The Land of Cherries and Giant Spoons

Apparently the symbol of Minneapolis is a giant spoon housing a water-spewing cherry.
That's okay, I'm a fan of cherries and it was a pretty cool sculpture. Minneapolis was actually much cooler than I thought it would be. That might be because of the three nights in a row that I got really drunk, but also because it was a very clean, artsy city. I didn't see any homeless people, and although we were in the heart of the city, there was nary a fast food place in sight. We heard about a "Subway restaurant, but didn't actually see it. There is also a really cool "Skyway" where you can walk all around downtown inside a big window filled walkway over the city.

I guess I'll start at the beginning, I have some time before my nap. Andrew, Andy and I caught our flight at 6am on saturday morning the 9th. Andrew, Mike and I had stayed up all night the night before, because we had to be at the airport at 5am anyway, so we thought we'd have a Mario Party party after Mike's show (which was also really fun, but look to his blog for that story). We met Andy at the airport and took our super non-linear flight to Atlanta and then to Minneapolis. I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep on each of the flights. The first flight felt like it lasted 5 minutes because I just slept the whole time, it was pretty cool.

We got to the hotel too early to check in, so we dropped our stuff off with them and walked down the street until we happened upon some blues festival.
We ran into Michael and Sean (Michael's old protege who has since blown up in the field) and just decided to get some lunch. We then went back to the hotel and slept for about 4 hours (well at least I did). After we all woke up and showered and whatnot, we walked around looking for someplace to eat and ran into Carla. She tagged along with us and we went to a cool brewery place to eat. We all got a little beer happy; this is what our table looked like before our food came:
Carla graciously picked up the tab and the boys and I went to check out the bar scene. We bar hopped from Gluek
to a gay bar with naked male dancers (a mistake on Andy's part, but a hilarious one if you saw the speed at which Andrew and Andy left the bar) to someplace called "An Irish Pub" which was huge:
Since I was pretty drunk by that time and we had to wake up at 7:30am we just took some more pictures and headed back to the room to pass out.
The next day we attended talks pretty much for the whole day. I ended up sneaking into a few I wasn't signed up for, because I randomly signed up for some classes I didn't really want to go to. Most of the talks were really interesting, and one could have been good but the speaker kinda ruined it. If anyone wants to hear more about what they spoke about (why we dream what we dream, neurotransmitters associated with sleeping, etc) let me know. I also saw Angie's uncle and was so mad because I only got to talk to him for 5 minutes. I looked for him the rest of the days but he was like a ghost in the night. Oh well.

After the talks we all went back and took another nap. I guess flying at 6am, drinking, and waking up early will do that to you. After the nap we got ready for the Perlis annual dinner. At this time I obtained (by courtesy of picture man Andrew) my favorite picture of myself from the Conference:

So the Perlis dinner night is Michael's taking everyone who ever worked with him out for dinner night. Which is awesome of him, and it was a really good time. We ate at Joe's garage
which has an awesome roof seating area. This is probably the best picture of everyone that was at dinner:
And then the sun started setting over a church, and it was pretty.

We were at dinner for about 4 hours so instead of going out afterwards we got really strong drinks at the martini bar in our hotel and drank in our room watching Dane Cook's Vicious Circle. I find Dane Cook hilarious so being drunk it was especially funny. Andy passed out while we were watching it, but Andrew and I made it through and then went to bed.

The next day we visited vendors, aka got lots of free pens and things:

and walked around the closest sculpture park during the day. Instead of just looking at the sculptures like the signs said, I decided to play on all of them:

The downtown is great to walk around in, every corner you turn has something artsy about it. Here are some of the best pictures from around the city:
We bought some alcohol, went back to the hotel, and went swimming (well Andrew and I did). The pool was the perfect temperature and there was nobody else there, it was great.

After swimming we (Sara, Andy, Andrew and I) listened to a bunch of people discuss the future of insomnia and ate a free dinner. After the dinner we (minus a Sara) grabbed our alcohol and went to Mike and Wil's hotel room to hang out. Well...we hung out...kinda. We played asshole and everyone was enjoying it so we played a bunch of hands. Which was really bad for Andrew and I, because somehow we both got trashed. I had only one picture from that night, but Andrew gave me a few others:
So after stumbling back to the room, Andy pretty much immediately passed out again. I was ready to pass out as well but after about 10 minutes I realized Andrew was missing. I found him in the bathroom, ready to hang out there for the night. After some time I coaxed him back into the bedroom where he stayed for the night.

The next morning we found a breakfast place and then Andy and I went on our super fun 10 hour flight home. (including down time) Andrew stayed longer but I didn't want to pay for all those nights in a hotel.

I'm not sure if it was the atmosphere, the partying, all the interesting people, or the things I was learning (or maybe all of it!), but I really had a great time.

**Footnote: A lot of these pictures were taken by Andrew so...thanks buddy!**