Moving Toward Something

Brrr!

It's cold and snowy.  I don't know why it surprises me every year, but it does.  I have this little initial reaction of outrage when the first decent snow hits.  Then I become resigned.  Then I start wondering how fast we can get to April.

Speaking of snow, my flight was delayed getting into Philadelphia (where I was attending a family wedding) last Friday and I was momentarily shocked:  What do you MEAN "delayed because of snow?"  Well duh, we aren't in the Upper Midwest anymore, Toto.  Unlike MSP, MSN, etc., most airports don't have the equipment or staff to deal with snow well enough that it won't affect flight schedules.

The wedding was nice.  Churches make me squirm, but the ceremony on Saturday was brief and the reception was fun.  It was good to catch up with people I hadn't seen in a long time. 

The next day, I made the error in judgment of trying to make a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art while a marathon was running right in front of it.  Oops.  Police barricades, thousands of dazed marathoners, and a guy with an amazingly piercing loudspeaker hollering the names of each runner as they crossed the finish line.  Good grief.  We did finally get in to the museum and see the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit, which I thought was fantastic.  Then we had a quick lunch and Dad walked me across town to find a cab to the airport for my flight back to Wisconsin.

I arrived back in WI on Sunday night and didn't bother unpacking; on Monday I worked, then took off by car toward Minnesota, where a) I was going to close the sale of my house and b) I was going to spend Thanksgiving with friends.  The house sale did not close, because the buyer's lender made a booboo and couldn't actually get her the loan she needed.  That was a bit of a disappointment, but I'm taking it in stride.  I'll go into more detail when the situation isn't in flux.  I did, however, get to spend the week with Jen and Anders.  We all went over to Reb and Dave's house for Thanksgiving and there ended up being 22 of us there. 

We had nine pies.  Nine pies.  That picture to the left shows the nine pies we had.  There were nine of them.  That's almost one for each finger.  There was a chocolate pie, a blood orange tart, a raspberry pie, two pumpkin pies, a pear chiffon tart, a cherry pie, a chocolate pecan tart, and an apple pie.  Reb makes good pies.  This was a ridiculous amount of good pie.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Jen and Anders and I loafed around (well, and did some work), went up to the Minneapolis Central Library to see the PostSecret exhibit there, and then had dinner at the Red Stag Supperclub.  If you get a chance to go to the Red Stag, GO.  I miss having easy access to it.

Saturday, I drove back to WI.  I had been scheduled to go back on Sunday, but as luck would have it, it was going to snow on Sunday (today), so I left early. 

Tomorrow I return to some semblance of a normal daily routine for a few weeks.  Wish me luck.

A Fair and Balanced Report of the Weekend's Highlights

Saturday morning I went to the farmers' market in search of leeks.  The week prior there had been loads of beautiful leeks, and I wanted some. This week, there weren't as many and they weren't as pretty.  But I found some that would work in soup, and that's all that matters.  Then in the evening, I found my way over to the home of my coworker and his wife, and along with ~10 other people I played Mafia.  Also there, to my surprise, was the creator of The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, a webcomic I follow.  If you read webcomics and haven't yet read Wonderella, I highly recommend it.

Sunday was a bit of a wash.  I had planned to clean up the apartment a bit, since on Tuesday I'm going to get a preliminary visit from the folks who will watch my cats while I'm on vacation in Hawaii for a week.  Instead, after talking to my parents who were worried that I wouldn't find proper attire for a wedding I'm attending in late November, I went on a frenzied tour of two malls before I remembered that I have two months in which to deal with this issue.  But anyway, I suppose it was good to find the malls and get to see a bit of local mall flavor.  West Towne Mall is a regular mall with shops, and Hilldale is the "lifestyle" mall where they have boutiques (not shops--horrors!) and you should never expect to find clothing in your size.  I have yet to explore East Towne Mall.  That will be another weekend.

So, currently on my plate is:  cleaning up the apartment (still), and getting ready to go to Hawaii.  The latter involves excavating a suitcase--they're all still full of stuff from the move--and refilling it with Hawaii-appropriate clothing and items.  Do I even have any of those?  For sure I don't own a pair of shorts.  I know I have a bathing suit somewhere.  I do have sandals.  This is all very complicated!

In Which We Boldly Venture Forth

My friends Jen and Anders showed up Friday night, and yesterday we did some exploring.  After breakfast, we hit the Dane County Farmers' Market.  This is a year-round farmers' market that takes up the street all the way around the Wisconsin state capitol building.  I bought the makings for spaghetti sauce (except for tomato sauce; I have tomato sauce amnesia and buy some every time I'm at the grocery store because I forget whether I've used up what I have) including a pound of fresh ground bison meat.  Jen and Anders got, among other more ordinary things, some ground emu meat.  We also got raspberries, zucchini, basil, cipollini onions, garlic, etc.  I almost got a bouquet of coxcomb, but I think I'll hold off on flowers until I've got my furniture all arranged the way I want it.

I took a picture of the market (click on the little picture above for a larger version), but it really doesn't show how big it is, nor does it show the lovely capitol building.  I'm new to this camera thing, and I tend to forget to take pictures when I have the chance.  I was too busy going "OMG WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE BEAUTIFUL EGGPLANTS," so do forgive me.

After bringing all this back to the apartment and stashing it, we drove down to the New Glarus Brewing Company in New Glarus, WI.  A bit of background here, for those unfamiliar:  this brewery makes beer that is beloved in the region, but can only be purchased in Wisconsin because the family running the brewery doesn't like the hassle of dealing with distributors.  People drive to Wisconsin just to buy this beer.  Now, I'm not usually a beer girl, but this is some tasty stuff. 

At the brewery you get a self-guided tour--they hand you a handset, there are numbers on the wall near each thing you might to want to know about, you punch in the number, hit "Play," and put the handset to your ear.  It's pretty efficient!  Of course there was an old German document on the wall, and I had to know what that was.  It turned out to be a copy of the first ever German food quality law, which was about beer, written in 1516.

The town of New Glarus prides itself on its Swiss heritage, and it's got all sorts of little Swiss style buildings, shops, etc. on its main streets.  I'll likely be bringing out of state visitors to both the brewery and the town, unless they protest.

Dinner was at Arbat.  We walked there.

For breakfast we had tortas and cemitas at La Concha.

And now Jen and Anders are on the road, and it is time for me to do some errands.