I recently ate at Murray’s Restaurant in Downtown Minneapolis. As per usual, I wore a collared shirt and nice dress pants. Generally, I feel underdressed when I don’t wear a tie. This time around, I felt overdressed with no tie on. Apparently, there’s no dress code at Murray’s any longer and there were plenty of men wearing shorts and sandals. Seemingly most of the women were dressier, however.

Call me old-fashioned, I guess, but I’m relatively young and grew up in the casual era. I’ve never worked in a place that required anything above khakis and golf shirts as standard dress attire. But when I go to a place like Murray’s, I expect there not to be Joe Schmoe in a t-shirt and shorts with flip-flops on next to me. Apparently management thought it was more important to let this go. I think it’s kind of sad that you can’t even expect dressy attire at one of the last bastions of formal dining in the cities.

Our whole group had the silver butter knife steak, and we were not disappointed. I will be back again, even with the lax dress code.

So if you’ve read my previous entries… I’ve been moving from Chanhassen to Eden Prairie…

The move is complete, for those who care…

But even more interesting is that the City of Eden Prairie Government has a BLOG! Yeah! You heard me! A BLOG!

After reading a few posts… it seems as though the City Manager, Police Chief, Fire Chief, and the Deputy Police Chief all post! It’s great to see a modernized city government speaking to its people. The place of government is to serve the people and because I’m techy and a citizen of Eden Prairie… they are speaking to me!

It feels kinda cool… but almost has the “stop trying to be cool mom” feel to it.

The second piece of interesting news is that the City of Eden Prairie is having problems with WATER! How freaking crazy is that?…

“Over the weekend, the City had to issue a press release asking for an increased level of compliance from Eden Prairie citizens with out current outdoor watering restrictions. These restrictions include no watering between Noon and 5 p.m. any day, and an Even/Odd watering plan the rest of the time. If we can’t get a high enough level of voluntary compliance, sometime this week we are projecting that we will need to implement a complete outdoor watering ban.” - Scott Neal

What’s even more interesting (and partially why this blog is pretty neat..)

“At this time (Monday, July 31) the City does not need to impose a full watering ban, but we are getting very close to making that decision. We will need to impose the full watering ban if we cannot drive water consumption down through a combination of asking politely and issuing more outdoor watering violation tickets. We prefer to do the former to the latter. Let’s hope it works.” - Scott Neal

Now THAT is reaching out to your citizens with a touch of personality.

I like it.

(p.s. I hope that this appeases Sam and his complaint of my lack of meaningful content :-P)

A couple of my friends (including Bill) and I went to the Twins/Tigers game Friday night. We were about nine rows from the ceiling, so it took us a while to descend into the packed hallways of the Metrodome. We walked over to the HCMC parking lot, where we were parked, and proceeded to wait in line to get out of the garage.

Half an hour later, we hadn’t moved and when we saw the lady in the electric wheelchair go down the ramp past us, we decided we were hungry and wanted to eat dinner. But it was going on 11pm and that’s when we realized that between the three of us, we couldn’t really think of anything close to the Metrodome that involved actually ordering food off a menu.

Maybe we were missing places we just didn’t know about, but we ended up walking to Kieran’s Irish Pub, which didn’t disappoint. But let’s face it - when you’re cranky about your favorite baseball team losing a close game, do you really want to walk a whole .4 miles in the sweltering heat?

What else serves a somewhat full menu after a nighttime baseball game? I know there’s the warehouse district full of places, but what about closer?

Hey folks, it’s that time of the year when Minneapolis Metrobloggers start pimping Fringe Festival shows.

Well the show I’m pimping features my good friends, Sadie Bowman and Marc Gutman — Calculus the Musical. Let me explain… Marc’s been my friend since high school. The about us page points out that he holds the “Seward Cafe Iron Chef,” but he also holds the title of “Dave Dash’s Best Man.” What does this really mean? This means that he has come in and out of the Katie and Dave compound for a number of years just to hang out and possibly work.

Work? Well kinda… his work wasn’t “real” or “meaningful”, it was related to creating lesson plans — active and engaging lesson plans that went above the call of duty of a teacher. You might call this “extra credit.” It mostly involved Marc listening to pop music (for example Cracker) humming the music, and slowly replacing the legitimate lyrics with math related words. Occasionally he’d try to engage Katie and I and ask, “what’s a good word that rhymes with ‘theorem.’”

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You and your date are cruising down Washington Avenue after a nice dinner at Nochee or dancing at the Bolt Underground or maybe your headed to Sex World to spice things up a little. You pass the corner of Portland and Washington, and all of a sudden your car fills with the scent of rotten eggs. Your date cracks the window as you desparately attempt to convince them that it wasn’t you, it was the combined sewer overflow (CSO)!
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Just heard on WCCO and confirmed via the Strib: “As of 7:30 p.m. Sunday, more than 12,000 Xcel Energy customers across the state were without power.”

Then comes the obligatory fear mongering about rolling blackouts if we don’t all turn up the thermostat and conserve power. My grandma made it a point to say the power company has had to do this in the metro’s past, although I didn’t find any record in a quick Google search. I for one don’t believe we’ll lose power metro-wide.

Hard to believe Xcel isn’t rejoicing at all the extra kilowatts they’re pumping into homes across the metro. My bill is going to be HUGE. But if you’re up for taking a personal hit for the greater good, here are some suggested tips to greater your discomfort from the Strib:

• Keep your power use to a minimum — and prioritize what you do use.

• If you have central air, keep it at 78 degrees or more.

• Turn off lights in the house.

• And try not to use major appliances such as washers, dryers and dishwashers until after 10:30 p.m.

Team Infinity, the team I play for in the Twin Cities Goodtime Softball League, is now the champion of the C Division! We started the year in the D Division, got reseeded into C mid-season, and took it to Infinity and Beyond in the playoffs today and yesterday. In the double elimination playoffs, we were undefeated, and played the Bad Puppies for a second time in the championship game, where we won by 4 (I think) runs in the 7th inning. I scored no runs, but got an RBI.

All the teams today had a great showing and played their hardest. Now I’m off to the Nicollet Island Pavilion for the awards banquet!

Almost. (Picture taken from NOAA’s website describing today’s forecast as “Hot.”)

I figured we’d have a slew of posts since everyone would be hunkered down inside their houses with the AC and the computer. But even in my air-conditioned apartment, it’s still stuffy and uncomfortable, and keeping the hot laptop…well, on my lap is uncomfortable at best.

I’m going to try to beat the heat today by going swimming. Rumor has it that the cleanest lakes around town are Square Lake, Turtle Lake, and Sweeney Lake.

Jason, I hope you’re staying cool while playing softball!

A friend was telling me today that his membership to Northwest Athletic Club is about to come to an end.

Life Time Fitness has just finalized a contract to take over operations of Northwest’s clubs, plus an additional club called Flagship Athletic in Eden Prairie. NWAC was apparently the second largest fitness chain in Minnesota next to Life Time. Details of the deal are here. My friend hasn’t heard if Life Time will conform the membership fees for NWAC’s members with their existing fee structure; the article only says the NWAC memberships will be honored through the end of August.

Ladies and Gentlemen, buy your stock now!

I have no connections to Cities 97, other than that I listen to the station regularily. With that disclosure, I highly suggest that you join their Frequent Listeners Club. Part of that club is a Dining Deals gift certificate program in which you can buy gift certificates at a significant discount.

Thanks to this wonderful program, my girlfriend and I ate at a French influenced restaurant in St. Paul called A Rebours (Mpls St. Paul | CitySearch | City Pages). Wow.
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