Summer Updates

Wow, it's been a fast-paced summer. I've been working in Nebraska quite a bit with an exciting project in Omaha but it's wrecked havoc on schedules. I'll post some pictures when it starts appearing less like a construction site and more like a building. Meg's back in school (graduate program and teaching) and has a great group of students. She's also coaching volleyball and apparently has quite the squad.

We've also been working on buying a house, which has been a fun but frustrating process. More to come on that, but we're pretty close to zeroing in on one. James Dougherty tells me that he's proud of Meg's persistence that we look in St. Paul.

The Republican National Convention brought a little bit of national craziness to our quite town too. My Aunt Rebecca was in town to attend the convention and invited the family to a party the last night of the convention and it was a great time. It was fun to see some of the politicians (both sides of the aisle) and the swarm of national media that would likely have never stopped in St. Paul outside of a Wild hockey game. My favorite part was actually watching the protesters and demonstrators, most of whom were from out of town. St. Paul is a strange city when it comes to roadways, and on multiple occasions we found people demonstrating at locations that were not exactly their target. One fun part was that some of them didn't realize that Minneapolis is ten miles west of St. Paul. There were waves of buses, vans and other people movers scurrying back and forth between downtowns all week with great people watching. Overall, it was great to see the American political process in action from all perspectives.