...and a valuable lesson was learned

Heeyyyy friends! Well, it has obviously been a while since I've written anything here. I'll try to get through this catchup business so we can get to the good stuff like concerts I've been to, musings about teaching yoga and other stuff that's been on my mind lately.

Before we go any further though can I just say, this winter is straight up ridiculous. It's either -30 or snowing...there is no middle ground here. 

Also I broke my car about a week and a half ago...and by 'I broke it' I actually mean 'dude ran a stop sign right in front of me and I couldn't stop in time'....so my lovely little Honda is now in the body shop, sans front bumper. Thankfully no one was hurt, and my stop sign-running friend was actually a decent human being who stopped to make sure I was OK, exchanged insurance info with me, and hopefully learned a valuable lesson about traffic laws. 

I did drive away, and went straight to my favorite yoga class. Good times. [Sidebar - it's possible that I should not have actually driven away nor should I have driven to the body shop a couple of days later. Dennis (the shop owner) gave me the extreme side eye and was like 'yeah...this is borderline driveable...' ) but you know, everyone is alive and OK so all's well that ends well]

In a related story, Facebook has identified the following as the defining moments of my life in 2013:

That last one is probably the most representative of my life

Here's a little somethin somethin from my Weather Puppy app. This basset hound is not pleased about the -41 windchill, and neither am I.

Nope. Do not want

A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered selling tickets for the Minneosta Bach Ensemble's winter concert which was fun times. MBE was founded last year by my former choir director (he left us to move to Boston...le sad), another former choir colleague and friend is the managing director and I know most of the musicians and soloists so I always enjoy working with them. At one point, we ran out of tickets so I started tearing up small pieces of paper and writing 'ticket' on them. Profesh.

Real tickets

Also real tickets?

That same night, I went to Hilary Hahn and Haushka's concert at Aria in Minneapolis. Aria is in the former Theatre de la Jeune Leune space in the warehouse district, and I hadn't been there since it was Jeune Lenue so it was fun to see a classical concert there. Well, classical-ish. New classical. Hauschka plays a prepared piano, which I will link to a video of in case you haven't seen this. You should...it's awesome. He also de-prepared his piano towards the end of the night and just started tossing the random objects all over the stage - fascinating and hilarious at the same time. And to top it off, the show was almost entirely improvised.

These two have an album together, Silfra, which is gorgeous and atmospheric and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka at Aria

Last Sunday we went to Piccolo for Ben's birthday - Piccolo does very creative preparations and small plates, and it's one of our favorite spots in MSP. We shared roast carrots with fennel and bleu cheese (pictured below), lamb loin with brown butter gnocchi and mushrooms, and an oxtail terrine...and a buttermilk panna cotta for dessert which was heavenly. Favorite dessert of 2014 so far.

Yumm

And for good measure, here's what my car looked like after Thursday night's incident. Stop signs are not a joke, friends.

Yup.

Well that's all I've got for tonight! Time to 

Thailand Honeymoon Part III: Bangkok day 3 and Travel to Koh Pha Ngan!

Today has been the first day in MN that has really felt like fall - a welcome relief after a hot and humid week. I went to the State Fair on Thursday with co-workers and almost melted out of my shoes. Last night Ben and I had an amazing dinner at Piccolo, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants - although, I forgot to bring the camera so we had to use the one on my phone. None of the food photos really turned out, and this one of me in front of the restaurant has some serious freaky-camera-eyes going on.

This morning we walked to the farmer's market, and then back home for breakfast - I know they are all summer fruits but something about the color of this yogurt and cereal bowl just says "fall" to me. Makes me happy

Anywhoo - on to the main event!

I started off the third day right with some healthy fruit - a dragonfruit! I had never tasted one before but they were easy to come by in Thailand, so I brought one back to the hostel from our local supermarket.

(Amount of food we were allowed to bring up to our room: none. Amount of food we actually had in the room: six or seven granola bars, some godiva chocolate bars, banana bread, moon cakes, a bag of mangosteen and a dragonfruit.)

Dragonfruit, as my friend Evan pointed out, looks a lot prettier than it tastes. Not that it tastes bad, it's just slightly underwhelming - but I still much prefer it to papaya, honeydew and canteloupe (those are my three least favorite fruits...sorry if I've offended anyone...).

After breakfast and dragonfruit snack, we ventured out for another day of sightseeing! Our first stop was the Jim Thompson silk house.

Jim Thompson was an American businessman who helped turn the Thai silk industry around in the 1950's-60's - when his fabrics were used in the film adaptation of the musical "The King and I," Thai silk became highly sought after and the industry hit the big time. However, in addition to his business savvy, Jim Thompson has sort of a weird and creepy story. While vacationing in the Cameron Highlands, Thompson went for a walk one day and just never came back. No one ever found him and his mysterious disappearance was never solved. Thompson was a former U.S. military intelligence officer, so obviously there has been speculation that he was part of a "planned disappearance"...but really, no one knows.

In any case... the house was gorgeous but we weren't allowed to take photos inside, so this is the only picture I have from the Jim Thompson Silk house: the flower pots outside of the garden.

Lotus Flower :)

After visiting the silk house, we went to the flower market...which took forever to get to. I will give you this one piece of advice: if you ever have a choice between taking a taxi through Bangkok traffic and not taking a taxi through Bangkok traffic, choose not. Just saying. But it was worth it because the flower market was really interesting.

After our long day of running around the city we were pretty hungry, so we went downstairs for a bite at the Suk 11 restaurant - with special guest Michael Cuddyer!

This might need some explaining - last year we brought former Twins outfielder Carlos Gomez('s baseball card) with us to India and took pictures of it in strange places. This year, we decided that Cuddy should have the honor.

Cuddy bounds fearlessly through the foliage - is there anything this man can't do??

It was a great dinner, even with Cuddy barging in on our romantic evening ;)

After dinner we grabbed a quick drink at Cheap Charlie's, a local bar, and then went to bed super early because we had to be up at the extremely painful hour of 4am to catch our flight to Koh Samui. Love those early mornings...luckily the Bangkok airport has coffee.

The flight to Samui only took about an hour, and it felt so great to finally be relaxing on the beach!

Landing in paradise

Alright... I have wayy too many pictures from the rest of this day to fit into this entry - mostly of the beautiful island and our awesome villa - so I'll save them for the next. Plus, Ben and I are going to hang out and enjoy our evening with a movie and some tea. Happy holiday weekend everyone!

Previous Recaps

Honeymoon Recap Part II

Honeymoon Recap Part I