Osama bin Laden is dead. The second those words flashed across the screen Sunday night, I knew people across the world would be reacting. Ten years of searching for this man and suddenly they had him. It didn't feel real. Like every other person connected to any form of social media, I immediately checked my Facebook to see what people were saying. That's the beauty of social media— it creates an immediate outlet for people to vent their feelings.

My passport expired yesterday. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, and the reality is— I should be relieved.  The little blue book that gets me in and out of the country looks more like a home-ec project than proof of my citizenship. That dumb thing has gotten me detained in my own country, detained in other countries, denied entry visa, removed from various forms of transportation and possibly added to the FBI watch list. I don't know for sure.

We finally did it.  We bought a minivan.  After all these years of swearing I'd never get one, we did.  The timing is right, with two small children (and an every growing amount of their stuff), it was just too hard to try and fit it all into a Civic. Don't get me wrong, I love(d) my Civic, great gas mileage, handled really well.... but you try and fit a four year old, a six month old, 200 lbs of kid stuff, along with you, your spouse and enough sanity to last a weekend... (...

My name is kind of the female equivalence of "John Smith." There are A LOT of Sarah Nelsons on planet earth. A LOT. In fact, I know there's a least three or four in the Brainerd lakes area. I got a phone call today, on my work line, from a stranger looking for "Sarah Nelson." She left me a message while I was out of the office and tried to get through a second time when she didn't hear back from me. On the second try, I answered. This is kind of how it went down: Me: "Newsroom, this is Sarah."