Kristine and Julie!

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Kristine came from Seattle on Friday night to do a puzzle contest with her sister Julie. They did not expect to win, and they were right. The winners did a 500-piece puzzle without a picture of the actual puzzle in 16 minutes. I do not know how those peoples’ brains work.

Julie brought Kristine to Woodbury for a lovely breakfast at Hope Breakfast Bar before heading home to Pine City. We had never been there before and it was delicious. I had a cinnamon roll waffle, which I could not finish, and Keith had a French toast grilled cheese sandwich (with the most crunchy, fried cheese of all time on it) with cheesy tomato basil soup. The soup looked like a bowl of cheese, but tasted like tomato – totally weird, but totally tasty. We shared loaded hashbrowns. Julie created a vegan breakfast plate by ordering sides and Kristine had her first gluten-free waffle, which tasted like a waffle! Yay. Wins all around.

Kristine, Keith, and I went to Hudson to the Phipps to see the acapella group, Cantus. I really enjoyed the concert. I found it so interesting to watch each of the eight men in the group. Kristine’s son sings in an acapella group and she commented that her son’s group faced the audience and smiled at the audience. The Cantus men looked mostly at each other, sometimes out at us, and just looked like they were really enjoying what they were doing, but weren’t working to visually entertain us. It felt a bit like we just happened upon some guys singing some songs (and they were really good at it).

No two singers looked remotely like each other, which is true of most people. yet I kept noticing it. I would say I am odd, but my companions said the same. I said it was a like a Guess Who game (the game with the flip down faces you are trying to eliminate – Does your guy have a beard? glasses? bald? tall? really short? black? Asian?).

We had teriyaki vegetables and rice for dinner – very proudly keeping Kristine from starving. It was good. Keith went off to Metro Brass rehearsal 2. Kristine and I sat in the blue chairs and did all the chatting. A perfect evening, except for forgetting to make popcorn.