Things to Recommend doing in the Twin Cities

Find a hotel that lets you bring your dog along.

Spend as much time as possible lying on the very large, very comfortable bed with dog (see above), watching Roger Federer and Andy Roddick in the semi-finals of the U.S. Open.

Wonder about the truth or fiction of all the awful things you've heard about hotel bedspreads. On the first day, remove the bedspread and lie on the blanket while watching t.v. On the second day, throw caution to the wind and lie on the bedspread.

Keep the bedspread on when the dog reclines, like Cleopatra going down the Nile on her barge, on the bed.

Eat at Everest on Grand, a Tibetan restaurant, where you discover that Gewurtztraminer is way too girlie a wine to drink with curries and pakoras. Observe the extremely large bottle of Indian beer that your husband has ordered, and wonder about the super sizing of alcoholic beverages.

Sleep in until a quarter to nine. It's the latest I've slept in in the last two months.

Go to yoga at One Yoga in St. Paul with your daughter. Walk several blocks from the neighborhood where we park to the yoga place. Admire how clean and organized and beautiful the studio is. As you enter, you come into a large room with a wooden reception desk, and behind that, a lovely sitting area painted sage green, with big upholstered chairs in sage green velvet and an Oriental carpet. The studio has a shiny cork floor, exposed wooden beams, walls of a cinnabar color, and a large skylight that pours sunlight into the room. The class is challenging, but it feels good and surprising to be able to balance in Crow pose and hold a headstand for, maybe, two minutes.

Walk over to the pizza place for dinner. Walk back to my daughter's house. Walk over to the student center to buy cheap movie tickets. Walk to the theater and see "Little Miss Sunshine." Enjoy laughing. Especially enjoy the ending, which gives a great take-down of little girl beauty pagents. Favorite character: Dwayne, a teenager with bottle black punk hair, pale skin, and a Nietzche t-shirt who has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy and communicates by writing emphatically magic marked notes to his family. Very "Harold and Maude."

Walk back to my daughter's house.

Leave the dog overnight with my daughter and her roommates, who are happy to have a pet for the night. When we go back in the morning, we are told that they had a slumber party, painted each other's nails, and stayed up too late. This wouldn't be so plausible if the dog hasn't always wanted to be a part of the party when my daughters had slumber parties for their birthdays. We would have to drag the dog out by the collar, or she would flop herself down in the middle of a heap of pre-teen girls and wouldn't leave for anything. In the morning, we would come down to a pile of sleeping kids and the dog, blissfully arranged in the midst of them.

Drive home through a cold, misty rain. Make some progress on a new project: a poncho for a colleague's daughter.

Realize that good materials make the difference. Malabrigo is a pleasure to knit: soft, lustrous, and saturated with color that still have some varigation throughout the skein. This is Shocking Pink from the Yarnery in St.Paul, which I was told would be the right choice for a little girl. So much more enjoyable than the washable acrylic with a bit of wool that I'd initially tried for this project.

There's no substitute for good yarn or good olive oil.