HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNE

Once again its that time of year,

Where Anne is full of Birthday cheer,

In search of presents her eyes will peer,

And she states "where did you hide them my dear",

In which I say "Oops, I forgot them I fear",

While I try to quickly escape from the rear,

Then she springs after me as fast as a deer,

Towards our second bedroom I turn and veer,

To smile and point out "your presents are here".

Love ya Anne - Happy Birthday (and sorry about the cheesy rhyme, but the second grader in me just has to some of the time.)

A Reminder That We Live in Minnesota

One of the many adjustments that Anne and I have been undergoing since our arrival back in the States is getting used to the temperature. We found that we tend to like the temp much warmer than we used to. For example our thermostat was set at 67F or 19.5 C (which I turned down to 65F/18.5C at bed time) before we left the States. After arriving back in the States we set our thermostat at 77F/25C and eventually we worked our way down to 72F/22C. Though we should mention that at 72F/22C we wear pants and sweatshirts, only changing to shorts and T-shirts after going under covers at night. Even during the hottest day in Minnesota this summer I spent most of the day outside doing yard work thinking that it was not very hot (in Minnesota's defense this summer was unseasonably cool). But, I digress and made a short story long, sorry folks, back to the point.


On Saturday Anne and I woke up to find snow on our lawn. We then looked at the temp online to find it was 27F/-3C with windchill of 16F/-9C. For those of you who are lucky enough not to know what windchill is it is what the temp actually feels (including the wind). We then looked at the temp in Tokyo and Shanghai, both of which are currently enjoying weather in the mid 70s F/20s C. Fortunately the snow melted, but on Monday it snowed for at least another 6 more hours. Just a little reminder that, yep, we are back in Minneapolis.