My Orangina (one of the only hangover cures i’ve tried that actually works) and silverware waiting to rip into the food i was starving for.

I’d be hard pressed to name a better wine bar (or restaurant) in Minneapolis, and it’s been this good for over 10 years. The place actually feels like a bar somewhere in Europe. The tables are close together, it gets crowded and loud. It’s the kind of place we go to a lot.

Pam found this place inside a girlie clothes and furniture store she goes to in Edina. The place is sort of annoying, but she said the food looked pretty good, so we gave it a try saturday. I gotta say it was pretty good too. The place is over the top french and girlie, but i had a ham and swiss bagette that reminded me of being in Paris and that’s the effect they were going for and the effect i really dig.

We stopped into Dunn Bros. for a fix and i noticed these bags of coffee beans waiting to be roasted. That’s the cool thing about Dunn Bros. is they roast the beans right there in ever store. The smell is amazing, and the product is that much better than the next corporate coffee shop. When i used to drink the “hard stuff” (before i switched to tea) i would pretty much only drink Dunn Bros. or only go to places that actually roasted their own beans. If you ask me that’s what it takes to be a real coffee shop.

If she’s not sitting in the window barking at the passing dogs, she loves to be one of the passing dogs. She loves her walks. As long as we don’t run into any other dogs i like our walks too. (Although i’m not a big fan of picking up dog poop with little sandwich baggies. Gross.)

Our office is right around the corner from the courthouse and we usually see a few camera guys once in a while, but ever since that kid killed 8 or 9 in northern Minnesota we’ve seen a million camera crews sitting around waiting for something to happen...they even went so far as to install a podium with microphones and everything for the person to speak at that comes out and gives the updates. Crazy. People sure do get caught up in murder news don’t they?

We met Josh at Lucia’s after work to get some work done and put back a couple bottles of wine. Just when we were getting ready to leave we got a call from Barry Rubin and he wanted to meet us for a drink so we stayed and he showed up and we talked and drank more and got a bunch of potential investor names that Josh could call on. It was a very good night...and that wine is fantastic. It’s the same one Pam and i had (we drank two bottles!) the other night when we were there. Dry. Easy to drink. Cheap. No hangover. Can’t ask for much more than that.

This is a seeing eye dog we see all the time downtown. She is a beautiful dog and how cool is it that they get to go around and help a person as much as they do?

So i broke down a started paying for radio service a few weeks ago. I held off this long because I hardly have time to listen to all the music that I have of my own, let alone the radio. But i’ve had a few rental cars with satellite radios in them and I really dig the programing. It’s so much better than regular radio...which pretty much has nothing to offer. I also held off because all the damn radios are so ugly. Once Tivoli came out with this radio I was done. The radio is beautiful and sounds fantastic so I bit the bullet and paid for a year of service and we’ll see how it goes. If anything I just want regular radio to see yet another person willing to pay for something good...they are all shaking in their boots and they should be, they suck and it’s their own fault that they choose to deliver such a crappy product all these years and now they are stuck crying in their beers because they’re getting their asses handed to them by a good product. 

UHG is one of our biggest clients right now, which is good. But it means having to go out their huge “campus” and have long boring meetings with soulless middle managers. Oh well, as long as they keep paying us I guess it’s okay. This guard in the lobby had his eye on me...especially when I took my camera out. But I had my “Vendor” badge on and there was nothing he could do about it. Ha!

They sure spent some money on art at this UHG place. It’s everywhere...”good stuff” (aka: expensive) as far as I can tell.The problem is once you get to the areas where people actually have to sit and work all day long the space sucks. There’s no art anywhere near those beige cubes! A huge health company that’s dripping with money would hate to make a better space for it’s employees to spend their lives in I guess. This kind of shit I really don’t understand.

I love this place. Real Japanese noodle soups in a bowl

the size of your head...and good for you too! I’d eat here everyday if I could. It was a little crazy because we went down the night of one of the art crawls they have in downtown St. Paul. The traffic was nuts and people were everywhere, but we found a place to park and got a table right away so it all worked out...and we got to walk through a bunch of studios to check out the crap...I mean art. Most of it is crap, but it’s still art and that’s all that counts. Even bad art is better than no art. And it did inspire me to have a studio someday...why not? print out all my crappy drawings and 4-framerz and photos and stick them on the wall for people to look at? I’d be into that.

There were a bunch of these cool old “real” Mini Cooper’s parked outside of Java Jacks yesterday. I wish the new ones were this small. Pam’s Mini Cooper looks like a Caddy parked next to that thing.