I’ve had six free days since I was designated to sit for jury duty. I wasn’t needed. That ended tonight when I called to see if I would have to report tomorrow. I do. Bummer. I had planned to take my Father-in-law to visit my daughter in the Twin Cities where he will get his last glimpse of her as a mother-to-be. She’s going to make me a grandfather for the first time this September. Alas, I’ll have to cool my heals in the jury “lounge” and Dad will have to sit home watching our newly installed cable channels trying to keep cool.
Dad will be with us till Friday when we cart him accross Minnesota and pass him along to Claudia’s brother who will take him to his home in Bismarck. We’ll head back to Duluth and I told Claudia we’d have to watch the latest Harry Potter movie that night. Saturday Claudia helps host a baby shower for our daughter. Sunday we’ll take her back to the Cities and we’ll watch a matinee of Spamalot with Claudia’s friends from the Minnesota Safety Council. After that we’ll have a couple days to organize ourselves for our summer vacation. We got our passports finally so we can travel to Canada and arrouse less suspicion. I’ve grown a van dyke and look a little more middle eastern.
In the meantime I’m still scraping and sanding our house to apply at least some spot priming to our window framesbefore our departure. It was beastly hot today so Dad and I quit by noon. I have to use him before I lose him.
I put in a call to another Faribault School Board member this afternoon. He didn’t add a lot to my knowledge but confirmed and added to a story I had heard earlier. Apparently Supt. Dixon asked the City Council for money to build a “youth center.” The Faribault City Council agreed to help finance it but after a while they got to wondering about how their money was spent.
When they asked the School District about the youth center the District explained that it was a school cafeteria. Evidently the Council was extremely embarassed at having been taken in and decided not to make a fuss.
It works the other way in Duluth. Our City Council asked the school district for money for the Heritage Hockey Center – anything for hockey you know- and the School Board, which was elected to save the East High School Hockey coach, handed over $1.5 million for the project. They didn’t even need to have a bond referendum to raise the money.
