Last night, Kim and I attended the 25th anniversary of The Advocates for Human Rights 2008 Awards Dinner which included a keynote from Ishmael Beah author of a book I read earlier this year entitled, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider.
The event was held at The Depot in downtown Minneapolis and it started at 5 PM with a reception and silent auction and moved on to dinner at 6:30. Chris and Laura were kind enough to take Buddy in for the day so that he could spend time with his best male dog friend, Tucker and he wouldn’t have to hold his pee for 15.5 hours or make us drive back to Apple Valley and then back to Minneapolis.
Trying to get there without being drenched, even with my Century College branded umbrella, Kim and I unsuccessfully navigated the skyways the three blocks near to the event. We originally planned to escape the system at the Courthouse and walk across the street but with intersections completely flooded and Kim looking gorgeous. We headed back for the cover of the skyway and took the roundabout way even closer to the event. We crossed the street, after walking halfway down the next block to avoid a river of splashing water, and entered the hotel where we stayed for the next 4.5 hours.
We first hit the silent auction and looked at the nice donated items. Some of them were really neat like a Nepalese tea set and some dinner packages for 6 to 8 people where someone would go and cook for you and your friends. If only we had the money for those! After we wandered at the auction we had some time to kill so we walked around the first floor of the hotel and looked at the Hiawatha memorabilia and posters they had on display. I was shocked to find out that on the first run of the line it reached speeds over 112 mph! I was really blown away by the posters as it reminded me of the artwork I used to have on display in my old office (when I had a real wall) and if they were for sale I probably would have went broke, 10x over, attempting to buy one. After all of that we sat down at the bar and enjoyed their happy hour specials. I had a Kalamazoo Stout for less than $3! YUM. They also had several scotches for sale and because their computer was only setup for one price I got the 18 year old Glenlivet for the 12’s price. Glad I only got a single because it looked like a quadruple, mmm.
Dinner was at 6:30 and consisted of a glazed chicken breast, baby asparagus and carrots on a bed of wild rice. When serving ~800 people it’s tough to make good food but this was surprisingly decent. They served wine with our dinner and we had a salad and mousse as well. We sat with other people from Kim’s company and enjoyed chatting with those that were within earshot.
I got my hands on Beah’s book through Andy from my previous job as part of the Century College Common Book Project which selects a book for all students to read with hooks into various courses they are taking during the year. While I thought the story was compelling, although filled with too many details to be 100% true/accurate as the author claims several times throughout the book, it was poorly written and I’m glad it wasn’t chosen as a book for college students to read. On a related note, they ended up choosing Field Notes from a Catastrophe which sucked and is also a poor choice for college-level readers in my opinion.
After the dinner we took a cab back to Kim’s office, picked up our bags, and then took the train back to 28th Ave, got the car and went to pick up Buddy. Chris and Laura share our CSA box from Harmony Valley Farm with us and today was one of our pickup days. Harmony Valley Farm makes it really easy to swap pickup locations in advance and this week Chris and Laura picked it up in Bloomington. I’m looking forward to taking even more pictures of what they picked up for us although it will have to wait till this weekend as we didn’t get to their place until after 10:30 and there was no real sense in swapping anything at that point.
There were plenty of excellent speeches, although one in particular with political undertones which could have been left at the door, and overall I really enjoyed myself last night with my wife. It was nice to get out to do something fun and get all dressed up after work.
See all the pictures from tonight’s Human Rights Awards Dinner on Flickr here (mobile — because I left my SD card in the reader, boo).
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