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After a kinda crazy morning of carpooling for golf, then back home, then back to golf, then to the junior high school, then to the grocery store, liquor store, and home to prep a few tasties, I was ready for a nice, long chat and a cool glass of wine with my aunt Marge and her daughters, my beautiful, cool-chick cousins Kim and Kelly. Marge and Kim live in (and near) Willmar (Kim actually lives in Spicer, on lovely Green Lake) and had driven in to the Twin Cities to pick up Kelly, who lives in DC, at the airport. She’s in Minnesota for a relaxing, week-long vaca from her job in marketing at XM Satellite Radio. Despite the heat, we were relatively comfortable on the screen porch (with the fan on), gabbing and snacking on tomato toast with ham and Manchego, zucchini parmigiana, cukes in sour cream, Marcona almonds, and olives. They just hit the road, back to west-central Minnesota, hopefully not hitting loads of rush-hour traffic, although it’s highly likely. Damn. AND I forgot to take their picture for the blog, which I’m sure they’re glad of, but I’m bummed!

And I have to confess, as I write this, I’m sipping one of my new favorite summer beers, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse. I’m definitely into wheat beer, I love the cloudy body of it, and hint of spicy-sweetness, yet it’s still light and thirst-quenching. The Hacker-Pschorr Weisse I mentioned yesterday is delish too. But the Franziskaner might be better, a touch less sweet, a bit more zing. Oooh, a beer contest… (I hated beer when I first got to Madison, WI, for college. Um, that didn’t last very long. No true Badger hates beer. Or bratwurst/brats. Or cheese. Or football players, woops I mean football, football. Ha. And, by the way, that is not me in the above pic – I’ve done oh so many dumbass things in lovely, hedonistic Madtown, but drinking beer straight out of a keg while being held upside down is not one of them. Maybe someday…just kidding. This pic is just an example of how, uh, passionate Badgers are about their beer. If you’re a parental unit for one these crazy kids, my apologies to you for revealing that students do not, after all, study before football games…)