Tuesday

That accelerator treadmill called my life has been at warp speed.  Not all bad stuff by any stretch, but there are quite a few balls in the air these days!

First things first, let's salute 1 as Daughter of the Day for the completion of her latest marathon.  Sunday actually worked out pretty good.  The weather was good for runners...a little chilly at the start, but 50's for most of the race with little wind and sunny/partly cloudy skies.  Twin Cities always does a great job of administratively running the marathon, and this year was no exception.  (The finish line area was a bit congested as the capital building has a major face-lift going on and there was limited egress as the crowds attempted to leave the area.  But no biggie.)

Congrats also to 1.1 who made it through the marathon circuit with a ton of determination.  Sounds like his last five miles were no fun.  The photogs had left the building when he came through the finish line.  Here he is with his favorite kindergartener at the coffee shop on Saturday AM.

My drive to/from Harvest Path was an easy one.  I managed to stay away from the sheriffs and highway patrolmen who were out in some numbers on the return trip.  My book on tape was a David Baldacci mystery that was better than some, but tedious to finish.  Again, another novel that had a convoluted ending.  Don't they all?

2 was actually a key player in the weekend.  She was in full charge of 1.01 and 1.02 while the rest of us were traipsing about Minneapolis and St. Paul.  She had driven up on Friday afternoon from IC so that she would have more of a "weekend" than the hit 'n run that I had scheduled.  She was Auntie of the Day...or at least Auntie of Sunday morning!

My meeting-up with 1 on the marathon route was reasonably efficient, very routine at 6 and 10, but we did manage to mis-connect at the 15-16 mile spot.  I had given her a wrong watch-point, and we just didn't see one another.  One of the rules of spotting in these races is that the runner and the watcher both have to be on the look-out or the connection can be easily missed.  There are just too many people.  Anyway, we caught back on with one another at the 19 mile marker, and again at 23.  My auto traffic management was near perfect.  I don't think I had to walk more than a 100 yards for any of the meets.  Disobeying parking and direction signs is a good rule to follow in these things.

And how 'bout the modified fff in Vermont last weekend?  Lots of moving parts to the clan on any given time.  Phil and Margaret would be pleased.

I don't think that I mentioned that the credit card standard in Europe was the "chip", not the "swipe".  I was actually a little worried about smaller restaurants wanting cash as opposed to credit, but we never really ran into that problem.  The waiter's had the chip-reader machine, and it would spit out the paper receipts.  It would even prompt for the transaction to be expressed in USD or Euro.

Most places wanted Visa, not AmEx, which was a bummer since my Starwood card has no foreign transaction fee, while my Visa had the standard 3%FTF.  I was able to use the Starwood card for my bike and one of the hotels.

Enough for today.  Thanks for reading.

BCOT