Weekend o' Fun

Ryan and I have been doing really fun things these past couple of weeks!  When you grow up in Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs, you tend to forget all the neat things there are to do.  Last weekend we woke up and I had it in my mind that I wanted to do something fun and active.  I get tired of sitting around watching TV, doing house work, running errands, etc.  It was perfect because Ryan asked me what I wanted to do and when I told him something fun, he immediately came up with going to Como Park.  I had been to Como Park Zoo once before with my mom in the summer time, but never walked around the park or went to the conservatory.  We got coffee and headed over to St. Paul.  It was a beautiful day, not too warm and not too cool.  We started off in the conservatory and looked at all the plants and pretty flowers in the Sunken Garden, A Visual Symphony of Color.  The Sunken Garden presents a seasonal potpourri of fantastic floral shows with five themes each year.  The Fall Flower Show displays chrysanthemums in shads of purple, pink and yellow in early fall with transition into shades of maroon, copper, and gold in late fall.  I loved looking at all the mums and getting ideas for flowers to decorate the church and the reception with.  After the conservatory we went into the zoo.  The Como Zoo makes me sad and happy at the same time.  It makes me sad because I feel like it's the forgotten zoo; the cages look old, the animals look bored, etc.  It makes me happy because it's free and a lot of people were there enjoying the beautiful day and the zoo.  The zoo was setup for some event that they were having that evening and for Halloween.  They had all these wood cut outs of really stilly things like Alice in Wonderland stuff, dinosaurs, and a pet section.  I suppose if I was 5 that would be really cool for me to see.  Not so much now.  After the zoo, we went and ate at the Wild Onion on Grand Avenue.  Grand Avenue as usual was extremely busy.  It was even more busy since the retailers were handing out candy and the kids were all dressed in their Halloween costumes.  There was even a horse drawn sleigh ride that was going up and down the street.    I liked seeing all the little ones dressed in the their costumes.  At lunch, Ryan & I had the pleasure of being waited on by a new server.  A new server who was like Houdini!  He'd take our order and disappear for hours (ok maybe minutes).  He admitted that he was new and we were totally fine with that.  I've never had the pleasure of being a server so I may be way off base here, but this should be common sense ... if I were the manager of a restaurant and I knew that I had a new(er) server working, I would be damn sure to check in on that table, especially when the restaurant isn't busy!  I mean come on.  Your new server has ONE table, you can't break away for two seconds to come and check in on how your guests are doing?  I don't get it.  It's not that we had bad service, it was just slow.  Our food was great, but what if it wasn't?  Houdini dropped off our food turned around got the water pitcher, filled my water, and then immediately asked, "So how is everything, tasty huh?"  Or something lame like that.  It was too soon to tell if our food was good or not.  Twenty minutes later he comes back.  I should have asked another server to get him, but Ryan and I were enjoying our laid back lunch together.  I don't get it.  I know we could have spoke up but at the same time, doesn't the restaurant have a responsibility to ensure that their staff is proving great service?  Wouldn't they want to check?  I should so open a restaurant.  

Sunday we got up early (ok earlier than we normally do) and headed out to the Vikings game.  My Zeta Tau Alpha alumni group was handing out pink ribbons for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  We teamed up with the Vikings.  They let us hand out ribbons, give us tickets to the game, and have pamphlets in the suites about breast cancer awareness and education.  We each were given 250 ribbons to distribute in our assigned area.  It was truly amazing to see the many fans and Vikings' staff wearing the ribbons.  My first ribbons I handed out, who do I pick?  The three deaf people.  But I got them to wear the ribbons!  At first, when I was handing out the ribbons, I was saying, "Did you get your pink ribbon for breast cancer?"  I found that I wasn't too successful when I was saying that.  I switched it up and did said what Ryan was saying, "Pink Ribbon?"  Also not very effective for me.  I then found the perfect slogan, though long, "Will you wear a pink ribbon today for breast cancer awareness?"  Bingo.  And 250 ribbons later I was drinking a beer and eating a hot dog in my seat!  The game was fine.  I like seeing a football game in person!  There's just something to be said about the atmosphere.  I love it.  We must have been sitting in the visitors section because there were a ton of Eagles fans.  Or Egg-Ls fans as I thought the announcer was saying.  Of course our team sucks so we ended up leaving a little early to beat the rush home.

This past week at work was incredibly busy.  I was literally running around all day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  For a desk job, that's busy.  We do a lot of advertising with the professional basketball team and because of our sponsorship they offered our team members discounted season tickets.  I had to coordinate all the names, quantity of tickets, payment information and coordinate with the basketball team.  They came out to the office on Thursday to sell the tickets.  They brought the mascot, he was cute, I had to entertain him the whole time and two members of the dance team.  The president of the team also came out along with two of our account executives.    It was nice to finally see these people in person as I have been working with them for the past year but have not had the opportunity to meet them.  The ticket sales went awesome ... we ended up selling 42 season tickets from 20 of our team members!  Go team.  I was exhausted when I got home from work.  I picked up a six pack of Blue Moon, Ryan asked me what I wanted from Than Do and we drank beer and ate chinese food.  It was nice.  At 8:15pm and three beers later I was sawing logs on the couch.  I finally got up and put my self to bed around 9:30 and slept the entire night!  I was beat.  Friday was also hella busy as it was our quarterly clean your desk day.  The first Friday of the second month of the quarter is clean your desk day ... I order food for the whole company and we get to wear jeans and tennis shoes so we can clean our desks and throw away old files.  In theory the day is great, however I don't have time to devote 4 hours to clean my desk and office.  I did my cleaning two weeks ago when my boss was out of town.  Anyway, I'm glad that last week is over.  This week is also busy ... our awards dinner is on Saturday.  I'm not sure how this happened, but it kind of just snuck up on me this year.  We are having the dinner at my boss' club and we have it there every year, except for last year (which was my first year planning the event).  Last year we had the event at a local hotel.  The hotel was ecstatic to finally get our business (for some reason they knew we had it at the club).  Anyway, the hotel was extremely good about contacting me and making sure I had everything ... pretty much kissing my butt to ensure I'd book the event with them again.  This year however the club is not so great about contacting me.  I didn't even have menu options until two weeks ago.  If I were an event planner, I think that I would contact my customers two months before to see if they had any questions and then give them a time line (different from sales and catering contract) on when I would be contacting them.  And then I'd call a month before and check in.  At least this is what my sales person is doing for Ryan & I at the DoubleTree for our reception.  Anyway, everything is all set for Saturday's event.  Almost.  I have to do the programs, make name tags, phonetically spell the last name's of those receiving awards (which is 75 team members) and type up in 15 minute increments a schedule for my boss.  Ugh.  Hopefully I can get that all done in a day.  Tomorrow, however, I am out of the office at an off-site training, so I'm losing a day!  Good thing I gained an hour due to day light savings!  He he.

Yesterday Ryan & I went to another cool place!  We went to the Stone Arch Bridge.  We parked at the Father Hennepin Bluffs Park on the east bank by St. Anthony Main and then walked across the bridge to Mill Ruins Park and back.  It was beautiful to see the Minneapolis skyline as we crossed the bridge.  The falls were really neat.  We even saw wear the the 35W bridge collapsed and had a moment of awe.  After the Stone Arch Bridge, we went over to the Sculpture Gardens and saw the Spoon & Cherry.  I'll have to post my pictures so you can see the goofy pictures we took!  We had fun.  Again, Ryan & I had never been there!  By the Gardens, there is a pay parking lot.  It's one of those lots where you park your car, go to the pay machine, get a ticket and then put the ticket in the window of your car.  As Ryan & I were standing in line to pay for a ticket, a guy came up behind us and handed us his!  He said he was leaving and we could have his ticket.  We looked at it and it was good until 3 a.m. today (Sunday, November 4th).  Awesome for us!  We didn't have to pay $3.50.  When we left, we paid it forward, and gave it to someone standing in line!  Karma!  Yea!  After the Sculpture Gardens, we had lunch at the Calhoun Grill (traditionally, our breakfast spot).  I dropped Ryan off at home and then headed down to Apple Valley to hang out with my sister!  We went to get our nails done and then ran some errands.  While I was at her house, she had her fireplace on.  Her cat Marley loves the fireplace!  She lays in front of it all day, she even puts her nose on the glass and is mesmerized by the fire.  Good thing it's a gas fireplace or she would probably get hit by the sparks.  The cute part is that she is so warm and she seems to love it!  :)  I'll have to post those pictures too.  While I was hanging out with Melissa, Ryan raked the front yard yet again!  I felt extremely guilty going out and having fun while he stayed back and did strenuous work.  On my way home, I stopped at Target and go him Guitar Hero III, Legends of Rock.  I wasn't sure he wanted it, but I thought it might be fun.  He loved it!  He said he was going to ask for it for Christmas.  I should have waited, but I couldn't help myself, I just wanted him to know how appreciative I was that he raked the lawn.  For those of you who haven't been to our house, we have ginormous trees in our front and back yard with tons upon tons of leaves.  Raking our lawn is definitely a chore!   I played it a little with him and enjoyed the new songs.  After playing GHII and Rock the 80's, I was up for some new songs to master on easy!  He he.

I've been up since 7am.  I'm on my second load of laundry and have been listening to Ryan snore for the past two hours.  I feel sorry for our guests (my mom & dad, sister and Ryan's mom & Aunt) who have slept over and had to endure our snoring!  I didn't realize you could hear it from down stairs!  I'm up early for two reasons; 1. day light savings 2. Ryan & I are getting our engagement pictures taken at 10:30 at Minnehaha Falls.  Doing something new again for the 3rd time this weekend!  He he.  Carrie H. is taking our picture this morning.  While she is not our photographer for the wedding (we want her to enjoy the wedding as a guest) we did want her to take our engagement pictures.  I have never been to Minnehaha Falls and I am excited to see what they are and to have nice pictures taken!  Thankfully we are not getting all fancied up, we'll be wearing jeans!  Hooray.  While I'm not putting an announcement in the newspaper (unless Ryan has one he'd like to do), I do want to send "Save the Date" postcards out with our picture on it.  

I must go finish getting ready and wake my love up!