composing vacation

I'm blogging from the Magpie Coffeehouse in beautiful downtown Decorah, Iowa. I decided to get away from everything in the Twin Cities for a week in order to concentrate on finishing this opera and, so far, writing in a sleepy town in Northeastern Iowa seems to be working. I knocked off the opening aria yesterday. It's a three-paragraph soliloquy by one of the main characters so it wasn't easy. However, this is exactly why I headed south.

Decorah is home to my alma mater, Luther College, so I was able to have dinner with my former music history professor (and all around genius), Dr. James Griesheimer, last night. We grabbed some Mexican food at Sabor Latino on Water Street. When I was a waiter there in my college days it was called Cafe Deluxe and had a completely different menu so it was interesting to see the new decor and try the new cuisine.

Their chips are salty and the salsa is perfect. It's really hot but also really fresh so you just keep torturing yourself with more and more of it.

I had a combo platter of some different stuff and it was easily as good as the salsa. As I was explaining why I was taking pictures he reassured me that it was not annoying and that, in fact, he "travels with his stomach" as well. Consider this "blogging with my stomach."

Lunch break here at Magpie. Cheese and chutney sandwich with pasta in a dill sauce. I'm going to need to run an extra couple of miles tomorrow...