Hubby bought me the entire collection of Florence + the Machine compact discs (CDs) for my birthday. There are five albums: Lungs (2009) Ceremonials (2011) How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015) High As Hope (2018) Dance Fever (2022) I had heard the song “Dog Days Are Over” from Lungs quite some time ago and was impressed with both the song and video. Over the past year, I looked up more of the band’s videos…
Erik and I went to an exhibit at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis last weekend. It’s called “Tomte: the Gnome, the Myth, the Legend.” And, it is delightful! A tomte, short for gårdstomte, is a spirit that watches over farmsteads in Sweden. They are often depicted as tiny old men with long beards and tall, pointy, red hats, though there have been some variations on their headwear. The tomte exhibit is spread throughout the…
Erik and I went to Austin, Texas, a couple of weeks ago. I was there for ClioCon, a large legal tech conference, and we stayed an extra day to see a bit of Austin because we had never been before. Heck, this was our first time in Texas. In planning for the trip, an online search I did for museums in the area turned up around 40, which is a lot of museums. We chose…
Last month, Hubby and I had a free Saturday with nothing planned, which doesn’t happen real often. We decided to go out-and-about to wherever struck our fancy. Erik wanted to visit a site in Minneapolis that he had driven past many times without realizing it existed. Somehow he learned of it and thought I would like to see it. As we drove up to this striking landmark on a hill in a quiet Tangletown neighborhood,…
Last Saturday (August 31), as Hubby and I were trying to decide what to do with our day, he made a suggestion that surprised me. He wanted to visit Fort Snelling National Cemetery. His grandparents are buried there and he’d never been to see their graves. The weather was gorgeous, so the visit was pleasant. Upon arriving, I was struck with how very many white stones there are, all lined up with military precision from…