Geese at the Spa?

I have papers to read from one course and for some reason this group of students are the poorest writers I've had in the 10 years I've been teaching at this University. I decided to take a walk as a bit of a break from reading and commenting on these papers.

I was surprised to see a flock of geese floating along in the river. I counted almost 50 in the flock. They were not eating; they just appeared to be taking a Sunday break in their routine. Is this the goose equivalent of going to the spa?

In the background one can see the University of Minnesota Showboat. The house is dark now -- no shows until next summer.

Those geese could have taken a city tour in the limo I found parked outside the door.

Haven't seen one this size since I lived in Pecs and watched an entire women's basketball team come out of a limo.

Early November Scenes

Not much excitement in the past few days. The Minnesota world is moving towards a season change.

One big activity is removing the fallen leaves. Here's the lawn service working and on another day the city came and swept the streets. It's best to get the leaves removed before they get mixed up with snow, particularly on the streets.

One early evening when I headed out for a walk the moon was so big over the river that it was easy to get it's photo.

 Had to go to a meeting in downtown office building so walked one morning. My route takes me down the street about 4 blocks and then over to a place where I can enter the parking ramp for the Science Museum. I take the elevator up 9 floors and then I'm at city level. I was surprised on an early November morning to see the tourist trolley right outside the door.

 And I was correct. As soon as the Halloween decorations went down, the Christmas decorations went up. These are at Target.

I made the announcement at work about retiring yesterday. I was most surprised for being congratulated for this! One wise friend told me not to retire until I knew what was the next thing. I do, and I'm looking forward to contributing to the world, but having more freedom, too!

Happy News

The news reached the U.S. about the emergency landing last week of the LOT flight from Newark. Today on my local news I learned the pilots have been awarded Medals of Honor by the President of Poland. This is well deserved. I felt a relationship with all of this because I have flown many flights across the ocean with LOT. We had a discussion, surprisingly, about this in one of my classes and I told my students I wasn't the least surprised about the success of this. Polish people are brilliant at dealing with problems and now their interaction with technology.

Now about Noise in the Night. The very good maintenance man for our building appeared at my door  this morning and got the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide monitors all back into working order. The carbon monoxide monitor needed new batteries and one smoke detector proved to be defective. What an experience! I hope if they ever break again they pick a weekday to do when help is more readily available than for Sunday staffing.

Noise in the Night

I was awakened at 2:15, just after we made the change back from daylight time by a monitor going off in my bedroom. At first I thought something had happened with the systems when the time changed. Then I thought it was the smoke alarm, a signal of a low battery or something like that. I shut the bedroom door and spent the rest of the night on the living room sofa. The sound was coming loudly every 15 seconds!!! With nine foot ceilings I had nothing in the apartment that would give me enough of a lift to take care of the problem.

Thankfully, I slept again for awhile When I awoke I left a voice mail about the problem morning and then called back to the building office at 12:15 after staff had arrived. I was assured someone would be by in a few minutes. When no one had shown up in 2 hours I went over to the office and found there was only one person working and she was very busy with prospective renters. She told me she would have someone fix this very quickly.

My daughter arrived about an hour later. She took the smoke alarms down and the noise continued. That's when we discovered it was the carbon monoxide monitor making all the noise. We took that down and changed the batteries and it still made noise. So now one smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide monitor are lying on a shelf waiting for maintenance help. There are many people in the world truly suffering so I tried not to feel too sorry for myself with the noise every 15 seconds -- noise I could still hear with my Ipod on and ear buds in place!

Woodwinds Adventure

I had to go a late afternoon meeting yesterday at a place I've heard about, but have never visited.

Here is the delightful view I found when entering:

In the photo above you can glimpse scenes in the stair railing. This same railing guards a walkway on the second level all along the atrium. Here's a view of the one of the railing scenes:

Out the window is this lovely view:

When I got to the meeting room I selected a seat near the window so I could enjoy this autumn view:

 So where was I? At a hotel? At a conference center? No, at a hospital!

This is Woodwinds Hospital which takes quite seriously that individuals have a body, mind, and spirit. Click here for more information.

Imre Makovecz

In looking at my blog statistics I find some arrive here after searching for Imre Makovecz buildings. I tried the same Google search and never got to my blog. However, from of all places ,Ghana News, I found the sad news that Makovecz died in September. It is one of the blessings of my life to have learned about his work and seen some of his buildings while living in Hungary. Click here to find more information about his work and life.

Decision Time

I received some very disappointing news at work on Monday, right at the start of a week that has held other disappointing and distressing information from a volunteer activity I do too. The only thing I can say is that's good to get it all at one time and then move on!

I came home Monday after being upset and decided the most constructive thing to do would be to take a bit of a walk. So out the back door on the river side of the building and look what I saw:

I spied this coming downstream and wondered, "What's this?" So I waited until it got closer. Remember Monday was Halloween -- is this a steamboat dressed up for Halloween? The only thing I can figure out is perhaps equipment and supplies are being transported downstream where a new bridge is being constructed.

Here's a close up:

I've never before seen anything that looked so "messy" on the river.

The outdoors brought me some beauty too. While the leaves are fast disappearing, this one was there:

And I walked down a different street than  usual and found this lovely rain garden.

Because we are so very close to the river, there are many areas like this to hold the rain water so it doesn't just pour into the river bringing along all the by-products of car traffic and other unwanted things from the street. These spots bring a lot of beauty, too.

Now for the decision -- I have been trying to get a bit of reduced work schedule, but that request was denied -- so I hit the computer last night and wrote a memo announcing that I would simply retire. For awhile I couldn't imagine not working, but now I'm beginning to wonder why I want to put up with all the office politics and some of the inequities that are going on.

I printed the retirement memos out last night and got up at 6:30 this morning. I was in the office with the sealed envelopes pushing them into office boxes by 7:05AM. Then I went up the road to a Panera restaurant and had breakfast. Remember it's still dark at this time. (We don't change to standard time until this weekend.) I love this place; it's wonderful to walk in and get some good food and sit by the fire.

So that's what I've been up to!