My wife and I had a nice night on the town Saturday, thanks to my mom watching the girls. We went to see Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance in The Queen at a theater we had never visited before, the Heights Theatre in Columbia Heights.

Opened in 1926, the Heights claims to be the Twin Cities longest continuously operated show house. The theater was beautiful and we made sure to catch the organist playing the very unique Wurlitzer organ before the show. After about 20 minutes, the disco ball lights came on, the organ dropped down and the movie started. Wow.

Being a Kingsbury, I love all things British. I thought the movie was very good and it made me want to visit London again. We’ve been to St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster and Buckingham Palace and it fun seeing all of them again. I’d really like to take the girls there soon–it’s such a great city.

After the movie, we stopped by one of my favorite downtown Minneapolis restaurants, Ike’s. I think they stopped publishing their website (it used to be ilikeikes.com), but here are a few reviews. Ike’s serves one of my favorite burger and fries combos in town, all in a great 1940s cocktail lounge atmosphere. How can you not like a place that brings you hot chocolate chip cookies and dum dum suckers when you’re finished?

Our TV for the past 12 years, a 42-inch Sony rear-projection CRT model, finally gave up the ghost. Best Buy had some good deals over the President’s Day weekend, so it was time for me to finish researching HD and decide. It also helped that we received a nice tax refund and a 24 month interest-free financing offer.

After many hours of reading pages at the AVS Forum site, I decided on a 50-inch Sony Grand Wega SXRD rear-projection 1080p unit (KDS-50A2000). The owner’s thread for this model at that site is more than 300 pages! That is a great reference site, but it can be a little overwhelming. (more…)

Before this week, we were around two feet below our normal seasonal snowfall. All of the big storms this year had gone around us–until last weekend. I’d estimate we received about a foot then and today was part two, with another nine inches (and it’s still coming down).

The plows in Eagan have been timely and thorough (although I suppose it helps to have no cars parked on most streets). I put the snowblower away today so I could get some exercise and the plows helped out by pushing the heavy, wet stuff to the end of the driveway.

I made it in to the office today for a 9:30 meeting, but left at lunchtime. Driving was horrible, with most streets in St. Paul covered with a nice sheet of ice. I almost got into a multi-car pileup that was hiding around the bend of a single lane freeway entrance. I was only going about 30mph, but the anti-lock brakes on the Mini had to work overtime to stop in time. Fun!