Halloween 2011

This year's Halloween display. We all dressed up as scarecrows. Son hung on a frame holding still as kids came up for trick or treating and then he would move. Sometimes just turning his head, sometimes coming down off the frame and right near the edge of the sidewalk. We had a couple other "bodies" laying around the yard. It was fun hearing people looking at him and debating whether or not it was a real person or not. We had a couple really good scares. One kid's mother kept suggesting that it was a real person and he kept insisting it was fake. Then my son came off his post and the kid ran two houses down before stopping and coming back. His younger brother just stood and watched. Later a couple older kids were looking at my son and were arguing whether he was real or not. When my son moved they both freaked out a bit and one of them shouted triumphantly "I told you it was a person!"

To top off the excellent outdoor activities, I had made a lovely beef stew with a crusty loaf of bread to warm us up from the inside.

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Fall in Saint Paul

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Every year one weekend in October the city of Saint Paul opens up the old water tower for an open house. Visitors can climb the steps to the top and get a great view of the city. We went up and took pictures all around. In one oyu can see the Minneapolis skyline and in another you can see downtown Saint Paul. You also can get a pretty decent view of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul international Airport. The couple days before this we had gotten a lot of wind in the area so a lot of trees had had their color blown off. Still makes for a beatiful scene.

Cannon River Vineyard Harvest 2011

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My wife and I went to the Cannon River Vineyard a few weeks ago to help out with the harvest. They have a beautiful patch of land overlooking the Cannon River Valley. 

As an interesting testament to how sensitive farming can be: I think this was the second weekend the were harvesting at Cannon River and they planned to be doing it two more weekends. Less than 40 miles away at Crofut Vineyard (another vineyard we helped at this year) they had done their entire harvest in one week about two weeks before this. Both places had fantastic years for their grapes and the 2011 vintage should be great form both.

Poll results

@RasmussenPoll on Twitter just announced that in a recent poll 16% said the U.S. was heading in the right direction. What about the rest? Since you need to be a member to see the full poll results I took the liberty of creating this pie chart showing the results.

Courtesy link to the tease on their site for the full results.