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All the sisters in this picture are currently pregnant!

Winter walk

Last night was one of those crisp winter nights that just called for a walk down to our coffee shop. Silvi and I bundled up and braved the 4 degree night air. I took a few pictures along the way (click on the "Photos" tab for more.) This is one of my favorites.

Brit's on a winter morning

Annie, Silvi and I spent yesterday morning at "church," of sorts: Brit's Pub. We went to watch Manchester United lose to Arsenal in the last minutes of injury time, and to have the best breakfast eggs, hash and sausages in town. There are only a few other places around where you can find a good football match on a snowy Sunday morning, at least a place I feel comfortable taking my daughter.
Brit's is also the pub where - on their second-story outdoor patio - we caught the World Cup final this past summer.
A warm fire, some piping hot English tea, and lots of widescreen televisions. It's my definition of paradise on a cold winter's day.

Mickey Mouse football

I thought this article was entertaining.

So, farewell then David Beckham. You took a mean free kick, you always looked good on camera and, er, that’s about it. Becks hasn’t actually croaked but the tone of reaction amongst British sports journalists has been decidedly obituarial. By opting to move to the land of Walt Disney and play in a Mickey Mouse league, Beckham’s football career is effectively over.

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Idiot card

Sometimes we hire actors who cannot remember their lines. And so by the tenth take we are forced to write out the lines on a poster board and hang it just out of frame. We call this the "Idiot Card."This morning's shoot, which should have lasted no more than thirty minutes, dragged on for an hour-and-a-half, the actor sweating, director frustrated.

I think I would like to have an Idiot Card most days, especially when meeting new people at parties. Or having to explain why I edited the video the way I did.

Coming to America

David Beckham moving to the US to play soccer for the LA Galaxy is like Michael Jordan moving to Albania to play basketball.

Avoiding work

Am trying to avoid working at this moment, and am succeeding wonderfully. "Smashing" success, to use a common British colloquialism. I'm scanning in more pictures for my "Photos" section (stop by), perusing YouTube (I stumbled across these four British clips; not for the easily miffed or the queasy), and, obviously, blogging.

The British clips reminded me of my outing to see Borat on Thanksgiving Day. Tracy, my sister, told me how much she and her husband laughed while watching Borat. (She also owns the film Se7en, which should have been a red flag.) After the meal, we brother-in-law's and father-in-law all went to see said movie, on my recommendation. Fortunately, my father-in-law slept for much of the film, as my brother-in-law's are no longer speaking to me. (well, they are, but they now question my taste in films; perhaps it was the recent outing to see Mel Gibson's Christmas family film, Apocalypto, that removed any doubts from their minds.)

I suppose, if one is called for, the moral of the story may go something like this: Borat was crude, and Gibson was rude, but rest assured, my sister is no prude.

I am a Minnesotan

As I walked back from a fast food restaurant on my lunch break, on this brisk 36 degree afternoon, with no jacket, scarf, gloves or hat on, drinking a milk shake, I realized that I truely have become a Minnesotan.

You betcha.