Tuesday, May 7, 2013

The First Minneapolis Adventure + Basketball

So, after some persuasion I convinced a loved one to do a little traveling with me, only after being bribed with basketball ticket to the Timberwolves.  So I booked our hotel, reserved the tickets and started scouring reviews for mouth watering food.  Then I prayed.  I prayed that our unpredictable weather would not get into the way of this trip. Where I live we have had several (I mean more than four) major snow falls since March 1st.  Ewww, at least this sleepy community looks as good in the snow as it does with green grass and colorful foliage.

There was no snow on the ground for our trip to Minneapolis, I love these "winning moments."  We cranked up the radio and drove to Dave and Buster's.  I LOVE, LOVE. LOVE Dave & Buster's.  If given the chance I'm just a huge kid. For those of you who don't know about Dave & Buster's it's an arcade that geared toward adults.  It uses hotel style magnetic cards that hold a balance for you to spend in the arcade.  They also serve food, soda, and adult drinks, in my opinion the food and drinks are over priced, I say eat elsewhere & go to play.  There are several locations across the US, check their site to find one near you. So we played at the arcade for a few hours then headed to the hotel.

We stayed at LeBourget Hotel in Bloomington.  I am on a budget and try to get the best deals possible,  therefore I use Priceline to book all of my travel needs.  In this case I used their Express Blind hotel and booked our amazing suite for $64.44, including parking and taxes. This hotel boasts of a new renovation, a pool, a bar & restaurant and The Effile Tower decor (which in my opinion is tacky at best but it's cute.)  No internet and no breakfast, but the bed was comfortable, we had a Keurig and we didn't really want to eat in that hotel anyways.

We went to American Burger bar and ate.  Yumm. Whenever I can I use a combination of YELP.com and Restaurant.com to save money on really good food, when I was taking clients out for dinner I would call ahead and give the location a heads up and give the certificate to the hostest/ server before my clients arrived.  Once at the restaurant I ordered the American Burger, which has American cheese, bacon, and of course a patty.  They offer mini fries, my favorite is to eat them with Garlic Mayo.
We headed back to the hotel to grab the (free) shuttle to the lightrail for the game.  Timberwolves vs the Phoenix Suns, the Timberwolves won!  Whoop Whoop!  


The night had gotten late so we headed back to the hotel to sleep, until brunch. 



Monday, May 6, 2013

In Focus

Today is kinda a big day for me.  After working 19 out of 20 hours in a 24 hour period I am free. I love the children I work with but I am looking forward to my next two days off.  (Yippie!)  Let's face it my house could use a good scrub down and when I get home at 11pm or 2 am I'm not really in a cleaning mood.

Today, I am sending my day shopping with my grandmother.  My sister graduates from college next week and she wants a new outfit, as I'm headed to the cities to purchase a new 4/3rds DSLR camera I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to catch up with my gram and save many $100's of dollars on my camera.
See isn't it a beauty?  It looks just like one of the 35mm cameras
hopefully those pickpockets and scammers will think so and leave
me and it alone while I'm in Europe.
This is the Olympus E-PM2

I'm so excited!  I'm also buying two lenses from a different source.  Yes, it may be expensive to drive to the cities to buy something that I could order online (there's not a store within 75 miles that sells this exact camera) but it would cost me much, much more.




I got the camera and lenses & ordered my adapters.  I'm pretty excited.  Today is an off day. I'll be cleaning and doing more research on my camera and my trip.