Kansas City firm chosen to design Gophers' new stadium

The University of Minnesota today announced that it has selected HOK Sport of Kansas City to design the Gophers' new on-campus football stadium that was approved by the Legislature last month.

"We believe HOK is an ideal firm tohelp create a facility that renews our big 10 football traditions and meshes with the campus and our neighborhoods," University President Robert Bruininks said in a statement released this morning.

HOK Sport has designed several high profile sports facilities across the country, including Major League Baseball's Jacobs Field in Cleveland and Camden Yards in Baltimore and the new Arizona Cardinals pro football stadium in Phoenix.

The company has also worked with football programs at the collegiate level, including Penn State, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, the University of Florida, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Alabama.

Fucking Computers...and Axis & Allies

So much for my plan for one very long post yesterday. If you saw the blog at all yesterday afternoon or evening you probably noticed that my post was cut off in mid-sentence. Well, my computer was going funky, so I quickly posted what I had written.....literally seconds later everything went nuts. Tried to restart it, but every time you tried to log in it just kept taking you back to the log in page. There was a team on techies working on it all afternoon, but there's still no resolution. I'm writing this on my laptop as I sit in my cube with a dead computer. So, I wasn't able to work or go online at all after 1:30 yesterday. I just sat around until 4:30, then they finally told me to just go home. When I got home I quicky turned on my laptop, hoping to check my email and finish my bloggin, but the interenet connection I'm stealing ion my apartment wasn't working ALL NIGHT!!! I was so fucking annoyed! So I accomplished nothing yesterday at all......
Now I've given up on my mega-post idea from yesterday.

In other news...AXIS & ALLIES

On Sunday Jay and Matt came over to play a little A&A minitaures. This is my new obsession, and I'm proud to say that it's contagious, and I now have Jay and Shawn hooked on the game....and of course on collecting the miniatures used in the game. I've spent many hours making spreadsheets and organizing my pieces over the past few weeks. Ah, the geekiness! These are just some photos I took on Sunday of the nerd fest.








(The German armor is about to be destroyed by the French and the British expeditionary force)







(After we played a couple games Matt took off and Jay and I began trade fest! This is out setup for our Uncommons trade. It looks fun doesn't it?...it was! It really was!)











(Here's Jay, proudly sitting at the trade table. As if the miniatures wasnt geeky enough, the helmet wall in the backround seals my fate as a geek! Oh, you can also see my A&A miniatures spreadsheet displayed on my laptop.)

Blue Mounds State Park

Greetings readers. Today I want to show you a bunch of pictures form previous events. I won't go in chronological order, because, well, I don't want to....and it's my blog and I don't have to. I'm going to start with my trip to Blue Mounds State Park and Luverne, MN on Saturday with Rachel; followed by some A&A stuff and pics from the Memorial Day party. I'll just post what I have, little by little, and keep adding on to the same post, rather than creating a new post for every topic. So, if you see the same headline on top of the blog all day today, that doesn't mean I haven't added more to the bottom....

So anyway, on Friday night I was hanging with Rachel at my place watching a movie, and suddenly we decided that we should take a day trip on Saturday.......and we decided to go to Blue Mounds. So we left Saturday morning at 7:00am. It was a beautiful morning, and we drove the roughly 3 1/2 hours to Luverne, and got there around 10:30-11:00. As we drive into the city we see a mass of people in downtown Luverne, and realize that the road is closed and there's a parade going on! I think the entire county was in Luverne that day, because there was no place to park in this tiny town in SW Minnesota. Well, we came to find out during our lunch at this little sandwich shop, that Luverne is celebrating "Buffalo Days" that weekend. The town was covered with American Flags of all sizes; there was a craft show going on in the city park(which we skipped), and various other activities throughout the weekend. But after we ate, we got out of town and headed for Blue Mounds State Park.

(As you can see in the photo, they had a "Buffalo Days" sign on every table....oh, and they also like "Faith" in Luverne, MN)

We parked and decided to walk the 2 mile trail that goes along the edge of the Bison range. I'd never seen bison/buffalo before, so that was pretty cool for me. I was surprised, but they didn't seem to care that we were standing 50 feet away....they just layed there, and some munched on some grass. Damn lazy animals, we want entertainment. However, the walk in the hot prarie got to be a little long for me. By the time we got to the visitors center on the other side of the park I was pooped. I chugged a bunch of water and we started back on the 2 mile walk back to our car, and the little swimming beach that was our true destination! On our way back there was a flock of about 10-15 hawks circling above us, hunting in the prarie, which was pretty cool.

When we left the car about 11:30 the beach was completely desterted. Of course, when we came back there was a mass of small children in the water with their parents covering the beach...ugh. We went in for a few minutes, but after about 10 minutes the muddy water and small children drove us away, and we headed home.
(note: the drive home included a 3 hr. '20 Questions' marathon...good times!)