…or out or over or something. We’re moving to a new blog. A free one. NikkiLynn.net & my photo gallery will continue to be up & running for another 6 months or so but no new posts are planned over here.

Where are we moving to? Great question! We have started a blog that I’ve currently got titled “The Jensen Family” but we’ll see - that may change. The blog will mostly focus on Travel & Twins games along with other random things we partake in. Click here to find the blog. Once you get there you can get an RSS feed for the posts or sign up to receive new blog posts via Email too!

Also, we’ve got another blog that’s specific to Date Nights that we’re trying out for 2010 called “52 Dates a Year” and that can be found here. The idea is that we have to find at least 52 different things to do throughout the year…preferably one per week. The Date Night blog also has RSS and Email options.

Check them out & leave a comment if you have anything to add to any of the posts! Thanks ~ Nikki & Chris

On Friday, December 4, 2009 Chris & I participated in our very first 12 Bars of Christmas! We got red shirts that named the bars included on the back. We could visit any of the bars listed without paying cover charge and there were drink specials too!

We first hit up the Lyon’s Pub and then moved on to Gluek’s where our friend Bill met up with us.

Next we hit up the Annex for a little bit of dancing and then moved on to Chammps where we had some appetizers.

We hit up Rosen’s fifth and finally Bootleggers where I did some pole dancing!

It was a really fun night, even if it was SUPER cold out.

All the pictures I took can be found here.

…my husband and our first Thanksgiving together
…my family, who I’m lucky to see year round & not just at the holidays
…my friends, some I see often, some not so often but all who are on my mind & in my heart
…the lakes near our house which have helped me get back into running
…Chris’s family, who we get to see more than once a year since they moved closer
…sunshine - more of which I wish was going to be around as I run this morning
…a job, especially working with people I like
…all the years we had with Toby, who makes me smile just thinking about him
…airplanes and pilots who allow us to see many parts of the world
…photos and scrapbooks which I love looking through and remembering great memories
…our house and the fact that Chris bought in such a great neighborhood 10 years ago
…a reliable, old car that I still love to drive
…blankets which will keep me warm in this old house all winter
…the MN Twins who keep me entertained 6 months out of the year, even if entertained = frustrated sometimes
…the fact that we can afford good food
…a renter in my condo
…favorite TV shows that allow me to escape from real life for a few hours a week
…good beer - and the never ending adventure to find more we like
…Chris’s willingness to embrace Baseball & visiting new stadiums
…Target Field…I cannot wait for outdoor baseball
…the Light Rail which provides quick, safe transportation downtown and home throughout the year
…our health and our new treadmill which will hopefully enable us to continue being healthy
…everyone who helped make our wedding day amazing & unforgettable
…memories of those people who are no longer with us
…traditions, both old and new

Those are in no particular order…and I’m sure there are many more. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving today and great times throughout the end of the year celebrating whatever holiday(s) you choose!

As the weather has been cooling off, Chris & I have started a new habit that we are both loving…making at least one meal a week in our slow cooker! It is so awesome to throw a few ingredients together in the morning, turn it on low and have the house smell amazing when you get home. We can eat dinner by 5:30 and have the whole evening ahead of us. Anyway, I’ve been loving it so much that I decided to share the recipes we’ve tried…without further ado…

1. Butternut Squash Soup: This one isn’t the fastest to put together because you have to bake the squash ahead of time & blend it after it has cooled…but it was worth the extra effort. The soup was creamy & delicious!
2. Pot Roast: We added carrots & potatoes to the pot with the roast and we thought the peppercorn was too spicy. I think we will use one of the other recommendations next time…and there will be a next time because this was tasty & there were lots of leftovers.
3. Salsa Chicken & Black Bean Soup: This was our first attempt at using dried beans instead of canned. It turned out really well!
4. Sweet Potato Chili: We have more sweet potatoes than I know what to do with so that was the main ingredient search I did the past couple weeks. This chili was good & it was very thick which was a nice change.
5. Latin Chicken: This recipe came from Allrecipes.com and again required some prep (browning the chicken) but Chris took care of that while I did other prep work and it all came together nicely. We chose this dish for a Saturday because it only needs to cook about 4 hours. My only complaint here is that I don’t really like finding bones in my meal. I know that’s a little thing, but it’s gross to me to pick bones out of the food. Otherwise, it tasted good over rice and as a tortilla filling!
6. Chicken Tacos: These were VERY yummy! I doubled the whole recipe except the water and also added one Taco Seasoning packet. Chris said he would have liked more flavor, but I think the rest of us liked it as it was. Next time I’ll dump the seasoning directly on the chicken before adding the tomatoes, beans and corn but otherwise, yum! Also, we didn’t need forks to shred the meat. Just stirring everything together and chopping the chicken up with the spoon worked great.

So, as you can see - our crock pot has been working overtime. Thanks to the “A Year of Slow Cooking” blog, I don’t think we’ll stop anytime soon either! If anyone else has favorite slow cooker recipes or sites, leave them in the comments!

Chris & I attended our third Policy & a Pint event on November 12th and again, really enjoyed it. The food wasn’t great (again) but I guess I just have to alter my expectations & plan on eating dinner after these events.

The guest for this event was Michael J. Sandel who is a professor at Harvard. He teaches a very popular course that has now been turned into an online course, a CBS miniseries and a book. Basically he asks “what is the right thing to do” and poses that against difficult scenarios. A lot of the discussions ended up coming back to “seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people” or Utilitarianism and the work of Jeremy Bentham.

Here are a couple examples of the tough questions…
SCENARIO 1
PART 1
You are operating a Trolley and ahead of you on the tracks you see 5 people who will not be able to get out of the way in time and will definitely die. You then notice that there is another track you could switch to that has 1 person who would die. What would you do?

I would say that a majority of the people in the room said that they would choose to kill 1 rather than 5. Regardless of who those 5 people & that 1 person were (doctors, murders, parents) they would save the larger number.

PART 2
You are no longer operating the Trolley. This time you are on a bridge that the trolley will go under and you notice that the trolley will hit and kill 5 people that are on the track. There is a very large person standing next to you on the bridge and you are certain that if that person landed on the trolley it would save those 5 people but the person you pushed would certainly die. What would you do?

This time, the “greater good for the greater number” wasn’t quite so easy to go with. The audience was split a little differently this time, but those who wouldn’t push gave the argument that in Part 1 you are directly involved either way but in Part 2 you are a bystander. Additionally, physically touching someone makes the whole event a lot more personal. I honestly don’t know what to think…the results are the same, either 1 or 5 die, so why should the answer be different?!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SCENARIO 2
PART 1
A terrorist is threatening to bomb the Twin Cities. You have a member of the terrorist group captive and you know that this person has information that can stop the bombing from happening. Would you torture the terrorist to get the information?

At this point in the discussion people were feeling a little more comfortable with interacting with Mr Sandel I think because there was more participation. Obviously, “greatest good for the greatest number of people” here says that you do whatever it takes to save the thousands (or more) people who would be killed or injured and it seems like torture doesn’t mean kill, so I think the majority of people decided it was okay to torture the terrorist.

PART 2
Same situation - bomb is directed at the Twin Cities. This time the question is Would you torture the terrorists daughter?

Yikes. It’s still ONE person in exchange for many, many, many more…but that changes the situation a LOT. I think I surprised myself a little bit because I decided that I would. To save many lives, I (at least that night) thought that it would be okay to torture an innocent girl. Honestly, I just hope I’m never put in a situation like that where I have to decide!

I’m really interested in watching the miniseries (which looks like it’s available online) with Chris. I think the conversations that can be sparked by these thought-provoking questions are great!

So, the question of the day is…WHAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

You can listen to the event on The Current’s website here if you are interested.

PS - That Bentham guy was crazy. He had his body preserved & it is on display in London! Apparently he thought that he could continue to have a positive effect on the world, even after his death.

I am completely loving the Google tribute to Sesame Street. I think the past 7 days they’ve had a different google image with Sesame Street characters! Click here to see a slideshow of them.

Hard to believe that my brother turned 25 today. Hope it’s a great day for you Josh!

Love this picture of Josh & Dad!

The Halloween Party was actually on Halloween this year which was pretty fun. I am VERY happy with our costumes too! Chris made his by himself, I had to enlist my mom’s help sewing my outfit. I purchased a blue silk pj set from Savers that was way too big for me and we modified it to end up looking like this:

Yep. Rainbow Brite! I ordered my socks online and my mom found some knee high (with the individual toes) rainbow socks that I cut the toes off of to make the arms. I cut the rainbow out of felt and attached it to a red belt to round off the outfit!

Chris was a Lego Man! He created the head out of styrofoam and it looks amazing! It was a lot of work, and not really all that inexpensive, but totally worth it. For his body he purchased an XXL shirt and XXL pants and fashioned cardboard to make a square frame. He also wore yellow cleaning gloves for a couple photos at the beginning of the night. The head was off after about 2 minutes with the occasional encore when new people arrived (or others wore it)and I think the cardboard was out before 10pm. Oh well, the effect was totally there!

We had two Bat Girls and two Priests, but otherwise there was a lot of variety. I’d say our spread of costumes was definitely fun & pretty impressive.



Lady Gaga, Young Mitt Romney, Morton Salt Girl, Steve Zissou (The Life Aquatic)


Priest, Amy Winehouse, Ricky Bobby (Talladega Nights) and Bat Woman


More Halloween Pictures are available here.

Yes, not nearly as impressive as those who ran 26.2 miles (including the guy who came to the Twins game in time for the start at 1:10), but I’m pretty darn proud that I ran 6.2 miles in 58:14! The 10k race was new this year as part of the Twin Cities Marathon weekend of runs. I started training for a 5k in April by running the Couch 2 5k program and jumped right into a 10k training program on the Nike+ site when I finished. Those programs definitely prepared me for the run.

Another piece of inspiration and motivation came from Christy who agreed to run the race with me. I think it was probably her idea originally, and I’m glad she mentioned it. We both ran up to 8 miles as part of our training (and she’s done 9 now!) which I think made the race a little bit easier than it would have otherwise been. Also, running a different route and having all those other people with you just seems to make the time go by so fast! (I’m so fast, I’m blurry!!)

Chris & Andy cheered us on somewhere around mile 4 I think and then they met us at the end of the race too. It was a drizzly, icky morning and I really appreciated having the support! I think I’ll probably plan on running the 10k again next year to see if I can improve my time!

I didn’t realize how far behind I am…wow, this was mid-September! Oh well, moving on.

Friday night Josh & Robyn hosted a bbq at their place as a belated Thank You to us for helping them move during the summer. It was nice family time with Becky & Nathan driving into town for the night.

After dinner, Becky & Nathan came to our house and stayed over. Chris (with a little help from me) cooked up some delicious breakfast for us all and then they stuck around just long enough to see the Autumn Daze Parade go past our house!



It was a fun way to spend the beginning of the weekend!