Game Night at the Neighbor's House

Game Night at the Neighbor's House

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for March 5, 2017

At Oracle, we are just starting our Q4 for FY2017 so we had a kickoff event at the Mall of America.  These fellas are good friends from my sales team along with our manager.  I'm not sure why we're all wearing black, but hopefully that's a good sign for our upcoming sales efforts.  

After the event, Miss Sheri and Avery picked me up and we headed to the University of Minnesota for the College of Science and Engineering Dean's Showcase.  Avery was trying to decide which school to attend between Minnesota and Wisconsin/Madison, but finally made the choice to go to Minnesota.  

At the event, we had the chance to meet several of Avery's potential future professors as well as hear some day-in-the-life stories of current students.  I think Avery is really going to enjoy going to school here.

On Friday night, we went to Prior Lake High School to witness the reveal of the high school's FRC robotics team robot.  The team is KING TeC #2169 and their new robot looks very impressive.  Here's the video they played for us for the first time at the event:

Avery is the head of programming for the team and he participated in the  reveal presentation showcasing some of the capabilities of the robot, some of the strategy they are planning to use, and how they programmed it so they could be very competitive.  It was great seeing him on the stage!

These are some of the members of KING TeC along with the team's latest creation.  Their first competition is in two weeks in Peoria, Illinois and we can't wait to see how they will be able to compete.

On Saturday night, our neighbor Jim Ingvalson invited us over for a "Game Night".  I was all excited to come over and play some monopoly and Uno, but apparently his idea of a game night is something different than mine.  Jim is a big time hunter and so his definition of a game night is when he and his hunting buddies get together and cook up all the different "game" they've been fortunate enough to take down this year.

I ate all sorts of things I had never or seldom eaten before including black bear, pheasant, duck, goose, venison, and salmon all of which was shot by people at the party.  At least I think they shot it.  I suppose it's also possible they stalked and captured the animal with an aggressive tackle.

It was great seeing Jim's daughter, Jill, and her husband, Joe.  They are massive Golden Gophers fans, so when we told them Avery had decided to go to the U, they were quite excited.  Which made us quite excited and then there was just generally a lot of excitement in the air.

We don't do a lot of hunting and fishing at our house, so Game Night was a new experience for all of us.  We were all pretty adventurous, tried some new tastes, and had a lot of fun.  

Thanks, Jim!

The pheasant gumbo was yummy and also mixed in shrimp, okra, andouille sausage, and some other stuff. Good gumbo!

There were a lot of fun people there and we experienced a lot of new foods.  All in all it was a great Game Night at the neighbor's.  Even if we didn't play monopoly.