was a longer drive, going through various towns and hamlets along the way, but the scenery was gorgeous, the landscape revealing why so many central and northern Europeans settled in the area.

I was glad to return home, though, and since I would be home with Sarah for the next four days I had plenty of time to recuperate from the weekend's activities and stresses.

Next: Four whole days with a toddler, and Harry Potter 7!

Mood: Thoughtful
Music: The Rolling Stones: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"