Sunday, August 24, 2008

A Pictorial Review of My Big Adventure

I spent the greater part of my great escape at H's. This is one of the first sights / sounds I experienced there. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep at night but my brain must have treated the planes overhead like the trains that rumble by our place. They didn't bother me at all.



I spent much of time at H's on her elevated deck, spying on the neighbors and looking into the trees.



And I got to spend time with my grandkitties. In this picture it is my precious Trixie who is being naughty and naughty Bella who is being shy.



On my second night we ventured into St. Paul. H drove, of course. Until we drove by this, I had no idea that the Republican National Convention was being held there. Now that I know where it is being held, I know where I am NOT going to be until the red dust settles.





This had no interest for me either. Star Wars stopped being fun for me after they started making prequels.



We eventually parked and went to Garrison Keillor's book store, Common Good Books. This is a backdrop for some scenes from Chasing Windmills in which Hulles is a star. Follow the Hulles link to find CW.



I loved this part of St. Paul. I want H to make tons and tons of money and buy a mansion here with room for me. H in the city:



One night we took the light rail to to Minneapolis. I wish I would have been braver with my camera and taken pictures of the Viking freaks fans. But alas and alack, I have no pictures of the trains, station, riders, or people waiting to board.

We walked to the heart of Minneapolis. This has to be the heart, because here is Mary Tyler Moore. Only I don't think it looks a thing like her.









As we passed this sculpture in front of a church, a kid whispered to his parents, "They're naked!"















There are other things I wish I would have photographed. Like the swallows nesting in the liquor store sign (for Captain Crab), the brat at the light rail station shoving paper into the credit card slot of the automatic ticket machine, the sign at the station about holding on to your children and keeping them away from the edge of the platform, the same brat hanging her toes over the edge of the platform, and the woman in the liquor store wearing a tube top made from a pair of men's jockey shorts. And to think I was worried about what to wear in the city.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Lovely Veggies

It was sweet corn time this week and I went to my folks to get some corn to freeze. It was not a great year for corn with the sporadic rains not arriving at the best time. Still, I got plenty of corn to freeze.

Every year when I get corn my mom recalls my dad's mom at corn freezing time. Grandma would work away at shucking, silking, cutting and freezing corn and say, "What lovely corn!"

Before I left Mom asked if I wanted green beans. I told her I'd picked some up the day before at the farmer's market in Jeremy Freese's home town. She asked how the beans were and I said, "lovely".

farmer's market beans


"As lovely as these?" Mom asked as she showed me a 5 gallon bucket of huge green beans.

Mom's beans


So compare:

compare beans


I took some of Mom's beans and the day after I froze corn, I froze beans. Mom also cut a tomato off the vine for me to take home:

big assed tomato


I tipped the scales some holding the measuring tape. The tomato weighed just under 3 pounds. But it really was 18 ⅝ inches around.

One of these days I need to make a trip out to my own tomatoes and do something with them. I love the abundance of fresh vegetables. I get tired quickly of putting food by.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I'm Alive!

Holy cow. My last post was July 22? Really? What can I say, I've been busy.

I was involved in a small town celebration (tiny K town) that was held the first Saturday in August. It was our 2nd annual and it was awesome. H came and ran the kid's games. There was softball for bigger "kids". The food was great. Weather wise, it was the best day Iowa has ever seen.

Preparations leading up to K Daze were brutal. And when it was over, I still had stuff to do. Stuff I haven't finished yet because.....

Then it was my birthday! And I did something I haven't done in a long, long time. I ran away from home leaving Captain Crab home alone to take care of the critters. I went to visit H in the big, bad Twin Cities. It was great to hang with her in her environment and spy on her neighbors when she was at work. H, I'm telling you, the nurse across the street IS having an affair with a married man.

We did some touristy stuff (I think it's obligatory) like visit Garrison Keillor's bookstore in downtown St. Paul and ride the light rail to downtown Minneapolis (along with the purple tide of Viking's fans on the way to a pre-season game).

I learned my way around her neighborhood and, most importantly, got over my fear of driving in Minneapolis. It was a wonderful vacation and I am so glad I went. Cities are nice to visit but I'm glad I'm home in the land of not having to drive 70 mph to keep from getting run over.

But now I'm behind in everything, it seems. I have still have work to do for K Daze, a client's website to update and a new client I really, really, REALLY need to make website headway on. And I am without my computer.

I took it in to my geek before I left for the cities to have it tuned up and more RAM installed. (Sorry, Mush, I know you are cringing but I am not that friggin smart!) It would be done by now had I not asked for more RAM, which comes from the RAM store in Timbuktu and is shipped to Iowa by camel.

Crab is gone and so I have access to a computer, but not my programs. I am so jonesing for my machine. It is all I can do to keep from installing Firefox on Crab's computer, installing programs that will suck up his hard drive and configuring it like mine. I am trying to be a good guest and leave things just as I found them, so I will refrain from fucking up his computer.