Blogs from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, North America - page 20

Kevin Slowey, my good friend and one of the newest subscribers to this blog, sent me a package to France with a new baseball glove and some under-armour baseball clothing. I wrote him an email to thank him for his gracious gift, and he said that he did not need any thanks, but that if I ever felt obliged I could feature him in one of my blog entries. Well, that time has come. This morning I was reading an article on ESPN.com, an opinion piece giving a rundown of the latest happenings in Major League Baseball, and unexpectedly the article started talking about Kevin Slowey. I took this as a sign that it is time for the 'Tribute to Kevin Slowey.' Kevin is a professional baseball player, grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. I met ... read more

My friend finally posted the pictures from my recital on Facebook. I know this isn't a travel post for me, per sey, but for Andrea and our grandma, this counts. :) The pieces in the recital (in this order) were: 1st movement of Vivaldi's Concerto in A minor for two violins and harpsicord --- played with my friend Miriam 4th movement of Telemann's Trio Sonata for recorder, violin, and harpsicord ---recorder was played by my friend Lauren Mozart's Violin Sonata in E minor --- This was one of the pieces I started in Vienna Dvorak's Sonantina in G major for violin and piano (it was a duet... the piano wasn't accompaniment in this piece! It was cool.) Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro --- Grandmama and I have played this at her church before. The recital pictures ... read more

We went to Cheyenne, Wyoming this past weekend with every living thing that we own in our Volvo. We packed up all of our plants, our fish, Horace, and our cat, Daisy Pants and drove across the plains of Nebraska. The funny part was that the air conditioning in my Volvo has been broken for awhile, and it was about 85 degrees across Nebraska. We used old-fashioned air conditioning. My mother-in-law, Cheryl, calls it the 4-75, 4 windows down at 75 miles per hour. It was a little windy in the car, but we all did great and got there in one piece. We went to Cheyenne mainly because Cheryl was graduating from LCCC with her Associates Degree (Congratulations, Cheryl!!) and we wanted to help her celebrate. We decided that since we were already making ... read more

We're only a couple months away from the start of our Guatemalan adventure! In fact, it feels like we are already there, what with the balmy 30 degree spring days in Minnesota and all. We started to wonder if it was ever going to warm up this spring. A few weeks back we had a few days that hinted at spring. However, they were abruptly ended with a week below freezing. The big news this time is that we purchased our plane tickets this weekend. Yep, two round-trip tickets (those of you who were wondering if we were coming back can now breathe a sigh of relief). We are scheduled to leave July 5th and return mid-January. We also registered for language school at Celas Maya. It's really happening!!! We started to go through our belongings ... read more

The Conley family is 100 percent Irish; all of my immediate ancestors emigrated from Ireland to Chicago. (Angie's family, by contrast, has been tainted by some Czech and Scottish blood.) Nonetheless, I recently sent a DNA sample to the National Geographic Genographic project. They analyzed my Y-chromosome, the one that is passed directly from father to son, and identified specific mutations that make it possible to trace my ancestors’ wanderings after leaving Africa some 45,000 years ago. I just received the results last week. Imagine my surprise upon learning, on the eve of our trip to Spain, that my ancestors probably came to Ireland from Spain. The report from National Geographic indicates that I am a member of haplogroup R1b. This is the most common genetic marker in Western Europe; in parts of Spain and ... read more