Lisa Zahn

This morning I was reading this article on http://www.peakoilblues.com/ (yes, I have a bad habit of reading about peak oil too much), and it's a good one. "26 things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Manage Your Anxiety" . When I came to number 8, I thought of how we're teaching our kids about money... 8. GET THE ENTIRE FAMILY INVOLVED in cutting back Tier “B” and “C”spending. If you’ve set a goal of reducing expenses by 20%, make that across theboard, and involve the kids. If this means cutting back on extra lessons,dances, mall trips, etc, give your children a say in which things are cut out orreduced. If you are sincere about your own cutbacks, your children will respectand adjust their expectations as well. If you say you are cutting back, but thenbuy something in the “C” category, you’ve lost your credibility and you’ll havea family mutiny on your hands. Discuss, as a family, all of your expenses basedon these categories, and try to reach agreement, so there are nosurpris...

Starting out, water bottle in hand... Down the street... Past the house with the "secret garden" Just me and my shadow Through the park at Lake George, my favorite view of the city Gotta stop and check out the swans in the pond Slightly scary and dark bridge underpass Continuing on past St. Germain Street downtown Approaching the railroad tracks, through the "ghetto with a meadow" Slightly scarier walk bridge under the railroad tracks, good view of pigeon crap Past this cool old church building which I think is a homeless shelter now A ways down, the industrial area near the tracks National Guard Armory building--talk about inflation! It's gone from 2ok to 40k to 60k in two years On the left the funeral home, on the right the strip mall the co-op is in. This is probably where the spirits that haunt the co-op come from, passing through on their way out. Seriously. The final destination: work

My mom's feeling left :-( out because I only mentioned George's parents in the last post. I'd been thinking about what I learned from my parents' marriage, too, but didn't know if I should write it. But here goes, the lesson I take from them and which might help some of you: stick together through all the stressful years and in the end you'll be able to enjoy each other. They've been married 34 years, as much of an accomplishment as 51 of course. I'm happy for them, they're happily retired and takin' it easy now!

Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary and we went out to a new downtown St. Cloud restaurant, Mi Famiglia . We like to go spend big bucks on good food once a year on June 24, and while usually we go to Minneapolis or somewhere further for this, this year we decided to try this elegant new place right here in town. I'm proud to say we spent more bucks than ever right here in town. We really enjoyed the restaurant, quiet with only 5 tables filled on a Tuesday night. It's a fairly large place so seemed rather barren, but still beautiful and very classy. The bathroom was even so lovely I just had to twirl in my dress in front of the long mirror! The wine was fabulous--can't even remember the names of the reds we got but they were Italian and about $9 a pour. For our antipasto, the Clams Adeline (the owner's grandmother's stuffed clams) were amazingly good, and the prosciutto-wrapped melon nice and simple. The Casa Insalata (house salad) was okay, a little strong on...

We forgot to bring out the camera to take photos of this, but on Sunday before my Grandma's party we took a side trip into Minneapolis to visit Devin and Heidi Quince and their two boys. I found their blog somehow or other and we started emailing right away. They consider themselves Urban Homesteaders too, and I can tell you they have really gone gung-ho about it! Do check out Devin's blog, The Quince Urban Homestead , for great photos of what they're up to. Minneapolis does allow chickens and we were excited to visit their chicken coop and see all the lovely roosters they got (9 out of 12 chicks turned out to be roosters--ha!ha!). We got there right after they slaughtered 3 of them for meat, and I wish we could've seen that process. Boy, Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle has so many of us city kids wanting to raise and even um, process, our own food. It was their first time doing it and it seemed like they didn't find it difficult. I...

Life is so busy lately, don't have much time to post. We've been keeping up the garden and yard, doing laundry, painting the front porch (in above picture you can kind of see the blue ceiling; the walls will be tan and the trim a nice shiny white, still in process), etc. George is outside now mowing the lawn, and I'm itching to get off the computer and vacuum the dirty floors, and then it's off to work for me. I have been walking to work when I can lately, so that adds an extra hour to my work day. The walk is mostly pleasant, about 2.5 miles each way which takes me half an hour, but it does take away another hour from home. Still, my friend Rebecca just got back from Europe and she said, "Europeans walk EVERYWHERE, miles and miles...", which I knew from my trip there when we walked and walked and walked whole days (joined by everyone else walking, not just tourists). I remember that being very pleasant and of course it's good exercise, so I'm trying t...