How We Cool Down with no A/C

Some Favorites From my Garden

Minnehaha Falls at Night

Look at this lovely waterfall not two miles from my house:

 

 

It's Official

*POST YOUR DRAFTS* Movin' Along...

I found this old post in my drafts from December of 2011 when I was just fresh back in Minneapolis from my eight-month-trip-to-Central-and-South-America-then-two-months-with-my-parents-and-then-four-months-working-in-New-Orleans-and-Tucson-trip and I was trying to get my house rented out so I could work-all-summer-and-live-in-Larry-and-Chris'-basement-and-then-leave-for-my-two-months-in-Eastern-Europe-and-then-two-months-in-India-trip -- ANYWAY I regarded the draft as marginally interesting because it's about what life is like when you don't have anything but yet you have way too much, and I'm talking about stuff. Maybe you'll find it marginally interesting too -- thanks for your patience while I suffer from "severe writer's block" and "my life is a little boring right now".



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I'm living in Minneapolis again! It's so good to be "home", even if only temporarily.

I've been staying in the house that I own this month while I search and prepare for the next renters by doing little things like replacing furnace and fridge filters, adding lint traps to the washing machine drain pipe, replacing light bulbs, broken light switches and re-caulking the two bathtub/showers. The place is completely empty except for a borrowed air mattress that I've set up in my old bedroom with some bedding and a nightstand that I found in my little little storage corner in the basement:

This bed also serves as a couch, dining room table, and office desk.

I was so happy that I had saved this bedding.  Without it I would have been sleeping right on a plastic air mattress.  And with it I have a little bit of normalcy in this totally empty house.  

Other things I'm totally happy I saved:

• A couple bath towels and hand towels.
• A set of pots and pans.  
• An electric kettle.
• Four cereal bowls.
• Two tumbler style water glasses that are doing double duty as wine glasses.
• Two travel coffee mugs and a coffee cup.
• Miscellaneous mixing spoons, wooden utensils and a spatula.

I have enough to get by and a heck of a lot more.  

The little corner storage area is about four feet by six feet, and about eight feet high. I had filled it completely full and all the way to the ceiling with all of my worldly belongings that didn't fit in the backpack I brought with on my trip around the world. I called that really simplifying and downsizing. But when I got back, I was completely overwhelmed with the stuff in there. Looking at it made me feel claustrophobic and trapped. I thought, 'there's no way I could fit all of that into my car.' And I don't want to own more stuff than can fit in my car.  

It was pretty interesting to see what exactly I felt was worth saving in January 2010 when I last lived here. I found a laundry basket filled with hangers.  Dumb.

I found a roll of tin foil, boxes of zip lock bags, a pair of three-and-five pound weights. An office chair. Clearly some of the items in my storage area were only there because they didn't sell at the huge garage sale I had before I left. I spent the better part of a Saturday going through and getting rid of at least 40% of it. Seriously there was a lot of garbage in there. Garbage. It is so much easier parting with the ridiculous when returning to your "home" after two years of being completely "homeless". You just realize exactly what you do and do not need to live.

I took photos of the stuff I felt I could sell and put them on Craigslist. Within an hour I had sold an electric guitar I haven't played in ten years and three Rubbermaid tubs' worth of picture frames. I also sold my old compost bin. $355 went straight into my India savings account.

OOPS

Obama appointed Loretta Lynch as Attorney General and the local Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune printed the following headline:

The Last Nice Day

A few shots of a really, really long bike ride I took on the Last Nice Day. 

River Road, from Lake Street

Lake Nokomis

Near Lake Harriet

Lake Cahoun

Lake of the Isles

Downtown

Bridge to Northeast

Downtown from St. Anthony

Tough Guy

I do love this city. 

The Nicest Thing I Ever Had

I have the greatest and most beautiful and sweet and brilliantly talented friends. Ever. 

One is named Heather and she works in Product Development at J.W. Hulme Co, a 105-year-old Minnesota company, a real MADE IN THE USA kind of place. Production is right here in St. Paul, Minnesota. Check out their story. She and her husband moved about three-and-a-half hours away last year to take care of some family obligations, but she kept her job and has stayed with me in my apartment from time-to-time to ease the commute. I charged her eggs. Yep, eggs. Up north she's got a little farm, and would bring me fresh farm eggs from her pet chickens...so fresh they sometimes still had chicken poop on them. 

Anyway, she's so amazing and I'm always bragging to anybody who will listen about all the bags she makes for J.W. Hulme. Look! She even appeared in some Korean magazine sewing away!

That's Heather!

That's Heather too! Modeling for the company's facebook page - on the right my other friend Kerrie who also works there! Remember when Kerrie made me my passport cover?!!?!?!

Here she is hard at work. Anybody recognize that shirt?

WELL.

Her last day was on Friday and so she won't be needing to stay at my place anymore which was pretty sad and I'm going to miss her so much, so we decided to go out for dinner and drinks and OMG YOU GUYS LOOK AT WHAT SHE MADE FOR ME:

The Mini Excursion, in custom colors:

Look at the lining! I LOVE IT. It's tiny little 110 cameras on the most beautiful retro-inspired fabric!

...AND THE BEST PART:

...AND THE SECOND BEST PART:

I'm so happy and proud!

You guys can all go home to your kids and your soul-mate-life-partners and your grand-kids and your pets and hold them all you want. Because I'll be holding onto my new bag. I'm going to marry it, and when I die you can throw my ashes inside because we will never ever be apart not ever, ever, ever.

Photo Shoot - Starring ME!

Last summer, my ol' pal Brent asked me to participate in a photography project. 

I really can't believe I haven't yet linked to his post about it, since it's all about my favorite subject (ME ME ME). Well, here you go. Original link here at his blog, The Speckled Record. He writes about lots of things, including his previous work for the Peace Corps and currently at the American Refugee Commission...and that one time when he made me hold hands with a bunch of strangers on a whim:

If you have a friend who you know loves meeting new people, a ‘yes’ person, a friend who will disregard decorum for a good story, and if this friend is meeting you for a Thursday afternoon happy hour, then I suggest you scrap your bar chatting plans for something else entirely.

My friend, Kady Hexum, is easily one of the most outgoing people on the planet. And earlier this summer I suggested that we change our happy hour plans and meet near a park. There we would introduce ourselves to strangers so that I could take pictures of her holding hands with them. What you are looking at now are the results.

It isn’t actually too hard to ask people to hold hands with your friend. It helps that Kady is beautiful, kind, and can make almost anyone laugh (see first photo). Most people were totally down. We asked around 20 folks, and only one person said no. I mean, I think he said no.  He slurred something in a fake accent, gave us the crazy eyes, and speed-walked away. (Note: this is an excellent way to get rid of people on the street.)

Most people smiled, mentioned something about their artist family member, and asked me where to stand.

You really ought to check out Kady’s blog. She’s hysterical. The perfect kind of friend to drag along into perfectly uncomfortable afternoons.

Cherry and Spoon

A famous Minneapolis landmark and a place I take all my visitors to see is the "Cherry and the Spoon", a fountain located at the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden. You might see it when you Google 'Minneapolis'. It's kind of cute and kitschy and please come visit me and I'll take you there too!

Anyway, my mom is in town for some doctoring and so after we spent the morning of what was probably the last lovely day inside canning tomatoes we had to get out and so I took her on the same little Minneapolis tour that all my Couchsurfers get. I told her about how my sister Kelly took her husband Mike there when they were dating and it was night time and it said, "don't climb on the sculpture" but they were like "let's climb on the sculpture!" but they were across the pond from it -- only the pond looked a lot like cement because it was late late at night and it was very still. So they started to run across the cement to climb on the sculpture but never got to because they fell in the pond and it served them right.  

See? It's pretty cool. Anyway, people like to take selfies there, or photos of themselves trying to hold the spoon in a periphery shot, ala the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

It's nerdy.

Anyway my mom and I tried to selfie it up at my insistence of course. The sun was in our eyes and the double was on our chins but so what? I love her.

FAIL

Most Hilarious Craigslist Text Ever and a Narrow Escape from Being a Silenced Lamb

So I'll make this short story as long as possible, as per usual.

I'm trying to work more from home. I don't really have an ideal situation at the moment, though some may call it that...

Laptop desk? Cereal? Coffee? Check. Check. Check. Fancy Business? Check one million.

The thing is, I am trying to be a fancy business lady and so working in bed, though it has it's benefits (see photo caption above), it isn't a long-term solution. I do have an office, but I also have the world's baddest back -- so my adorable yet hella-uncomfortable little school desk just won't do:

I decided that a corner desk would maximize the little baby office that I have -- and I even created a Pinterest account so I could get "inspiration" for tiny office spaces and stuff like they have in this one really appealed to me:

Isn't that just fantastic? I don't have those stairs of course, but you get the idea.

ANYWAY. I went on Overstock.com and bought a white corner desk from them for $225 that would fit the dimensions of the tiny room. But a week-and-a-half later I realized that my desk wasn't here and then I tracked it on UPS and found that it was damaged in transit. I chatted a customer service rep and they told me that they were out of stock now, sorry. Full refund. Thank you Overstock.com.

So I went on Craigslist and found this little cutie for $95:

Except my office is only 91" long. So I texted the seller:

"Is this desk easily trimmable? And are you the kind of person who has the tools and goes around cutting desks?" and they said yes! 

And then we arranged for pickup, etc. During the conversation, I got the single most hilarious text I have ever gotten from an exchange on Craigslist. Here it is:

"GARAGE IS OPEN AND SAW IS READY."




Of course I responded as you see in the blue above, and thus began a hilarious text exchange regarding my demise:

Don't worry, he didn't kill me. And neither did his adorable daughter.

Instead, he cut 3" off the end of my desk and while we waited gave me and my neighbor Matt (aka bodyguard aka muscles-of-the-operation aka SUCKER) beers and refunded me $30 because I didn't take the chairs and then we all became best friends.

And look at my cute new little office, primed and ready for some fancy business:

Work in progress guys, I still gotta get that staircase installed.

All's well that ends well, am I right, Dad?