I’ve Moved to 10520 Wayzata Blvd.

New office location

After working more than ten years at 11900 Wayzata Blvd., I have had no choice but to move my office. The new location is 10520 Wayzata Blvd. Suite 100, exactly a mile east of the old location. Moving day was October 17, 2023, but it has taken me a while to get settled in the new location and to update the address on my web site.

I say I had no choice because the 11900 building was being sold and is about to be town down. Apparently the new owners will be putting up a big apartment building. It seems a terrible shame to me. The old place was a quaint and comfortable place. I had a beautiful view of a pond where there was lots of wild life. Now here at the new place I have a view of a parking lot, a bill board and the I-394 freeway.

I have downsized and crammed my stuff into a space which is perhaps a third of what I had before. On the other hand, the new place has a massive waiting area, a play area for kids, a big conference room and a lunch room. I had none of those things at the old place. I’m getting used to it and starting to like it here.

Here’s some views of the outside and inside of the new place.

The Spinnaker Award

Spinnakeer Award

By David J. Kelly, Minnesota Bankruptcy Attorney

This is off topic for a blog that focuses on bankruptcy, but it’s something I would like to share anyway. A spinnaker is an extra sail that is hung off the front of a sailing vessel to give it an extra boost, extra speed. It’s easy to understand why the Minnetonka School District has used that as the name for their award for outstanding volunteers.

I was surprised a couple of months ago when I received a notice by email that I was about to receive an award – complete with an actual trophy – for doing volunteer work for the Minnetonka School District. I almost deleted the email, thinking that it was just another scam. I get lots of spam email telling me that I have won an award or some kind of certification, but they almost always want me to pay a few hundred dollars for the honor.

Once it dawned on me that the email was real, I couldn’t think of what volunteer work they were talking about. Up until then, I wasn’t thinking of anything I do as being volunteer work for a school district. My daughter is a music teacher at one of the elementary schools in Minnetonka. About 15 years ago she asked if I would bring my video camera and record one of her school programs. After that I started, at her request, showing up and recording all of them for her. After she became director of one of the school district choirs, I started recording the choir programs too. The kids love to watch a video of themselves. It’s also a teaching tool.

Here’s a short clip of the virtual award ceremony:

I have always had a fairly nice video camera. Fiddling with video has been a hobby of mine. For one thing I needed a decent video camera to make clips for my Youtube channel. I never thought of videoing the school programs and concerts as volunteer work. It was just something I enjoyed doing and something that helped my daughter. She had started off by trying to obtain video which had been taken by some of the parents, but those turned out always to be overly focused on their own child. My daughter knew that I was capable of taking a fairly good video, because when she was a kid I was always there with a camera for her gymnastics events. Taking videos of the school events now that she was a teacher just seemed like a continuation of what I had always done.

My advice for anybody who wants to take a good video of a children’s event: get lots of close up shots of the faces. The kids always love to see themselves. Find a camera that has a good zoom lens and make plenty use of it.

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