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Condo living – easy living at it’s finest. Normally that’s a pretty true statement. The Pointe of St Paul experienced a electrical interruption that should be a wake up call to all condo owners. Do you have an Emergency Plan? What would you do if your building lost power for an extended period of time? If you’re unsure on how to answer those two questions, it’s time to sit down with a pen & pad and get to work.
You should always have lots of candles, extra batteries, blankets, and other items to allow yourself to live “off the grid” for a day or two. Do you have a cooler handy in case the power goes out? The FDA says to throw out the food in your fridge after 4 hours of no power or add some dry ice to it.
Do you have back-up batteries for your phone. Does your alarm clock (remember those?) have a battery in it? Is it fresh?
I’d really recommend visiting Ready.gov, there’s a wealth of information available there. Don’t be the person complaining that their life is ruined by a power outage – have a plan.
I know sometimes living in a condo makes you feel invincible to trouble. Especially a brick high-rise condo. Ask me how I know…
The Pointe experienced a major power spike around 4:15pm on the 18th. It damaged the main electrical bus for the homes, and blew a transformer feeding three floors. It took until 6am on the 19th to restore power to a majority of the building. The poor folks with the blown transformer had to go dark for nearly 24 hours.
The building has placed temporary wiring to allow power, but it’s not designed to handle the normal power consumption the building usually draws. We’ve been asked to conserve as much as possible, run minimal lights, fridge, and our fan coil units for heat. No microwaves, stoves, dishwashers, or in-unit washer & dryers.
Last night was interesting. Luckily, I had nearly everything I needed on hand. Plenty of candles, blankets, etc. I do wish I had more batteries and one of those LED camping lanterns. Thankfully, it was so cold out my freezer items spent the night on the balcony. My fridge items were in coolers with lots of ice & ice packs.
I would like to add that the staff at the Pointe did a hell of a job scrambling on getting power back up. Within 30 minutes of the power outage, the electricians were already on site with our maintenance crew trying to figure out what happened. Would I have like to seen the power on sooner? Of course. But I think we got off lucky, as it could have been much worse.
If you’ve managed to read through this whole post, I hope you take it to heart and build yourself an emergency kit. Having a plan for extended power outages isn’t a bad idea either 
It just seems like this summer that Red Bull swooped in and brought us Flutag, but it’s been a year and a half since Red Bull has bought some fun action here.
Last time was goofy fun, this time it’s insanely crazy! They stack up four skaters at the top of a frozen track, swing open the gates and who ever crosses the finish line first, wins.
You may be able to tell, but I’d a tab bit excited for this. I’m planning on going down there tomorrow and Saturday. If you want to get a play-by-play of the action, follow me on twitter at @STPBud (disclosure: All opinions on twitter are my own, and most of them are pretty bad).
If you want to avoid the parking nightmare that will be RBCI, I’d suggest finding a parking spot near one of the bars that’s running a shuttle. Alary’s is one of them.
In it’s second year, American Express’s “Small Business Saturday” was designed to promote small, brick & mortar local stores and companies during the busiest shopping season of the year.
Well, Come to Saint Paul to do your shopping! Downtown is full of unique, one-off stores and restaurants. Some of my favorites are Heimie’s Haberdashery, Details Salon, The Artist Mercantile, & Black Sheep Pizza. There are so many other wonderful local artists it’s impossible to name them all. If you know of some great St Paul local companies, post them up in the comments section.
And if you’re looking for a real estate company, We’re about as local as it gets!
OK, so it was here longer than a blink, but the Scottish sandwich shop, Blink Bonnie was served papers to vacate their last St Paul location on 7th & Wacouta this week.
It’s been kind of a staple of downtown lunch for quite some time, so it’s sad to see them go.
Hopefully, we won’t have to sit with another vacant storefront on Seventh for too long, but I’m not holding my breath.
This weekend should be interesting! We’ve got the fall Art Crawl Fri-Sat-Sun throughout Lowertown in Saint Paul. If you’ve never been to the St Paul Art Crawl, you have no idea what you’re missing. So many great, local artists to support and a great chance to snoop around a lot of the buildings in Downtown.
Then there’s the darker side, the world of the un-dead. And they’re massing in the Twin Cities on Saturday night. There’s a Guinness World Record attempt for “Largest Gathering of Zombies” in Mears Park.
My suggestion? Get zombie’d up and crawl for some art 
St Paul Art Crawl
Friday October 7, 6-10 PM; Saturday October 8, 12-8 PM; & Sunday October 9, 12-5 PM
http://stpaulartcrawl.org/
Zombie Pub Crawl
Saturday, October 8, 8pm Guinness Attempt
http://zombiepubcrawl.com/2011/
Special thanks to Shawn Bartle, the Twin Cities preeminent zombie expert for providing an excellent picture.
If you didn’t catch it on Facebook, here’s some pics I took last week while walking around our fine city. Enjoy!
Bud Sells Condos
Spotted this the other day on their rig, I had to grab my camera! Station 8 is Representing Downtown St Paul with their new “DOWNTOWN” logo on the front of the rig. One of the benefits of living in downtown is having such an awesome fire station as a neighbor. The response time can’t be beat! On any given night, you can swing by and chat with the firefighters as they relax out front between calls.
To learn more about their station, check out their website (looks like they need some motivation to keep it updated).
http://firestation8.wordpress.com/
Now if we could only get them to use less of that newfangled siren at 1:00am in the morning…
Food Network Magazine ranked Black Sheep Pizza in their 50 States, 50 Pizzas article. Regardless of what the Star says, they didn’t get ranked number 7 in the country. But it was Black Sheep’s #7 pizza Food Network picked
I can’t really argue with Black Sheep holding the title of best pizza in the state. It’s a family favorite at our house, as it’s one of the very few pies that both kids agree on (and keep the parents happy too). Have I mentioned how glad I am that Black Sheep opened their doors in the Rossmor lately? Most of the time, I’m just making a grab & go – calling ahead by 10 minutes and flying back home to feed the hungry masses. But when I do get to dine in, we tend to go over board and get all sorts of extra goodies. In fact their salads are so good, they could call themselves Black Sheep Salads and it would still be a hopping place.
If you find the menu intimidating, you can always just order whatever you want. The menu is there to guide you to a custom creation. Now you’ve got no excuse to not try the best pizza in the fine state of Minnesota!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/50-states-50-pizzas/pictures/index.html
It’s starting to look like the final nail is in place for the Lund’s & Penfield development. Money they were planing to use, is no longer available and the City and the developer are having a hard time securing financing. From my understanding, the hammer drops this fall if a money source isn’t located.
Truth be told, it’s not the end of the world. As much as I would love a Lund’s grocery store across the street from me, the housing side is just a shell of its former self. The Penfield project has been scaled down more than a few times, and the latest iteration lacks neighborhood value. The future park that sits across the street might be a nice draw for a future developer when the real estate market returns to a more balance market.
Sure, the exterior just got a fresh coat of paint, but the improvements at Printers Row are more than skin deep. Behind the scenes, the building sought and received FHA approval from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
What’s this mean to you? As a buyer, you can now buy in this building using FHA financing and come in with 3.5% compared to the 5%-10% needed on a conventional loan. This is a big deal, as a lot of buyers are using FHA loans now. If you’re a seller, you now have opened your condo up to more potential buyers. If I remember correctly, last year nearly a quarter of all sales were FHA, so it’s a pretty big deal.
Congratulations to the Printers Row Home Owners Association!
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