blog.eliduke.com

last night we occupied ourselves with a trip to the local co-op (“the wedge”, apparently the most successful co-op in the entire country). ingrid was working and we picked her up and got some groceries for the next couple days and some snacks for the road. back at nate’s place, we made some food and watched the family guy movie before falling asleep.

the next morning we woke around 9am and headed out for the days events. first was a local “raw” restaurant where we got some “rawvioli”, tostadas, pear soup, and some cookie and cake for dessert. it was great. from there we went to the Twin Cities Model Railroad Museum (TCMRM). we took a lot of pictures of the trains rolling around the faux landscape and through tunnels and down city streets, but because of the lighting they didn’t turn out that great. aside from that, it was awesome. i wish i could have spent more time there and took more pictures and video.

from there we went back to nate’s to drop off meredith (she had an upset stomache), and nate and i continued on to the boldon’s (the family of the boys he takes care of) where we waited for gabe to get home from school. gabe is 10 years old and is autistic enough that he needs to have someone with him at all times. his older brother, nick, is 12 years old and is getting more and more independent every day. he still has someone with him most of the time, but when nate and i took him to his karate lesson, we dropped him off near the door and he walked through the small shopping center below the dojo and up the stairs to the place by himself. that is apparently something that we could not have done with gabe. we watched him spar during the lesson, took him home, and then headed back to nate’s.

overall, i didn’t get to see nick and gabe very much, but they seem like cool kids. you can tell that nate really loves them and enjoys his job. i don’t think i could do that kind of work because i realized that it requires something i’m going to call “purposeful play.” nate is very good at that. i’m lousy at instilling good habits in kids, and (as meredith says) they usually end up crying by the time i get done playing with them.

later that night we went to the “uptown” area, which is what nate described as the broadripple of minneapolis. it seemed like a pretty cool area, but it was ultra hip and at times a little too much for me to handle. there was a show that night at “the uptown” (a club) and according to ingrid the show consisted of “bucket drummers and hip-hop tap dancers.” that would have been so amazing to see, but the show didn’t start until 11pm and we knew we were getting up at 6am the next morning, so we bailed out and went home. at home, we did some laundry, began packing for the morning, and watched the directors cut/extended edition of Stargate that i bought the other day at Best Buy for $6.

i am writing this in the car during the 1st of 16 hours to Bozeman, MT to see pruce, cox, and tall tall. tomorrow morning we wake and head south toward salt lake city.