Sharon Comes Today!

So, Sharon arrives this afternoon. I got a lot done yesterday, but still have more cleaning and a bit of shopping to do today. Her room is somewhat clean - the bed is set up and I washed the sheets yesterday. I'll get it made today. The smaller guest bathroom needs some spot cleaning and I'm washing the throw rug and towels today. Vacuuming the house would be lovely if I can get to it. The kitchen is good, I need to put some water into the refrigerator to chill because she likes cold water where I prefer room temperature.

Sharon arrives today. She'll land at the small airport, a total joy to
park at and meet someone at. She'll leave on Tuesday morning from
the big airport, but that's just a drop-off for me, so also pretty easy. 

I'll be picking her up in mid-afternoon and after we drop off her suitcase, we'll head out to Red Lobster for dinner. That's where we'll discuss our food choices for the Fair and any scheduling stuff that she wants to make sure she does. We might watch Project Runway together tonight, but it's not an absolute must on the schedule.

The "Green Line" is the major link between all of these events. It goes directly
to Target Field (baseball), US Stadium (football), the U of MN campus (college
football) and turns around near CHS Field (St Paul Saints minor-league baseball).
It's also a major feeder hub for people going to the State Fair, passing only
a mile or so south of the Fairgrounds with good bus service from the drop-off. 

In the meanwhile, the Twin Cities will be going a bit crazy tonight and transportation will be horrid, so I'm happy I'll be avoiding most of it. The University of Minnesota will have their opening football game; the Saint Paul Saints baseball team has a game scheduled, as do the Minnesota Twins; and, then there is the Minnesota Vikings football team with their final preseason game. All four of these events AND the State Fair! Metro Transit buses and trains will be filled to capacity, shuttling all of these people to and from their various events. We've got a great transportation system, but times like this strain the seams.

I'll post two photos. I thought they'd leave more of a
slice, but they actually left a respectable stump hanging
on the wire. I think DH might cut that off later next
week, or not. Hard to say for sure. 

I promised a photo of the tree remnant. It's rather funny - like a counterweight swinging from the single cable that still runs through it. Apparently when they released the tension from the trunk, the tree top moved so dramatically that it almost brought the power lines down, causing some rather serious swinging of the wires and movement of the vertical support poles.

You can get a better view of the cable from this photo. It seems
to be solidly melded together. Rather funny in some respects. 

I leave you with a photo of the tiny frog that was at the YMCA's door yesterday. We get these small little frogs - about two inches long in their body size, and they climb up the windows to the separators and wait there for flying insects. These little guys must have suckers on their feet, but they're obviously not afraid of heights either. He was perched at about five feet up, and I've seen them as high as eight feet. They just leap down when they want to return to ground level. If we did something similar, we'd be smears on the sidewalk!

Just look at this little guy. He's only about two inches long with big
bug-eyes and suckers at the end of each toe and finger. He climbed
the windowpane about five feet to get to this small ledge between
panes. He'll just hop down when he wants to get back. Crazy! 

Happy Thursday. I'm entering "Radio Silence" for a few days and will return on Wednesday morning. Have a wonderful Labor Day holiday here in the US, and please, everyone, spread joy wherever you go. We need some positive actions in our crazy world now.