Interruption

Office mate Jeff.

A Bountiful Harvest

Ah, Saturday, another trip to the Rochester Farmers' Market. This week's entertainment: An elderly couple playing guitar and cardboard box (!), singing classic country tunes.

Now that we have our pots and pans moved in, we were able to take full advantage of the wonderful food available. Here is a photo of our purchases.

View From Desk

Did Someone Ask About Corn?

From the Explore Minnesota newsletter:

The city of Olivia will present CORN CAPITAL DAYS from Thursday, July 26 through Sunday, July 29, with a family fun night, World Championship Corn Toss, Corn-Lympics, a sweet corn and bean feed, arts and crafts in the park, outdoor worship service, library book sale, pie & ice cream social, a grilled pork chop dinner, salsa contest, public salsa and chip sampling, a “ DJ Dok” Dance, Crazy Days sales, the Napa Monster Truck Car Crush, a kid’s fair, a car show, free Thomas’ Train Rides, the Corn Capital Days Grand Parade, a fly-in breakfast and air show, and the Minnesota Minne-Rods Tractor Pull! For further information, dial 1-888-265-2676, or visit www.oliviachamber.org

Cat Stalker

Jeff does not like it when i shut the door for conference calls.

Office 1.1

Our Move in Numbers

- 106 boxes
- 54 items of furniture and non-box items
- 5000 lbs of moving weight
- 1 5x10 storage locker 2/3 full of items we didn't bring (packed after several rounds of donations and gift-giving)
- 5 movers/packers (3 in Philadelphia; 2 in Rochester)
- 1 parking ticket received by the Philadelphia moving crew
- 2 double cheeseburger meals purchased for the Rochester crew
- 1 52' (or is it 53'?) truck to unload our stuff here
- 4 transit days from Philadelphia to Rochester
- 6 nights sleeping on an air mattress (Eddie Bauer, not bad for its price)
- 1 911 response call to our apartment complex during move-in (not for us and thankfully with no problems/injuries)
- 1 other mover on-site this morning (guess it's rush hour moving in and out here)
- Countless pieces of plain newsprint on the floor of our apartment as we unpack our kitchen
- 0 broken items (so far)

I don't think I've ever been so happy and grateful to be surrounded by boxes. Akbar and Jeffie seem to be happy to have their old bed back as well: Jeffie immediately attacked it once it was set up. Hal's ortho library is nearly complete, and our kitchen is nearly unpacked.

Akbar Helps Unpack

Moving in

Sunset2

The view from our deck.

Sunset

Cold Enough There For You?

For our family and friends, half the fun of our move to Rochester has been the good-natured ribbing about the winters. As a public service announcement, I'm writing to let you know we have now installed a weather feed on the blog so that you, too, can poke fun when it's -15 in Rochester while probably a balmy 20 in Philadelphia.

For the past few days, we've had splendid weather: low humidity, sun, temps in the mid-70s. Thank you, Mother Nature. But I'm sure at some point we'll have a storm or two, in which case you can get all of the details here.

If you'd like to track our upcoming misery via Real Simple Syndication (RSS) directly, here's the Weather.com feed of Rochester weather.

Also, here's my chance to educate you on RSS: RSS in Plain English (a perennial thanks to Phil for pointing this out).

Who Needs A Cat Bed?

Not Akbar, apparently.

p.s. This blog post was created while listening to a podcast of the News from Lake Wobegon.

Musical Guests

Apparently seasonal fresh food is not enough for the farmers' market: here is a blurry image of a string quartet performing in the center aisle.

First Visit to the Rochester Farmers' Market

One of the things we most enjoyed in Philadelphia was our weekly run to the Reading Terminal Market. Before we moved, we started researching farm markets and local farms and discovered what a treat we would be in for. Minnesota appears to be a huge center for farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture and other farm-to-table efforts, and one of the highlights of our May visit was checking out the Rochester Downtown Farmer's Market.

The market is open Saturday mornings May to October and has probably 50 vendors of fruit, vegetables, breads ... and a truly dizzying selection of organic grass-feed beef, poultry and pork trucked in by the farmers themselves.

Because we don't yet have our kitchen utensils and cookware (Monday, hopefully), we kept our spree small: 1 New York strip steak, two loaves of bread and a pint of sugar snap peas. You can count on larger haul in upcoming weeks.

Office 1.0

Rochester offices of the Foundation.

We're Here!

After 20 hours over two days in the car, we are finally here! To tide you over until we write about just how darn nice the people are and how I for one am afraid I will be considered "the rude girl in 226" I will post pictures that some of you may have already seen. I'm working on flipping the photos on my phone, so apologies for the head-tilts.

Packed

Captives

Free At Last

Guarding The Perimeter

Admiring The View

You have new Picture Mail!