The Race: Who do you Think Wins?

This may be a minute of your life that you can never get back but we sure thought it was fun. Turns out that the U of Minnesota campus can be a pretty great place to play.

Silver Lining

Today started off with a little excitement. Twitter brought us to the attention of MPR reporter Catherine Richert (@CatRichert), who's managing the Minnesota Public Radio Shutdown blog. She called during our lunch at Trotters. We had nice conversation about our blog and staycation, and then she blogged about us (read it here).

After the MPR blog post went up, our page views jumped from a couple hundred to over a 1,000 - whoa!

Very fun and an honor to be part of the larger story.

Fun with Fish

As previously mentioned, our trip to Sea Life was a pleasant surprise. I was a skeptic as we fought our way through rush hour traffic to go to the Mall, of all places. This place was simple and fun and we liked it so much we went through a second time. With our wrist bands, we could go through as many times as we wanted until the Mall closed.

Our first stop was to take a closer look at the Garden Eels...

These were the craziest little guys I've ever seen. I really wanted the gift store to have a tiny snow globe version to put on my desk. No such luck :(

After passing through the Sea Horse tanks,  Pip pointed out the sign of the Sea Horse King...

This is where it goes from good to great. Sea Life has an underwater tunnel where the fish swim around and over you. We're not sure what type of fish this guy was but he sure wasn't shy about showing us his under carriage.

I'll leave you with this final photo of Pip and the Jellies.

Something I've Always Wondered

At May Day this morning, Pip asked "Why do some people choose to set their background to black with white text? As if that actually makes the screen easier to look at ?!"

Thoughts?

Staycation Soundtrack

On Friday, July 1st my brother gifted me a mix tape for my 34th birthday. Her name is Lucille. We decided to include this as our Staycation soundtrack given the convenient timing. View the playlist and liner notes if you're interested. For now, I leave you with this sound bite. Staycation goal = encourage Pip to really belt it out.

This is side one, track two-Dawes, When My Times Comes

Chinookanomics

Does the Chinook Book (formerly Blue Sky Guide) coupon book really save you money?

The short answer is yes - provided you remember to use the coupons. A couple of thoughts on the economics of the Chinook book:

1. The Chinook Book is NOT the 2011 version of the Happenings Coupon book. It may be easy to confuse the Chinook book with other giant coupon books sold for various fundraising efforts. And while there are similarities - namely coupons, the big difference from my perspective is that the Chinook book only features local businesses and businesses committed to sustainable practices. So in the lingo of economists, there are positive externalities to the coupons (positive side benefits).
   

2. Each book costs $20 (we got our three on sale for $16 a piece). We save at least that amount in grocery store coupons on purchases we were going to make anyways. When you add in hardware store, bike shop, wedding gifts from Patina and dining purchases we would have made anyways, the savings more than compensates for purchases we wouldn't have made without a coupon. Each book probably saves us at least $50 if not closer to a $100.

The trick of course is to remember that you have coupons. We keep one of our three copies in the car.

If each book saves you $50 to $100, why did you buy only 3? Good question.

Don't worry...

For those of you who miss our smiling faces, we will add more pics of us as the week goes on.