Adam & Amber’s Blog

Every year Lanesboro holds a festival in honor of rhubarb.  It is one of the many small town festivals around Minnesota in the summer and it gives a great excuse to visit one of the best small towns in Minnesota.  The festival itself is pretty small, they have Rhubarb Olympics where you can throw, toss, and hit various forms of rhubarb, a small farmers market, live music/entertainment, and all the rhubarb you can eat (which isn’t much).  The festival itself is very small (contained in a park) but the reason we go back is to experience all of the small shops and restraunts that Lanesboro has to offer.  Check all my pictures here.

As you can see from the pictures above we had a large amount of pretty good sized hail today.  Amber was at home during the storm, while I went through the storm twice, once on a bus driving on highway 52 and then again in my car in the parking lot at work.  Other then some broken pots and lots of broken flowers it looks like everything made it through the storm OK.  We will survey the roof and my car more tomorrow. Check out more pictures here.

There are people who make charts/graphs/diagrams of music lyric/title representations.  I think this is cool because it requires the interest of small subset of people who listen to popular music and enjoy graphing.  There is a Flickr set here (there are a few really great ones and many that are just people putting song lyrics on an arbitrary graph but the good ones are good enough to warrant the mindless clicking).

I know I should have posted about Thanksgiving before posting about Black Friday, but BF seemed more relevant this morning (by which I mean early afternoon). Amber and I are in Dayton, OH to spend the Holiday with her side of the family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt B’s house, turkey, stuffing, casseroles, pies, etc. After dinner the entire family took part in a Wii Bowling Tournament.

Top 3 Results:
1. Adam
2. Amber
3. Ben

I didn’t post this so that I could gloat about my winning, I posted because of all the embarassing pictures of Aunt B… Enjoy

See the entire gallery here.

Today is Amber and my Anniversary. No, not wedding anniversary, that is in July. Today is that anniversary that is celebrated by unmarried adult couples in years, and by high school couples by days, then weeks, then months. It is our dating anniversary. It was 9 years ago today that Amber and I “started” dating. The year was 1998 and we were both heading into our senior year in high school. I found some old pictures (including the one above) of us from that first year. The only gallery I have up is from my Christmas Dance. There will be more to come later.

Nothing makes you feel older then realizing how long it has been since high school, but it is wonderful to have someone around to remember those times with.

Happy Anniversary Amber!

Back in 2005 some friends and I had some fun playing with a light-up Frisbee and long exposure photography. The results were pretty cool (as you can see by looking at Andy’s Photos here). I ask you to please look at our humble pictures before watching the the following videos of the professionals. This first video is from a Sprint commercial (that I have never seen on TV).

There is also a cool making of video that shows you just how much work this art is (and prove that it isn’t just an effect). It really is a highly choreographed dance.

Finally, the non-commercial work of this art form can be seen here, in a very cool short film.

It is officially no longer Amber’s Birthday, but we had a great day here in Dayton doing Amber activities. What are Amber activities? Well, shopping, Target, Scrapbook Stores, etc. We also got together with Amber’s side of the family for a Birthday Party at Amber’s Grandparents. We re-introduced the family to this blog so maybe our readership will now double Check out the full set of pics here.

I should start all of this by saying that the lead singer of Four Finger Five is my cousin Joe, which is the entire reason that I was sitting in the Fauenthal Theater at 11:30 PM on July Fourth. That isn’t to say that Four Finger Five doesn’t have a good local following, I just don’t normally run with the local music crowd. I had been wanting to see the band live for a couple years, but I only spend at max about a week every year in Muskegon and the scheduling never worked out. This year with a concert happening downtown after the Muskegon Fireworks and me actually knowing about it before hand my sister, Amber, and I went down to the theater to get tickets after the fireworks wrapped up.

The Frauenthal is an awesome old theater with a beautiful old movie house styling and a rich history, a great place to see a performance of any kind. The show started very abruptly with a small crowd in the theater and a large crowd in the lobby getting the first of what I assume were many drinks (after whatever they had had before the fireworks). The point is most of the crowd was in some sort of altered state which made the show that much better for me, or at least made the dancing much more entertaining. The opening act was Ultraviolet Hippopotamus who played a short half hour set. The instrumentals weren’t too bad, but the singing was horribly out of tune (my guess is they couldn’t hear each other to harmonize) .

Luckily, the crowd built to a few hundred people (eyeball estimate) before Four Finger Five took the stage, introduced by my old band director Jack Adams. Keeping in mind my family connection to the band, my unbiased review is that they were awesome. They have a unique sound for a modern band, a sound more at home in the 70’s then today. Which is exactly what makes them different and unique. It also gives them freedom to incorporate more instruments into their sound including at this performance, trumpet, trombone, sax, keyboards, and a fuller percussion set. Compared to more popular sounds of today, with minimal instruments and a heavier reliance on the lead singer, the music was refreshing.

By the time they got to their last number at 2 AM (which consisted of a 15 minute jam session, including a couple of rappers from Grand Rapids who did some good but under-miked freestyling and an female R&B singer who did some uninspired and way over-miked freestyling) I was a Four Finger Five Fan.

The band’s next performance is at Summer Celebration as the opening act for INXS this Saturday. They have just finished recording their first CD under the Terrestrial Records Label which I hear is possibly due out in November. You can listen to some of their music on their website and myspace page and see the rest of my (er Beth’s) pictures here.

I am not sure how long this has been around, but I found a neat program off of the Simpsons Movie Page that allows you to create a Simpson Character modeled after yourself.  These are the characters I made for Amber and I, they may be a bit idealized but you get the essence.  Give it a try for yourself.

Yesterday was Amber and I’s First Wedding Anniversary we celebrated by taking a vacation from our vacation to go to Grand Rapids, MI for the day. We are currently on a week long vacation visiting family for the 4th and Amber’s birthday (the 6th). I am writing this post from my parent’s house in Muskegon, MI. We are here through the 4th before heading to Dayton, OH on Thursday to celebrate Amber’s Birthday at her Mom’s.

As I said we took an excursion to Grand Rapids for our Anniversary (who wants to spend their wedding anniversary with their parents). The picture to the left was taken at the Frederik Meijer Gardens, which is a sculpture garden as well as an actual plant garden (I am sure there is a fancy name for that, but it isn’t coming to me). I suggest taking a look at all the pictures I have posted of the sculptures and plants (Including Amber “The Thinker” and some phallic looking cacti).

While in Grand Rapids we stayed at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, one of the nicest in the area. Staying on a Monday of a holiday week we almost had the hotel to ourselves. This had a couple benefits, we didn’t hear any noise our entire time in the hotel and they upgraded our room to a suite after learning it was out anniversary.

The room was spectacular, easily the best hotel room I had ever stayed in. We stayed on the 19th floor and had views of the Grand River, The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, and downtown Grand Rapids. The suite had two rooms, 1 1/2 baths, and some of the most comfortable hotel furniture I have ever used.

For our Anniversary dinner we went to the The Grille at 1913, which served Dry-Aged Steak (like one of our favorite Cities Steakhouses, Manny’s but had a much more attentive wait staff). The entire restaurant staff spoke to us by name, we had white-gloved service, two-waitresses to serve us, and the food was wonderful. The prices were comparable to Manny’s but the portions were smaller (i.e. you payed for the service). Besides the steak, I had some of the lightest garlic mashed potatoes I have ever tasted, they were so light it was almost like eating the essence of garlic potatoes. For dessert Amber had the largest creme brulee I have ever seen, and I had a chocolate souffle that gave me my first opportunity to eat 24 karat gold leaf.

Overall our first anniversary was relaxing and elegant.