Travels TO [not OF] St. Paul

Friday evening after I got off work, we drove up to St. Paul to visit with Helen. [Jay was attending a conference in New Mexico.] We had a great time.

Saturday morning while Helen took Dinah for a walk, Tom and I went to the Mall of America -- not the National Mall in DC but the mega-mall in Minneapolis. We walked around for an hour and a half, I suppose. The Mall is amazing, and I particularly recommend it to people with children. There are lots of interesting toy shops and an amusement park right in the middle of everything. We did notice that, although it boasts something like 400 stores, like most malls, it looks like a third of them are shoe stores.

Then we had a nice Indian meal -- one of the things I miss from Chicago is Indian food -- and then visited the Minnesota History Center where Helen volunteers. We viewed three exhibits, and I have to say that they were great. Not just the contents but the design of the exhibits and the friendly staff who encouraged you to touch things in Open House, a recreation of a house that is only a few blocks from where Helen and Jay live. The exhibit showed how the residents of the house changed over a period of about a century, beginning with German immigrants and moving through Italian families and on to Hmong families. There was also an exhibit about 150 important contributions Minnesota gave to the country and the world and a moving one on Minnesota's Greatest Generation, dedicated to people born between about 1910 and 1930.

Back home to a good dinner and viewing a DVD of The Pirates of Penzance.

Sunday morning we went to a dog park and let Dinah exercise us for about an hour. Then off to an Asian grocery store, followed by Chinese food and a visit to a used book store.

Tom decided to drive home by way of the Great River Road along the Mississippi. Although the trees are bare and the ground mostly snow-covered, it was quite scenic. Near Wabasha where the water broke through the ice where the river narrowed, we saw eagles perched in the trees. In the space of less than a minute, I saw more wild eagles than I had seen in my life up to that point. Totally cool! Although eagles have recently been appearing in our area because of changing fish populations in the rivers, I still get excited when I see one. But, hey! I still make a big deal out of seeing wild turkeys, which are all over our back yard at times.

And so home and a hearty thanks to Helen.

Since I have off today (Monday), I have been getting the checkbooks updated and another paper graded from my distance learning students. My plans for the rest of the day: relaxing and watching a new episode of The Big Bang Theory.