Weekend

Back in town today -- we took a short family trip up to St. Cloud to get the kids wet at the big Holiday Inn up there. I haven't even looked at the blog or the web since Friday. I'm sure many important things have happened, but chances are you've already read about them elsewhere. A few quick thoughts to share:

• Depending on the numbers you look at, there are about 165,000-170,000 people living in the St. Cloud area these days. I swear that there were at least 165,000 cars going down the roads in the confluence of Highways 15, 23 and 75, the area around the Holiday Inn and the Crossroads Center mall on Saturday afternoon. Traffic on those roads was every bit as bad as it is around Rosedale or some of the other malls in the Twin Cities. If there's been a lull in economic activity in St. Cloud, you could have fooled me.


• There were a lot of kids at the hotel and my kids had a fine time splashing around the water -- they have two full-size pools and five pools altogether -- and playing games in the other recreation areas at the hotel. It's a nice trip from where we live, because we can get up there in less than an hour and yet it is decidedly out of town, even though you can still get the Twin Cities radio and television stations there.


• I did get to watch a little of the NCAA basketball tournament over the weekend. While I'm disappointed that my beloved Marquette Warriors (I know, officially Golden Eagles but they'll always be the Warriors) and Wisconsin Badgers both got blown away in Boise today, the tournament has been its usual fun. And I am happy to tell you that I have 15 of the 16 teams in the Sweet Sixteen correct. And I have to give my son Ben a lot of credit for picking Cleveland State to beat Wake Forest in the first round. Brad Carlson posted his bracket and so far Ben and I are both beating Brad. But we'll see how it turns out.


• I also saw the opening skit on Saturday Night Live. The comedians of the world sure seem afraid to make fun of Barack Obama.


• I'm going to be making a few housekeeping changes to the blog in the next day or so. Stay tuned.