We only had time and money for a mini-vacation this year. So we decided to take Moon up to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for the College of Liberal Arts preview last week.
A pit stop in Eau Claire to visit Chicken Unlimited, recommended by JM and Nichole.
Two non-consecutive overnights at the Embassy Suites in Bloomington, because it was so much nicer and more comfortable than the much more expensive downtown Holiday Inn. (We needed to be downtown first thing in the morning on Thursday and didn’t want to mess with traffic.)
A consumerist pilgrimage to Mall of America, where we bought a bunch of stuff from The Body Shop. I also had a chance to demo the Wii Fit (and got free socks!), and of course I want one of my own now.
Dinner at Fogo, which is now my favorite Brazilian restaurant. The service and food were unbelieveable. We spent $275, but it’s okay because we had free breakfasts at the Embassy Suites and free breakfast/lunch at the UM the next day.
The aforementioned preview day at UM. We ran into one of Moon’s friends from school, which was a fun surprise.
A tour of the state capitol in St. Paul, because I have a thing about state capitols.
Our first (but not last) taste of pie at Norske Nook in Osseo, conveniently located off the interstate.
We brought home a few souvenirs. The pecan fudge pie is already half eaten.
I’m not even sure this will work, but I’m checking email on my Palm TX and thought I’d try to post. Right now I’m in a hotel lobby in beautiful downtown Minneapolis. We’re going to the UM tomorrow for a full-day program about the College of Liberal Arts. Moon already knows she wants to go there, but this is a chance for Pete and Peter to see what the fuss is about.
Peter is a tiny bit fussy because we’ve been walking today (Mall of America — touristy!) and we had a pretty huge dinner. He fell asleep when we were watching So You Think You Can Dance.
SYTYCD was especially outstanding tonight. Moon and I are so glad that Mark had a chance to shine again after being saddled with less-than-stellar partners the past few weeks. Everyone was good, actually.
In other news, a four-hour car trip makes for impressive progress on the latest knitting project. Unless you’re driving, of course. Fortunately for our safety, I rode shotgun.
Here’s the whole photo set. I only uploaded the better pictures. Moon took lots of concert photos, but our seats were not good enough for them to come out very well. I’ve learned not to reserve floor seats unless they’re right in front. Now I know!
So, I was going to try to post every day all month, since July’s topic is FOOD. And I love food. But somewhere along the line, I lost my momentum. But I have two announcements today:
1. Dark Knight rocks.
2. American Idol concert tonight. Woo!
Today was the hottest, most humid day I can remember in a long time. I was So. Crabby. I wasn’t happy with any of my clothes, and my body felt huge to me.
Kirtan made it all better, naturally. The room at Jewel of the Lotus wasn’t any cooler than the outdoors, but I quickly forgot about my discomfort when the chanting began. My bad mood disappeared. Magical!
Moon went mini-golfing with a group of friends in the afternoon. She was outside for about 3 hours during the hottest part of the day. I think she was a tiny bit crabby as well, but after she changed clothes and complained a little, she headed to the movie theater with some different friends. (They saw “Hellboy 2.” Good flick, they said.) At least movies are in air-conditioned comfort.
Hey, the party last night ended up being a lot of fun… although I’m scratching several sizable new mosquito bites today. It was BYOGI (bring your own grill item) so I bought two sirloin steaks. They grilled up beautifully, and I ate ALL of mine. Oddly enough, it didn’t make me feel overly full because I didn’t have much else.
The guest of honor was completely surprised, and I snapped a picture right as she realized what was happening.
In other news, the American Idol concert is a week from Saturday. Yowza!
…but we’re going to a surprise birthday party tonight, and I’d really rather just stay home and watch So You Think You Can Dance. I’m sure I’ll have fun once I’m there, and I can just watch the tape after I get home.
This is one of those times I wish we had TiVo, because our VCR doesn’t always give us the best quality. Also, the kids have to remember to press “record.”
Today is Moon’s birthday, and to celebrate, Pete and I opened a checking account for her and switched her “kid-friendly” savings account over to a full-fledged statement savings account. With online access, a debit card and everything.
She was happy to see how much she’s accumulated already. For some reason, this whole banking thing really hits home to me that she is almost an adult. Wow.
We also went out for Chinese food at lunch. I think it’s another birthday-cake-for-dinner night.
Salon has an interesting article today about the prominence of bacon in pop culture. Just think, you can buy a bacon bra, wrap it in bacon paper, and festoon it with a squirt of bacon perfume. Sexy!
We celebrated July birthdays (me, Moon and Sister #3) today at the homestead. I was gifted with oodles of spending money, and I just made two online orders with some of it: a Knitter’s Block (which I’ll have to wait until August to actually get) and a pair of Toms Shoes.
Moon is upstairs playing Guitar Hero III, and I’m thinking about joining her soon. I’m moving slowly because we ate so much uncharacteristic-for-us food today. Brats. Cheeseburgers. Ice cream cake. Regular cake. Blueberry cobbler (excellent, and probably the most nutritious of the offerings).
Somehow Peter is still mobile despite having eaten 3 brats and 4 burgers (or maybe it was 4 brats, 3 burgers). I have a feeling he might not eat again until tomorrow, but I could be wrong.
I guess the whole bottomless-pit-male-teenager thing isn’t just something the writers of Archie and Jughead made up.
My friend Patti’s sister Jeannie died last night after an intense, exhausting battle with cancer. First breast cancer, then several years later, ovarian cancer. She lived 3 hours away but used to come to Madison to do Race for the Cure with us. This was the first year she couldn’t make it. The cancer was back this winter, and she had extensive surgery in January. Then there was nothing more that could be done.
I didn’t mention this earlier, but I saw her last weekend. Patti doesn’t drive, and her husband works long hours, so various friends had been taking Patti to see her family. I volunteered for a turn, because I really wanted to see Jeannie again. It was a humbling experience. I met Patti and Jeannie’s 93-year-old mother, who is robust and witty. Jeannie had a stroke a few months ago, and her vision was affected. She could barely squeak out a few words, and the morphine had her sleeping much of the time. Her skin was stretched over her bones and was yellowed from liver failure. I knew I wouldn’t see her again.
I can’t imagine the loss that her family is feeling right now. The only consolation is that Jeannie is finally free again.
I’ve been more and more enamoured with Twitter lately, and it seems like almost every day I see a nifty new way to use it.
Today I discovered Tweet What You Eat. Basically, it’s a simple way to keep a food diary. Just log into Twitter, follow Twye, visit the Twye site, and you’re good to go. All you do then is to tweet a direct message to Twye every time you want to add something to your day’s intake. (Example: ‘d twye 1 cup almonds’)
Then you can go to your page at Tweet What You Eat and see your full food diary. You can even edit your entries there. Pretty cool!
We have a birthday tradition in our family: the birthday person gets to choose a restaurant at which to dine on the special day. I chose India Darbar’s lunch buffet, much to my children’s delight. Rarely do we dine in the restaurant. However, we order carryout often enough that the staff recognizes us.
On Peter’s birthday in April, he chose dinner at India Darbar. When our waiter found out we were celebrating, he brought us complimentary mango ice cream. He gave us some more next time we ordered carryout.
As we were paying for today’s lunch, the subject of my own birthday came up. Our waiter said that if he had known, he’d have brought me a glass of wine. I thanked him and said it was okay since I was headed back to work.
My kids thought it was the coolest thing. And we all loved the buffet. My favorite dish is palaak paneer, but the spinach dish on the line was just as good.
I had to use the flash to take these photos, so sorry about the poor image quality. All the paint is FreshAire from Home Depot. We’re really happy with it. No smell, and nice colors. (I haven’t taken any bathroom photos, but the color we used is Northern Pear Tree, and I love love love it. I would paint my body with it.)
Yes, the painting is complete. I actually finished the final room (the bathroom) by myself yesterday, because Moon was with her best friend Brooke, picking up Brooke’s boyfriend from the airport. Brooke’s internet boyfriend. He’s from Pennsylvania, and although they talk every day on the phone, they had never actually met in person.
He’s staying for 4 days. Brooke’s parents are making sure that they don’t spend a single minute unsupervised.
Moon, Brooke, and T (the boyfriend) came over to play Guitar Hero a few minutes after the new sectional sofa-thing was delivered. T seems like a nice kid, and plays Guitar Hero on expert. I hadn’t played for quite a while, but I can still sort of rock the medium.
Today Pete and I are going to hang pictures and try to straighten up a bit. It’s looking like home.
I’m in my PJ bottoms and a t-shirt, sweaty and paint-splattered… but we’ve finished yet another color. The stairwell is now Canyon Pebble. I just cleaned up the paint supplies, and we’re going to keep taping the kitchen after lunch. It’s starting to come together.
I’ll definitely post pictures after the whole thing is done. Our new sofa unit is being delivered on Friday.
In other news, I’m getting a haircut this afternoon. I better take a shower before then.
My vacation started today, and I’m spending it painting the inside of the house with the kids. We started with the two biggest walls. After 15 years of white walls, we finally have color. It makes a pretty dramatic difference. We just finished a little touching up, and moved the TV and all the various electronics in front of one of the newly-painted walls. I think it opens the space up a bit.
Day 1, and I’m already exhausted. The hardest part was all the cleaning and vacuuming that needed to take place before we could start the real work.
The kids are amazing, though. Peter is a powerhouse with a paint roller, and Moon is precision embodied.
It’s an hour and a half past bedtime, and I’ll be up in 7 hours starting the next wall.
The gods have been hurling thunderbolts and swirling clouds all day, it seems. I was able to make a quick trip to Home Depot for some painting supplies during a lull between storms… Moon has already started taping, and she wants to paint the hallway tomorrow. It’ll be good to have something done before we start tackling the living room.
A few weeks ago, Peter decided not to go on his class trip to the Wisconsin Dells, and that ended up being a wise decision. For one thing, did you hear what happened up there over the weekend? Lake Delton drained out, some houses collapsed, and some roads were closed due to flash flooding. The trip was today, which makes me wonder how much actual water park time the kids got before the tornado warnings and pestilence began.
We received an automated phone call right after hearing an announcement on the news that a group of kids from Peter’s school were stranded and awaiting a police escort so their bus could get them back to Madison. The call was a recorded message saying pretty much the same thing, but with a later time frame. I’m guessing that the kids are back by now (it’s almost 10 p.m.) but imagine how worried all those parents must have been. My anxieties would have taken over my body well before the 3rd or 4th tornado warning.
I’m sure the kids will have lots of good stories to tell, though.
Here are our photos of the trip, which included:
