The Week We Remembered Outside Exists

The Week We Remembered Outside Exists

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 31, 2026

Work kept me pretty pinned down this week. By Friday night, we were ready to break loose a little, so we met up with Abby and Avery, helped them knock out an errand, and grabbed dinner on the patio at Charlie’s on Prior Lake. They all went with chicken tinga bowls while I ordered the two-meat platter, because apparently I treat dinner like I’m stocking up before a blizzard. Good food, good conversation, and one of those simple family nights that doesn’t sound like much until you realize it was exactly what you needed.

Minnesota finally warmed up, so Miss Sheri and I decided it was time to start walking again before our bodies officially reclassified us as furniture. I can make it about two miles without passing out, and we managed to do that three times this week. The first two were in our neighborhood, so Saturday we got ambitious and hit the Jensen Lake Trailhead at Lebanon Hills. Nothing says rugged wilderness like a beautiful lake covered in lily pads, where nature looks peaceful while quietly judging your cardio.

Luke joined us for the hike, so we picked something a little closer to his place in Apple Valley. I always end up walking faster when he’s with us, which annoys me because my preferred pace is “still technically moving.” Luke acts like there’s a finish line somewhere, while I’m just trying to enjoy nature and keep all major organs functioning. Still, it was good to see the boy, even if his casual walking speed feels like a personal attack.

You know us. We’re always keeping an eye out for interesting critters to harass by forcing them into unpaid photo sessions. Luke started the adventure by spotting a good-sized garter snake, but by the time I caught up, it had already disappeared under a log like it owed me money. We saw some turtles too, but around here turtles are basically the neighborhood committee. The real stars were these white ducks, who had clearly been sleeping until we showed up and ruined their spa day. They opened their eyes just long enough to confirm we were annoying, then we snapped the picture and let them get back to pretending humans don’t exist.

Saturday night, Miss Sheri and I had tickets to see David Spade at Mystic Lake Casino. I’m not sure I’d call myself a David Spade superfan, but I’ve followed him forever through SNL and classics like Tommy Boy. The only recent stuff I’ve seen is TikTok clips from the podcast he does with Dana Carvey, which mostly looks like two comedy legends trying to figure out why the internet is mad today. Either way, Spade is part of the Adam Sandler crew, and those guys have been turning dumb, immature comedy into gold for decades. They’re basically proof that stupid comedy works when everyone involved is way smarter than they’re pretending to be.

I’m a sucker for any venue that lets you upload a photo to the big screen, because apparently my ego needs stadium seating. When ours popped up, I liked to imagine the whole audience thinking, “Todd Swank? What’s he doing here? I’d like to hang out with that guy.” Then I took a picture of the picture, which is either deeply narcissistic or just good documentation. Probably both. But way down deep, isn’t that what we all want? To be loved, remembered, and briefly displayed above a casino crowd before David Spade comes out.

I’d love to say the comedy was amazing, but honestly, it was just OK. The two openers got a few laughs, but mostly felt like they were there to remind us David Spade was coming. Spade was definitely the pro. He’s lived an interesting life, so even just hearing him talk about SNL, movies, and Hollywood weirdness was entertaining. But the set did feel a little phoned in. He opened by ripping on guys in the front row for wearing shorts like they had just mowed the lawn, which was funny, but also bold coming from a man dressed like he wandered in from a gas station run during cabin weekend. Still, much respect for the guy. I just wish it felt like he wanted to give this crowd a show they couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.

Welcome to Summer. Bring a Hoodie.

 

Welcome to Summer. Bring a Hoodie.

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 25, 2026

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer, which in Minnesota means we all pretend the weather is cooperating. We get ten thousand lakes and about twelve perfect days, so when one shows up, you get out there before the weather changes its mind. Around here, summer is just winter taking a smoke break.

Big weekends on the lake mean everybody is trying to get ready for boating season, including the crews doing algae treatment at the Prior Lake boat launch by our house. Apparently they were spreading alum, which is supposed to help clean up the lake.  I’m all for clean water but when you see giant industrial tanks parked next to the dock, your brain doesn’t immediately go, “Ah yes, recreation.” The sign said it was safe, which is comforting in the same way every official sign is comforting. You believe it, but you also keep Erin Brockovich’s number handy just in case.

The Korkowskis were crazy enough to host us on Fish Lake for the weekend, which either makes them saints or people with dangerously poor judgment. Either way, they always make us feel like part of the family. We kicked things off at the Clearwater Legion, where there was supposed to be some kind of horse racing event until it got canceled and forced us into our backup plan: donating money to pull tabs like responsible adults with no real understanding of odds.

Our families have been friends for years, which works out nicely because we all enjoy sitting around playing games and pretending we’re not way too competitive about it. They always have something new for us to learn, and this time it was Mah Jong, which I’m still trying to understand without looking like I need a court-appointed tutor. The good news is I’m much easier to beat when I don’t know the rules, so really, I was being generous. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Saturday morning brought us to the Clearwater Truck Stop for breakfast, which turned out to be way better than it had any right to be. They had caramel rolls, donuts as big as your head, and enough food on the plates to make you rethink every health goal you’ve ever pretended to have. I didn’t realize truckers were such fancy eaters. I figured it was all black coffee and regret, but apparently they’ve been hiding the good stuff next to the diesel pumps.

By Saturday night the sun finally started peeking out, so we did what any reasonable Minnesotans would do after complaining about the weather all weekend: immediately acted like it had been perfect the whole time. Mason was kind enough to captain our two-hour tour, and we cruised around Fish Lake looking for local bird friends, most of which we confidently identified wrong. But confidence counts for something, especially when the bird flies away before anyone can Google it.

I’ve never seen a cat who likes water, but apparently Karl the Kitty is built different. They had to hold him back a couple times like he was seriously considering a leap into the lake, though I still wonder if he would’ve really gone through with it. Cats are big on acting tough right up until reality gets wet.

Summer never sticks around long enough here, which is probably why we all act like lunatics the second it shows up. But that’s what makes weekends like this count. Good friends, good food, a little time on the water, and just enough questionable weather to remind you not to get cocky. Hopefully this is the start of the best summer yet, or at least one where we make enough good memories to forget how short it is.

@toddswank A friend asked me how come nobody ever sees Dinosaur Ghosts? #dinosaur #ghost ♬ Olympo Rave - Kobe Mane & SoyFlowers

@toddswank The challenge said randomly pick a photo from your phone to see what sound TikTok adds to it. #cats #boats #creatorsearchinsights ♬ original sound - duc

Witnessing the End of the 2026 Timberwolves

 

Witnessing the End of the 2026 Timberwolves

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 17, 2026

We headed downtown Friday night fired up to cheer on our beloved Timberwolves in Game 6, fully expecting the kind of playoff fight that would force a Game 7 and keep the dream alive. Avery and Abby joined us, with the original plan being Avery sitting with me in our usual seats while Miss Sheri and Abby prepared for the upper-deck fan survival experience. Ant was gonna go off. The crowd was gonna be nuts. Wemby was gonna have a long night. Hope was alive. Which, for Minnesota sports fans, is usually the first sign of trouble.

Jade has been our Timberwolves rep for a few years now, and right as the game was starting, she tracked down Miss Sheri with the kind of news that never happens to us. She surprised us with 4th-row floor seats behind the basket. Just like that, Abby got promoted to sit with Avery, and Sheri and I got a brief glimpse into how the rich people experience playoff basketball.

I was pretty fired up. I’d never had playoff seats this good. Sure, we once got courtside seats for a random summer Wolves exhibition where the rookies played some team from another country, which was cool... but let’s be honest, that’s basically basketball recess. This was a Friday night, Round 2, Game 6, win-or-go-home playoff basketball. This was the big time.

And now we were sitting close enough to watch our favorite player, Anthony Edwards, go toe-to-toe with Wemby, the most fascinating phenomenon in basketball, from just a few feet away. Every dunk, block, stare-down, and possible playoff meltdown was suddenly happening right in front of us. What kind of absolute chaos were we about to witness?

It didn’t take long to realize this might not be the magical playoff memory we’d imagined on the drive downtown. The Spurs came out looking calm, confident, and annoyingly competent, while the Wolves looked like a team trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. Stephon Castle was cooking, San Antonio couldn’t seem to miss, and the energy in our fancy new seats started shifting from THIS IS AMAZING to uhhhh… is anyone else concerned?

There were still a few flashes that made you sit forward and think, okay... here we go. But if we’re being honest, San Antonio just looked like the better team most of this series. More confident. More composed. More answers. The Wolves never quite felt like the same team that punched Denver in the mouth in round one. That version of them apparently took a different exit.

And the supporting cast that helped take down Denver just never looked the same. Jaden wasn’t giving us those momentum-swinging moments, Rudy felt far less disruptive, and Julius Randle’s offense seemed to take an unexpected vacation. Against Denver, these guys felt like weapons. Against San Antonio, way too often they just felt... present.

Some of this is understandable when the other team has a guy who looks like AI was asked to build the perfect basketball player and ignored all normal human limitations. Wembanyama is 7-foot-4, handles like a guard, blocks everything, and somehow doesn’t move like a folding ladder. It’s absurd. Unfortunately, our magical VIP playoff experience ended the same way the Timberwolves season did... with a 139-109 punch to the face. And now comes the annual Minnesota tradition: pretending this roster is either one tweak away or in desperate need of demolition. Because right now, San Antonio and Oklahoma City look like they’re playing a different sport.

But hey, at least we got to rub shoulders with celebrities. Well... at least Minnesota famous. I got to bump into Mark Rosen, who has basically been narrating our local sports heartbreak for the last 50 years. If you grew up anywhere near the Twin Cities, you know exactly who Mark is.

And yet... despite the fact that Minnesota’s four major men’s pro sports teams haven’t won a championship since the Twins in 1991, Miss Sheri and I will absolutely keep showing up, wearing the gear, losing our voices, and convincing ourselves the Vikings or Timberwolves are finally about to reward our emotional instability. Because that’s what fans do. Hope is basically our regional personality trait at this point. And who knows... maybe 2027 is finally our year. Yes, I know. I’ve said that before.

@toddswank This kid might be really really good!. He’s by himself doing wind sprints an hour before Round 2 Game 6 against the Wolves. #wemby #spurs #wolves #nbaplayoff ♬ original sound - thu nguyen

@toddswank Let’s Go Wolves! Game 6 Round 2 2026 NBA Playoffs. #timberwolves #spurs #nbaplayoffs ♬ original sound - Todd Swank

Mother’s Day Maiden Voyage & Mild Hypothermia

 

Mother’s Day Maiden Voyage & Mild Hypothermia

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 10, 2026

Our weekend started off at Target Center for Game 3 of the Timberwolves-Spurs playoff series. After stealing Game 1 in San Antonio, we were feeling pretty optimistic… right up until the Wolves got completely humiliated in Game 2. The kind of loss where halfway through the third quarter you start wondering if you should just turn the TV off and reorganize the garage instead. But now we were back home in Minneapolis, the building was electric, and like every Minnesota sports fan who refuses to learn from past trauma, we talked ourselves right back into believing anything was possible.

It was my main man Luke’s turn to join me for a playoff game. One thing the Timberwolves do during the postseason is put a matching shirt on every seat and strongly encourage the entire arena to wear it. And by “strongly encourage,” I mean periodically blast random non-compliant fans onto the giant scoreboard like they’re being publicly shamed in a medieval town square. Luke decided he wasn’t about to cover up the Anthony Edwards Olympic jersey he paid good money for, so he spent most of the night gambling on the hope that nobody in the Target Center camera department noticed him.

Meanwhile, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell and his family also decided they were apparently above the mandatory playoff t-shirt program. Smart move. When you’re the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, you probably learn pretty quickly not to blindly buy into hype just because an arena full of people is yelling that this year feels different.

After struggling through Game 2, all eyes were back on Anthony Edwards to see if he was ready to take over again. Turns out he was. Ant came out aggressive right away and finished with 32 points and 14 rebounds, looking much more like the guy Minnesota fans have convinced themselves can carry this franchise to places we usually only read about happening in other cities.

Seeing 7-foot-5 Victor Wembanyama in person honestly feels less like watching basketball and more like witnessing some experimental NBA lab project that escaped containment. The guy doesn’t even seem real. His arms are so long he can basically grab the ball wherever he wants and casually place it into the basket while everybody else underneath him looks like they accidentally wandered into the wrong age division. Every time the Wolves fought their way back into the game, Wemby would just appear again like some giant basketball praying mantis ruining everyone’s evening. I hate how much I enjoyed watching him.

The Wolves fought hard all night and Anthony Edwards definitely looked more like himself again, but every single time it felt like Minnesota was about to finally grab control of the game, Victor Wembanyama would show up and ruin everybody’s mood again. The guy finished with 39 points, 15 rebounds, and enough blocked shots to make half the Timberwolves afraid to even go near the basket. By the end of the night I found myself wondering if the Wolves can actually beat this team four times unless something completely insane happens in Game 4… like Wembanyama somehow getting ejected or something crazy like that. But that’ll never happen.

We started Mother’s Day by having lunch with Grandma Linda, and honestly it’s pretty amazing seeing how much stronger she already looks compared to just a couple weeks ago. After the hip surgery and rehab, there were definitely moments where everything felt uncertain, but now she’s back home, getting a little stronger every day, and already talking about driving again soon. Which honestly feels like the final stage of recovery for anybody over 80. Once they start talking about getting the car keys back, you know they’re officially tired of everybody telling them what to do. Happy Mother’s Day to the little lady.

I’m not totally convinced a boat ride on a 50-degree day was how Miss Sheri dreamed of spending Mother’s Day, but she knows the family loves getting out on the lake so she made the sacrifice anyway. Nothing says “Minnesota boating season” quite like wrapping yourself in blankets while pretending the sunshine means it’s actually warm outside. Still, after a long winter, just being back on Prior Lake again somehow felt worth it… at least for the guy driving the boat instead of sitting in the wind.

Abby asked if I wanted to get a picture with the family, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity before one of the boys wandered off or suddenly became “too busy” for family photos. Not totally sure Miss Sheri enjoyed my full-grown adult body sitting on her lap for this picture, but this is one of the few recent photos of all four of us together so it felt worth the temporary structural stress to her legs. At least to me it did.

Since it was our maiden voyage on the boat this year, I immediately plotted a course straight to Bird Island. Every spring the cormorants, egrets, and herons completely take the place over and it honestly feels like freshman move-in day at a college dorm. Birds flying everywhere, everybody screaming at each other, fighting over space, hauling branches around like overloaded parents carrying mini fridges, and desperately trying to claim the perfect spot before somebody else steals it. Absolute chaos. Which is exactly why we love going there this time of year.

I always find it fascinating that hundreds of birds all choose this one tiny island every single year while there are perfectly good empty trees all over the rest of the lake. Apparently this place is basically the hottest nightclub in Scott County if you’re a bird. Everybody packed together, screaming nonstop, fighting over nesting spots, pairing off, and immediately starting families practically on top of each other like they’re splitting rent in downtown Minneapolis. Nature is incredible. Also… there’s definitely a smell.

Before we left the area, we noticed the turtles were already out in full force, which honestly surprised me considering it still felt pretty cold out on the lake. Apparently they’re just as sick of winter as the rest of us. The second Minnesota gets even a tiny bit of sunshine, every living creature in the state starts climbing onto rocks and logs like they’ve been trapped indoors since November.

After the boat ride, we finally got around to the thing Miss Sheri actually wanted to do on Mother’s Day, which was sit down somewhere warm and eat a good steak at Whiskey Inferno. Smart woman. And honestly, after raising kids, surviving Minnesota winters, putting up with husbands like me, and still somehow holding families together through all the chaos life throws at them, mothers everywhere have probably earned a steak or two. 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Nothing Strengthens a Family Like Helping Them Move… Whether You Want To or Not

Nothing Strengthens a Family Like Helping Them Move… 

Whether You Want To or Not

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 3, 2026

It wasn’t all fun and games this week… two members of our immediate family decided it was a great time to move. And when family asks for help, my first instinct is to run and hide, but that feeling of obligation always wins. So there I was, watching Luke sign for his first house in Apple Valley like a proud dad… while also thinking about how many trips it’s going to take to move everything. God didn’t exactly build me for boxes and furniture, but Miss Sheri is a pro and Avery helped with the heavy lifting. I showed up, did what I could, and tried not to hurt myself.

I’m so proud of Luke. More than a year ago he was about to sign another year’s lease with his friends when he said he was done renting and ready to become a homeowner. He committed to one more lease, start looking in December, and buy when it ended in April… and then he actually executed. He worked with a family friend, toured a bunch of places, landed on one in Apple Valley, negotiated a solid deal, and handled every closing curveball like a pro. He even timed it so the closing hit right when the lease ended, skipping the classic “move back home” phase. Now he’s in, figuring out decorating and all the surprises of homeownership… and I’m just standing there thinking, he did good.

Our other big move this week was Grandma Linda, finally getting out after nearly three months of hospitals and rehab. New hip, new pacemaker… basically the full upgrade package. Now she’s slow-walking her way back home and back to normal, one careful step at a time… and doing it with a lot more toughness than most people I know.

I was pretty worried about Mom before her hip was replaced… she was really struggling to get around and we were all wondering what things were going to look like. But then we stopped by today and she already had the place back in order, moving around, doing laundry like nothing ever happened. I don’t know how she does it, but she’s figuring it out one step at a time… and yeah, we’re pretty proud of her too.