I don’t know if anyone else likes to do this, but when I travel to a place, I like to read a book set in that place.

For example, on our honeymoon in San Francisco and Sonoma, I read The Maltese Falcon and East of Eden.

This weekend, Bird and I are heading to Chicago for a Friday night wedding but then we have Saturday and Sunday to explore the city.  I recommended Devil in the White City for Bird and she is about halfway through.

I’m still working on Moby Dick, but I am on the lookout for books set in London (there are just a few of them out there *sarcasm*).

The other day I used an Amazon gift card I earned through Swagbucks to pick up Imagined London by Anna Quinden.  I plan on reading that in August to get me in the mood for our trip to Europe in September.

Also on the topic of books and traveling…Bird and I are driving to Chicago and it’s approximately a 7 or 8 hour drive from Minneapolis so we are thinking about getting an audiobook or two to pass the time.

Does anyone have any good recommendations?

Is there somewhere online to get audiobooks for free?  I think we will check out the library to get some books on CD but it’d be convenient to just load up the ipod.

I love to read and every year for Christmas I provide my parents with a list of books that I would like to receive.  I always hope they will choose just a few off the list, but this year I was completely surprised because I received every single book on my list.

• Problogger by Darren Rowse
• Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim
• Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
• Crush It!  by Gary Vaynerchuk
• The Amateur Spy by Dan Fesperman
• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• Letters from the Country by Carol Bly
• Necessity of Empty Places by Paul Gruchow
• All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin

And I also received Cesar’s Way by Cesar Millan from Bird’s sister.

Have you read any of these?  Which one should I read first?

It’s that time of year again.

Tomorrow is the 2009 Minnesota Deer Hunting Opener and 500,000 hunters will take to the field and try to bring home a deer.  I will be one of them.

I’m only working a half day today because I want to hit the road early enough to at least miss out on most of the traffic.  I’m sure there will still be plenty of traffic as everyone heads North for the woods, but I’m leaving work at 1 pm.  I have a 5-hour drive ahead of me because we hunt just south of the Canadian border.  I’ll hunt Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, arriving back in Minneapolis Monday night.  So next week will be a 4-day workweek.  I like that.

For me, hunting isn’t much about getting a deer.  In fact, I’ve only shot 3 in almost 15 years of hunting.  It’s really about being out in the woods and getting away from it all.  It’s about being quiet and reading a good book.  It’s about being with family (there will be about 15 of us in deer camp).  It’s about stories around the campfire.  Stories my Grandpa has told hundreds of times.  We still love them.

It’ll take about 2 full tanks of gas to make the trip.  About $50.  Cost of a deer hunting license is $27.  If I get a deer, then the expenses go up into the $100-$200 range for butchering, but then I also get a freezer full of venison!

While I’m away, Bird will be going to Portland, OR with her mom to visit her brother.  If anyone is reading from Portland, let me know if there is any must see, must do, or must eat in Portland.

Here’s hoping for a big buck this weekend, but mostly for safety and good times for all 500,000 of us.  See ya on Tuesday.

By the time you are reading this, I will have been up for hours and will be tromping (is that a word?) through some field in Southern Minnesota with a huge smile on my face.  Unless it’s raining/snowing.  But the weather forecast is calling for partly cloudy and 50 degree weather which should be just about perfect.

I’m hunting pheasants with my uncles and cousins today.  Historically, I have not had much luck pheasant hunting, but you never know…so hopefully I come home with 2 birds (that’s the limit) for Bird to cook!  Anyone have a good pheasant recipe?  The last few times I’ve cooked them I just put them in the crockpot with some apples or maybe a wild rice soup and it was pretty good, but I’m by no means an expert and am open to suggestions.

Bird’s grandparent’s are also coming up from Wisconsin for the weekend, so I will have to hurry home after hunting and make it to family dinner with my in-laws.  That should be a lot of fun (not sarcasm!).  We will have a chance to go through all our wedding photos with the family and probably end up playing some games and just having an all around good day.

So even though I’m writing this on Friday, I’m so so so excited for Saturday!

Some financial notes:  A pheasant stamp cost me $7.50 on top of the Small Game License that I bought this Spring which was like $15.  Plus, I’ll probably use about a 1/2 tank of gas driving there, but oh well, it’ll be totally worth it!

Update: My uncle called last night and called off hunting due to the weather.  Boo.  So now I have a free Saturday and I’m not sure what to do with it!

I’m heading up north for a weekend of hunting deer with my family. Don’t worry, I hardly ever shoot one. It will just be a nice time to be out in the woods and enjoying God’s creation and spending time with family. I’ll be gone through Tuesday, but I do have some posts lined up for while I’m out so check back for those.

Say a little prayer for safety this weekend for all the hunters and I won’t mind if you slip in a little prayer for a monster buck. I’ll be back next week! Enjoy the weekend!

My brother just called to tell me that his friend won a fishing tournament this weekend. Let’s analyze:

$200 dollar entry fee…fish for two days…win $10,000.
Not too shabby.

I wrote that last post because I wanted you to get the overall sense that I’m just not that into food. I don’t know if that came through or not. Either way, I think there’s actually a lot more to it psychologically and even physically (I think something is up with my sense of taste), but I’m really having trouble unpacking it. I don’t know how to write about it.

Essentially, I thought it you might be surprised to learn that while I don’t care much about food, I love to go grocery shopping. Mostly, I love grocery stores.

A couple of years ago, when I first moved out on my own after college, I used to go grocery shopping every Sunday night. I’d go late, when most people were in bed and the late-shift workers were restocking the shelves from pallets of boxes that filled the aisles. I’d walk up and down almost every aisle, just looking, taking it all in. Absorbing the colors, images, shapes and sizes. Grocery stores are like the epitome of organization. I can appreciate some good organization.

It would end up taking me about an hour and I’d only pick up a half dozen items or so, but it was one of my favorite parts of the week. Just a time to decompress the week that was and gear up for the week ahead.

Somewhere along the line I lost that…and I miss it. It ‘s probably because I shop at Super Target now (which doesn’t quite feel like a grocery story and isn’t open late enough for the crowds to ever die down, but it’s so very close to home).

All this to say that I got groceries tonight. Traffic was terrible on my way home, but I knew I was out of my essentials for lunches, so I stopped by Target. After the long day at work, I was ready to get in and get out, so I just picked up what I needed and was out of there in 10 minutes. I ended up spending $33.34 on nothing special; some bread, milk, broccoli, carrots, apples, cereal….that kind of basic stuff. My one exotic (so-not really exotic!) purchase was a box of Thai noodles where you just add water and microwave it. I had it for dinner tonight. It wasn’t great…it wasn’t terrible. I feel like I would say that about 85% of all the food I eat.

After writing this post, I’m thinking I would really like to give my old grocery routine a try. I really do miss it. I wonder how it will affect my spending. Currently, I grocery shop whenever I need to, so it could be once a week or once every three weeks depending on a variety of factors including how much I eat out and how much food I eat at home.

One obvious problem I foresee is that I don’t currently know exactly what I spend on food per month. So it might be hard to compare, but whatever, I’ll just keep you posted on what happens.