This past Christmas Eve the whole family was sitting in my great room having a Skype session with my uncle Steve and his lovely wife Vicki, who live in Excelsior Minnesota. during the session, they mentioned that they were having their annual New Years day brunch at their house and that we were all invited if we wanted to come up.
After the call ended, my son looked over at me and said ‘Let’s go’. Knowing Matt was very spontaneous, I knew he was serious and I started to think of how we could arrange it. My mom said she wanted to go along, but I don’t think she thought Matt was serious. Little did she know that he was and that we would be calling her later in the week to make plans.
Fast forward to New Years Eve morning and we are out the door at 8 am driving to Excelsior. Steve did not know we were coming but I had coordinated ahead of time with Vicki to make sure it was OK to ‘crash’ the party. We were on the road for a little over seven hours traveling from 51 degrees and rainy to 23 degrees and hail/sleet when we arrived in the twin cities.
We arrived at the hotel at about 3 to check in (Matt and I were staying there for one night so I could get to my next hotel rewards level before the end of the year) then headed over to Steve’s to surprise him.
I rang the doorbell with Matt standing out of site to the side and mom sneaking in through the garage door. Needless to say Steve was very surprised to see me and then Matt and then mom when she snuck in from the side. Vicky did not look so surprised as she knew we were coming and had been nice enough to email me weather reports as were were traveling there.
We had a real nice visit before Matt, Mom and I headed downtown for a very pleasant New Years Eve dinner at Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis. Excellent meal, highly recommended. The roads were not at all treacherous like the local news tends to embellish, except for one intersection that I slid right through near their house. The funny thing about that incident was there was a police officer sitting at the intersection and he just watched just slide right through and did not pull me over since he was probably glad that I did not hit anyone and he did not need to get out of his squad car to investigate.
The next morning they had a brunch with about 30 guests coming in and out into the early afternoon. Plenty of good food and conversation in a very relaxed atmosphere. A nice way to start the year.
After everyone left Matt helped Steve organize his CD Collection of operas and classical music. Steve has an extensive collection and even more extensive knowledge of classical composers, opera composers and opera singers. As they were organizing, Steve gave us some background on the many of the operas and suggested that we catch one of the high definition broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera that are shown at some of our local theatres. We plan on catching Capriccio in April this year as I would like to see and hear the scene that is paid homage in ‘The Fifth Element’ where the Diva Plavalaguna sings on the space cruise ship.
We leave tomorrow morning to head back home at the same time Steve leaves to play organ in St. Paul as he does every Sunday. I’m glad we took the time to come up for the party as I learn something new about the family every time we all get together and why would you sit on the couch when you can be out making memories.
Here’s to making many more memories in 2011. Happy New Year to all my friends past, present and still to be discovered.
UPDATE: As Steve pointed out in his comment, the scene in ‘The Fifth Element’ is from LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR (not CAPRICCIO). Sorry opera fans everywhere.