Okay, so here is the average Friday for Stace and me:

3:45am I get up quietly to go to work. I leave the lights off for Stace.

5:00am-ish Stace may or may not have gotten up. I'm at the airport loading my plane. A cup of coffee later and soon I depart for Cedar Rapids, IA.

6:00am Stace rushes out the door, sticking closely to her routine of gulping coffee, lunch pail in one hand and messenger bag over the shoulder, and rummaging for her keys. She makes a couple of trips back into the house to select the proper jacket (autumn can be difficult). She then sets off the car alarm at least once (new cars can be difficult).

6:30 am I watch the sunrise over eastern Iowa.

7:00am Stace arrives at work, a major insurance company, which I have only seen the outside of the building. It's a joyless building, built on the pain of countless Minnesotans. Not even light escapes from it's interior. I imagine it's very much like Orwell's 1984 on the inside.

7:02am Stace thinks about how much she hates her job.

8:00am I arrive in Dubuque, IA. after brief stops in Cedar Rapids and Davenport, IA.

9:00am Stace wallows in her loathing for this job. Her last day is Monday. She counts the days, nay, minutes until she is free from the immoral, unethical, and deeply disturbing environment of a large, right wing, corporate insurance conglomerate. (I suspect they just let children die sometimes.)

9:02am I'm watching TV in the pilots lounge. Should I go out to breakfast or take a nap. Hmmm, I guess......zzzzzzzz.

11:00am Stace calls me after I eat lunch. I sit on a park bench in Iowa and tell her how nice my day is going. She tells me how much this place sucks the life from her bones. Her voice seems hollow.........and distant.

12:00pm During lunch hour, Stace's boss holds a farewell party for her. This mandatory party destroys lunch hour for everyone in her office. This "golden hour" as it's called in the healthcare world is the only time during the day the employees are away from their desks. They now hate her. Some cry openly.

12:30 pm I depart Dubuque, and a couple of brief stops later, I land in St. Paul at 3:00pm. The drive home is pleasant and traffic free.

3:30 pm Stace's is the best worker in her department, and it's a major loss to the company. Her employer presents her with a Target gift card. She thanks them, but she can't buy back the 6 months of her life she lost to the cubicle on the 3rd. floor. And I don't think Target sells a conscience cleaner.

4:00pm I'm not loving my new lawn mower bag. My day is ruined.

5:30pm Stace comes home. She says the lawn looks great and she hates her job.

6:00pm Instead of our usual Friday night visit to the Contented Cow (which we haven't done for months), Stace asks if I want pizza delivered. This is like asking a dog "Does this smell?".

8:00pm Like all 37 year olds, we sit back and eat pizza (Basil's house special) and drink red wine (Barefoot cabernet sauvignon).

Our lives are good.

Stace and I were working on remodeling our upstairs bathroom a couple of days ago. I was covered head to toe in drywall compound dust and she was trying to steam off the remainder of the floral (vomit) print wallpaper that the lunatic previous owner put up in 1971.

Then Stace says: "Do you realize that we are doing a major remodeling of this bathroom, AND we just got a new roof, because hail destroyed the roof, the gutters, my tomato garden and all your landscaping, meanwhile I'm also about to start my own business, AND we're decorating my new office for that new business, plus I also start another fulltime job in Eagan in October, for which I have to get insurance reimbursement approval, AND I need insurance reimbursement approval for my business too, AND Emma (our beloved cat) passed away, AND we're getting married in a little over a week?"

My response was, "Yep." And that one moment in time revealed so much about how Stace and I look at life.

Stace sees life as a never ending series of tasks and challenges that she takes on happily.

I see lightweight drywall joint compound.

It's Roofing Time in Northfield. Aah, I remember how much I looked forward to Roofing Time when I was a kid. Every fall, the whole neighborhood would come alive with airpowered nail guns and roofers yelling in Spanish. For what seemed like an eternity, the enchanted rhythm of banging and the ROAR of air compressors would fill the air. Afterward, the magic moment: I would run around the yard in a flurry picking up all the nails and scraps of shingle I could find before the other kids snatched them up. Oh yes! Good times!

As some of you may know, southern Minnesota was struck with two waves of severe storms on Thursday, August 24th. The storms produced hail ranging from "golfball size" to "baseball size" with some "softball size" thrown in just to complete a summer sports trifecta.

Thank God we were spared the Nerf Football size hail!

Merle is an "older" man that lives across the street in a 105 year old home. His father built it and Merle grew up there. In fact, I think Merle was born before the final nail was put in.

Merle got his roof fixed this weekend. The roofers worked in the rain and did the job in about 2 days. This included all new plywood on his garage roof.

My roof was replaced last week. It took a day and a half, and the whole house looks like a million bucks.

Lillian, the 83 year old woman who lives next door to us, commented to Stace that "those Mexicans were making such a racket up there on Merle's roof!" She is getting her roof reshingled next week. I hope the roofers are Norwegian, because I'm sure they'll be very quiet.

Finally, Mike and Winnie live two doors down. They love their home. I know because they proudly display their indoor furniture, trash cans, and SEVERAL gas grills (in various stage of disrepair) right there on the front lawn all year 'round.

Mike is putting his new roof on himself. SO many things bad about this, I have to list them:

1. It rained hard the first day, shortly after he got the first few shingles off.
2. He covered his roof with a giant tarp. This included covering the hot water heater vent, and the vent for the furnace. No one died from this?
3. He had no building permit. He was shut down the second day.
4. He drove a large farm tractor on main roads to the home store to pick up his shingles.
5. On day 5 (yes day 5) he had only the back of the house stripped.
6. His teen daughters and their boyfriends are up there helping.

Since he started, 3 homes on my block have had roofs put on one after the other.

Good day, ah? So I'm doin' this blog to keep folks up to date on what's going on with Stace and me. She may post stuff here from time to time.

Right now it's fall in Minnesota. Well, it's fall everywhere in the northern hemisphere.
Is it 43 degrees where you are?

I was flying last week, and the trees are turning yellow and orange, but there is still plenty of green down there. This part of Minnesota peaks around the beginning of October. We're the only part of the state that's not in a drought, so the colors should be good.

That is except in Northfield! We were devastated by a massive, softball size hailstorm in late August. In addition to wrecking the shingles on our roof, it defoliated many of the trees. It also pounded Stace's tomato garden into gazpacho.

Just yesterday, I put the finishing touches on repairing our landscaping in the front yard.