Photo 365 Project - Fireworks Stand

When I was a kid fireworks were illegal. At the time I thought they were illegal everywhere in Minnesota, but I was a kid, what did I know? Today there are a few varieties that are legal in the town I live in, but only for a short time; so tents like this pop up shortly before the fourth of July. The fireworks they sell are silly things, mostly smoke and not much spark or bang, and certainly no flying (that's a big no-no, presumably because of the concern over launching something onto a neighbors roof and starting it on fire).

Photo 365 Project - Cable Hackers

It may not look like much, but this truck and the worker inside are connecting up my office to a fiber optic Internet connection. More bandwidth please!

Photo 365 Project - Eagan Farmer's Market

The first day of the weekly farmer's market has arrived! Every Wednesday through the summer vendors set up tents and tables to form a Farmer's Market for a few hours.

Photo 365 Project - Buffalo Wild Wings

A nice place to hang out. Buffalo Wild Wings is in an area called The Promenade, a collection of shops that includes a few that have made it into the Photo 365 Project (Panera and Panda Express most recently).

Photo 365 Project - US Flag

A quick stop for gas on a sunny day with a little wind and the flag caught my eye. Independence day is coming up soon here in the states, so flag- consider yourself posted.

Photo 365 Project - MN Canoe

This was dinner. It is called a Minnesota Canoe; a flank steak wrapped around mushrooms, onions and swiss.

Photo 365 Project - Carriage Hills

It doesn't look like a six year court battle, but it is (or was). The lawyers have all gone home, now the bulldozers take over. This chunk of land was a golf course called Carriage Hills and will soon be transformed into a housing development called Stone Haven. I may catch more pictures here as things develop.

Photo 365 Project - Stormy Panera

Shortly after the latest storm blew through we stopped by a food place near Panera. I noticed the outside seating at Panera had gotten caught up in the wind, and am getting a little better at catching these moments with my camera. When we left the area a little while later the tables and chairs had been cleaned up.

Photo 365 Project - Lawn Mowing

About 1/3 of an acre to go...

Photo 365 Project - Panda Express

A new restaurant in town.

Photo 365 Project - Robo Stash

The Robotics team got kicked out of their storage room. Who knew building robots could generate such a mound of...treasure?

Photo 365 Project - Impaired Pedestrian

I've never seen a vision impaired pedestrian in this area, and I suspect they haven't seen me either (groan).

Alternate caption: Nary a bar in sight, not sure what this is about.

Photo 365 Project - Leaning Lamp

Another desparation photo. The day was slipping away with no photo logged. My iPhone doesn't deal well with photos having a dark foreground/light background (not good for most cameras, the iPhone doubly so). Regardless this leaning lamp caught my eye as I walked up to a bookstore.

Photo 365 Project - Pizza Oven

A coworker decided to build a dry-fit pizza oven. Dry-fit means it isn't permanent, just a proof-of-concept that will be used for about a year then replaced with a more durable design. In the meantime, pizza, pastries, breads and perhaps roasts will get their turn inside the wood fired oven.

Photo 365 Project - Road Stripping

The long running joke here (and probably everywhere else with similar climate) is "We have two seasons, winter and road construction".

I snapped this after grabbing coffee on the way to work. I'm amazed at how quickly these machines can strip an asphalt road. The ground up bits are taken to a local company called Bituminous Roadways where the asphalt is recycled into new asphalt.

Photo 365 Project - Something Wicked This Way Came

It's tornado season in the Midwest, but usually they don't all come at once. Before today, the most tornadoes confirmed in Minnesota in a single day was 26, that was in 1992. Normally, there are less than that in an entire year. On this day, that record is expected to be broken as dozens of tornadoes sprouted from a line of storms that raced from southwest Minnesota and off to the northeast and into Wisconsin.

It was getting late in the day and the sun had been hidden behind clouds since about 4 in the afternoon. It was storm building weather with a cool morning, lots of heat building during the day (what we call 'adding energy' to the atmosphere). If the sun gets down soon enough this stuff will dissipate, but these are the longest days of the year in this part of the country with over 15 hours of sunlight. There were storm warnings with dire predictions of hail and wicked weather so I ran some quick errands then tucked my car in the garage and waited for the drama. After much wind and gloominess, the light outside turned a very green (seriously, when the sunlight turns green nothing good comes from it) an hour later it shifted to an odd yellow color. I grabbed the camera and went out hoping to capture the odd color. Epic fail, the camera seems to have 'corrected' the color.

This storm continued to the northwest through the Twin Cities and ended up killing three people. An older couple fled their farmhouse and hunkered down in a ditch, only to get hit by some debris; the elderly gentleman was wounded and his wife was killed. In northwestern Minnesota a 58 year old man (on his birthday none-the-less) checked in at the convenience store where his daughter was working; he also worked there but was off that evening. A tornado whipped into town and the man covered his daughter as they ducked into the corner and the tornado hit the store. He was killed but his daughter survived. Also in north western Minnesota a woman was killed, details are sketchy as places hardest hit are cleaning up.

Photo 365 Project - Planted Field

This field has been left fallow for the last couple years. This year some cars showed up and people stood around looking very serious for a while. Later the field was plowed. Then more cars showed up. Then plants started to grow.

They've done a very good job creating these little plots of various plants. The current theory is the field workers leased the field and plan to sell the produce at a farmer's market later in the year.

Photo 365 Project - Kindle

This is what happens when you forget to take a picture of the day. I was lying in bed reading a book, dozing off, when it occurred to me I had no photo! I berrated myself for a while, considered taking a picture of the ceiling of my bedroom, then decided the kindle in front of me was a better candidate. I spend a fair amount of time looking at this kindle, might as well memorialize it in a photo.

Photo 365 Project - Gas Pump

A little pic for our friends overseas. A truely american gas pump. Note the color television at the top (it starts a little newscast, weather report, and advertisement when the pump is activated), the digital display and pay-at-the-pump card slot (these particular pumps are open 24 hours, the gas station/convenience store closes, but people can still drive up and buy gas).

Not very photo worthy? Consider the oddity of it. Gas stations claim they make very little money on gas, the real profit is in the store. The gas is a "loss leader" that gets people to the store. Yet the gas stations provide these monoliths and make it very easy to bypass the store.

Photo 365 Project - Mushroom Lawn

Along with many days of rain comes mushrooms. These little guys pop up fast and in quantity. Fresh ones appear daily as the rain continues, and often in clumps like this.