I’m not sure what it is about me and cockamamie yard care schemes that involve fire, but I can’t help but feel, deep down inside, that I desperately need a weed torch to help me deal with the depressing state of my driveway right now.
Or, I could just cover the driveway in kerosene and drop a match.
We’ll see…
Today is the day that the spirit of Tim Horton rides down the 401 in a ghostly De Tomaso Pantera and hands out beer, doughnuts and coffees (large, double double) to his devotees all across the bestest country ever.
I can’t meet up with Timmy on his magical ride this year, but I can help to spread the goodwill spirit. This year, I bestow upon you some useful cheat codes for those of us who don’t have 2 guitars with which to unlock Guitar Hero III’s deepest darkest secrets. I haven’t tried this myself yet - I’ll post later this week and let you know how they work.
A quick edit, to add a link to another little bit of happy.
The cats in my houses generally do those things that one would expect of such creatures. They are cute on occasion, neurotic most of the time, and manage somehow to be both needy and aloof at any given moment. Except in the mornings, when they are only needy.
Generally, Nerd 2 is up first and can take care of the feeding duties before the cats take to divebombing my face in an attempt to wake me up. The trouble, however, occurs when Nerd 2 gets to sleep in for some cruel reason, or is gone for a long period of time, and the pestering falls to me. I’m pretty stubborn about my last hour or so of sleep, and the cats know that they need to step up their game beyond a few gentle meows or paw taps to the shoulder. Mornings when I’m in charge generally consist of, at minimum, a lot of swearing, an item or several knocked off the dresser, and the occasional scratch-induced battle scar.
Things came to a head mid-last week in an incident that I won’t bore you with the details of, that ended in me returning my nightstand to an upright position whilst praying that my glasses made a safe landing and muttering about aggressions that will not stand…man.
So, Nerd 2 comes back, and I tell him the story, and he tells his aunt, who utters one of the wisest sayings that I’ve heard in my life: “Oh, you never feed cats in the morning!”
Wait…what?
I was skeptical of course, the cats have done a pretty good job of training us to fill their dishes every morning, and I couldn’t see that stopping just because they were filled a mere 8 hours before. But ‘lo and behold, the last 5 mornings have dawned to an uneasy truce. No howling, no biting, no cat tongue on my fricking forehead. This, my friends, is change that I can believe in.
who has to fight the urge to print 50 copies whenever she sees this in an e-mail signature:
Dear people who send me e-mail: please stop assuming that I am stupid. Thanks!
…gets a long and rambly write-up.
This past Saturday was Nerd 2’s birthday, and given that we’ve been a thing (’scuse me while I puke a little) for a little while now, but hadn’t really ever traveled anywhere together (he goes to Iraq, I go to Vegas…it never seems to line up), this seemed like a good time to do something about that.
Duluth seems to be the default place to go for Minnesotans who don’t really want to have to plan their roadtrips too thoroughly, and I hadn’t really ever seen the city so the location was fairly easy to decide on.
We drove up Saturday morning (thereby skipping the mad rush that I assumed Friday evening would have been) and made pretty decent time. On the way, we stopped at Tobie’s for caramel rolls that I told myself I wasn’t going to eat right away, but ended up devouring half of one before we even got back to the car. We checked into the Inn on Lake Superior a little early in hopes of upgrading our room (no joy, they were full up with weddings) and headed out on the town. It had slipped my mind that Fitger’s Brewery was based in Duluth, so it was a pleasant surprise when we drove by it in search of something to eat. The food was unexpectedly good, and the beer, well, we maybe walked out of their with 4 growlers (damn those samplers!). After dinner, we made a feeble attempt to work off the calories by walking around the Canal Park — including feeding the seagulls, the Army Corp of Engineers shipping museum, and walking under the lift bridge — and we ended up at the Duluth 10 theaters just in time to catch a showing of the latest Indiana Jones.
Post movie, we headed back to the hotel and partook of our first round of s’mores on the banks of Lake Superior. When I was researching hotels, I’d noticed that the Inn on Lake Superior did a little s’mores thing every evening (they have a couple of gas firepits in their “backyard”, and they basically lay out all the fixin’s and let you go at it) and I thought that it was going to be a total cheesefest. Well, it was a total cheesefest, but it was kind of awesome because everyone there knew that it was cheesy, and we were all having a great time, because hey…s’mores.
Sunday dawned rainy, and we took our time getting down to breakfast. Another cheesy-yet-awesome gimmick of the hotel: make your own belgian waffles. I didn’t believe that they could possibly be worth standing in line for, but after Nerd 2 brought me one I was sold (and planned out a better strategy for the following morning’s meal). After breakfast, we pondered driving up the north shore (too rainy) and ended up just tooling around town garage saleing for a while before we hit up the aquarium.
Fact: seahorses are kind of awesome.
Post-fishies, we lunched at Hell’s Kitchen North (possibly more awesome than the downtown incarnation) and then came a well deserved period of hard core nappage, which I reluctantly awoke from when I started getting text messages asking if I was ok. This confused me a lot until I got on the interwebs (I’d forgotten about them) and realized that tornadoes and hail of various sizes had been reported in my neighbourhood. I spent 20 mins or so trying to find someone in Blaine who would answer the phone and tell me that my house was still there, eventually reaching a neighbour who assured me that there was no reason to come home a day early. This obviously called for celebration, which we did with more s’mores, margaritas from Little Angie’s, and a swim in the outdoor-pool-which-was-really-more-of-a-large-hottub.
Monday morning, we braved the cold at breakfast for a better view of the water, and reluctantly packed up our things for the drive back to the cities. There was lots we didn’t see or do, but hey, that just leaves something to come back for, right?
Final thoughts:
Plant sale season is kicking into full gear. There were a couple last weekend that I missed, but this week I intend to be at the Ramsey County Extension Barn for their Master Gardener Plant Sale. I’ll probably also swing by the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market for some extra goodies too (I’m looking at you, Dehn’s Garden).
Note to self: never go to the Como Zoo & Observatory on Mother’s Day. It will be filled with whose sense of entitlement has been magnified by the fact that it is their special day, many of these women will be elderly, and most of them will be accompanied by an non-zero number of children.. The flowers will be pretty, but not worth the dose of rageohol that comes with them.
In more productive news (at least for my Wii-playing homies): Circuit City is having a pretty sweet sale this week, which includes some popular Wii games for BOGO50 (buy one, get one 50% off), and No More Heroes for $20. As you might guess, my trip there on Sunday evening was a little expensive for me, but with NMH, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Mario Kart Wii to occupy me, I don’t think I’ll need to be spending any more on video games for the next little while.
I don’t usually do birthday shout-outs on this particular forum, but given that I good chunk of my traffic comes from his general direction, I think it’s only fair that you guys all go visit Keacher and wish him the happiest of birthdays.
And a happy birthday to he-without-a-blog (aka Kyle).
We miss you both in the Twin Cities these days, and hope to see you in Alabama in this summer.
Yeah, so, wallet full of cash + Minneapolis Farmer’s Market + Bachman’s + bright sunny day = expensive + projects.
Last year, I pretty much ignored all things garden (except for a zucchini/pumpkin patch, which was really more about keeping the weeds down than anything). This year, I’m planning to ramp my vegetable production back up (I actually have seedlings that I started from seed that I might be able to plant, and get a usable harvest from) and I’ve also had an uncharacteristic hankering for flowers. So Sunday morning, I headed down to the farmer’s market with cash money and an eye for annuals. I didn’t really do too badly there, $16 on some creeping thyme from Dehn’s (why shouldn’t my ground covers be edible, dammit?) and another $20 on some girly-looking annuals (they are even called pansies…eesh).
The real trouble started when I decided on my way home that it would be a good idea to stop by the garden store to see what their selection was like. It’s possible that I maybe left with two 1gal perennials (they were peonies, that’s like my kryptonite), three dahlias, a sprinkling of alyssium, and one terracotta mushroom (more awesome than words can describe…pictures to come later when I am finished…modifying it). When I finally got myself out of there, it was 3pm on a Sunday and I had a couple hours of digging ahead of me. On the Sunday BEFORE Mother’s Day. A full 11 days before the average Southern Minnesota last frost date. During the coldest spring that I have experienced since moving here.
Yeah, that’s going to work out just great.
In other news, I started reading Then We Came to the End last night…coming into this office this morning hurt quite a bit more than it normally does.
Last but not least (yeah, I know this post is going on forever), remember when I was going on and on about the What Ale’s Thee podcast (well, maybe only Amber remembers). They kinda disappeared after last summer, which made me a little sad but it looks like Jason Alvey (the one with the accent) hasn’t given up on good beer, and is opening a “specialty beer store” in St. Louis Park. I can’t wait to check it out (even if it means cheating on my beloved Cellars).
That’s the news for this Monday kids…think warm thoughts, ‘k?
Including Saint Bibiana, patron saint of epilectics, the insane, single laywomen, and hangovers.
If you are a lush, and feel like a little bit of so-funny-because-it-is-so-true this Friday aft, check out The Boozehound Cinephile’s 5 Levels of Hangover + some Chow Yun Fat to Take The Edge Off. And be sure to read the comments too, Pajiba’s commenters never fail to amuse.