If you get the chance, you should watch “Lost Twin Cities” as produced by TPT (Local PBS). I had recorded it a while back and watched it last night – it was really quite interesting, especially for a transplant to the area who didn’t necessarily know much if any of the history. Did you know that the LA Lakers originated in the Twin Cities? Did you know that Minneapolis used to have a minor league baseball team just like St Paul still does? Did you know there was a baseball field at Lexington and University? (Explains why that corner is still a hole.) Very interesting, especially since many of the architectural features were buildings that were destroyed in the 50′s, so they’re not currently part of the skyline.
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You’ll never guess what I didn’t do last night. I didn’t do it today, either. Wanna know, huh huh? I didn’t write my paper that’s due tomorrow. Ha! And I’m not gonna tonight, either. So there. Such a slacker, I am. Well, not exactly. I mean, I’ve already written 6, and we only had to write 3, so… slacker isn’t exactly the right word. I brought my book with me today thinking I might write it here at work, but… well, after looking at the question again, there’s no way this paper is going to be good. It’s not the type of question I answer well, and so why bother when I already have several more acceptable grades. My employee health newsletter (which is not published by my agency, but purchased and passed around for our general well-being) is usually not helpful to me, and occasionally laughable. Like last month, when the helpful tip was that I should go outside for 15 minutes every day between 11 and 2, even if it’s not sunny out, in the winter. Clearly, the writer had never experienced a Minnesota winter. Even if it was just on my return trip from Starbucks, which would only be about 5 minutes, my coffee would get cold, I would be freezing, and I’m quite sure I would be sick more often than not. But anyways, I digress. This month they decided to help me with my goal to not be stressed out by the holidays. Because, let’s face it, holidays can be stressful (especially when trying to juggle more family than I’m used to), and I love Christmas most of all and don’t want any shadows to be cast upon the joy of the season. I thought it was nice of the newsletter to provide these tips, even though most of them weren’t new. And I thought I’d share them with you because, well, I can. “6 Ways to Simplify the Holidays” (from Unplugging the Christmas Machine by Jo Robbinson and Jean Cappock Staeheli, republished in HOPE Health Letter, December 2006) (my comments in italics)
Note: I am wearing my 30-year-old sweater today, the one
Happy Thanksgiving! Yeah… not really that much to say. I have been incredibly productive at home this week, which is probably why I don’t have much to say. I finished the curtains for I’ve been a superstar in Access this week at work. I finally recreated a report that had been done manually for… decades, I swear. Amazingly, I actually got everything to work, and only broke it once or twice. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but up until now I’d been manually doing math and entering numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, which is never a good option when all the information is already in a database somewhere. Yes, yes, I know, incredibly boring. Boo-hoo. So tonight I am going to Cub, and then I will either do my homework or make a pumpkin pie – we’ll see what I’m feeling like when I get back. Tomorrow we have two turkey dinners, followed by a wedding on Friday, and another turkey dinner on Sunday. Suffice it to say, my pants may not fit on Monday, at which point the world will rejoice and women everywhere will stop hating me. Alright, I should go.
**Yes, I totally stole that pic from one of the blogs I read today, but I’m way too lazy to check which one it was. But I didn’t steal bandwidth, just the image. Promise.
I forgot to mention that, for kicks, I tried on a skirt last night at Macy’s that was too short and quite hideous (think orange and green plaid flannel, with a belt). There was a moment in the dressing room, while The BBC brought to my attention an article entitled, “Pakistan votes to amend rape laws.” I was interested, since I think that in the Muslim-controlled countries the rules concerning women and sex are ridiculous, including getting lashes for “adultery” if you don’t have 4 male witnesses to a rape. Who wants witnesses to a rape? Isn’t it bad enough? Anyways. What sparked my attention was this quote:
WTF? Every 2 hours? Remind me never to go to Pakistan. Why are there still women living in this country? Are any of them un-molested? This is a tragic statistic (and apparently an underestimate, since many rapes go unreported) and it angers me greatly. Of course, not really being the activist type… I’m just going to talk about the injustice and leave it at that. But maybe someone else will do something? Where would one even start to change that situation? I was looking through old photographs last night – finally started to fix the content of the picture frames that I hung up over the fireplace a while back. It’s really amazing the power that a photograph can have. I found the scrapbook that my last church gave me as a parting gift, and relived all the happy times I had there, and all the special people and the kids and all the fun. But there were also pages in a photo album from college that I had to skip entirely, because I couldn’t bear to look at them. And there are the pictures of myself where I look horrible and I cringe, and those where I look horrible but it was such a fun time/experience/memory that I love the picture anyways. So, over the next few days I’m searching through all my digital copies of pictures to fill the rest of the frames, because I didn’t have nearly enough in print. Would you like to nominate any of your favorites?
There’s one of those “Do” posters in the stairwell at St Paul College that mocks me every Monday and Wednesday morning. I always take the stairs to class, which happens to be on the 4th floor, and the floors are particularly tall – it’s a double flight of stairs to each level. So by the time I hit the 3rd floor, I’m feelin’ it, if you know what I mean. You’d think that after two months, it’d get easier, but apparently walking up 3 flights of stairs twice a week doesn’t really build up much stamina. Whatever. So there’s this poster between the 3rd and 4th floors, at which point I am feeling the burn. And it says… “Free Stairmaster” and points to the next flight of stairs. Mocking me, I tell you, every time I pass it. While over at the Dating Dummy, I was referred to this article on “Guidelines for Platonic Friendship” [link removed]. While you all know my opinion about sex outside of marriage… this is very funny. I liked it. In fact, it was almost helpful, if I 1) had any guy friends, or 2)… um… see #1, because I’m pretty sure I broke a few of these rules with my guy friends in college. Quite a few times, actually. This is why people got hurt, myself included. I’m not feeling clever enough right now, but does someone have the energy to pull together a similar list from the female perspective? Test scores are in from Monday’s test, you know, the one that I wasn’t in such a swell mood about. 94%. Which means that I still have a 98% in the class, not including the extra credit paper. Feel free to hate me, because right now, I am that person in the class. Hehe. By the way, I’ve never been that person. Not that I didn’t do well in school, because I did, but in high school I was in honor’s classes, which meant there was a whole classroom full of smarties (and I just didn’t care enough to try hard), and college was just a different world entirely. So I’m going to enjoy this moment, while it lasts. Next semester I will hopefully take more than one class (my goal is three – we’ll see how that goes), and I’m quite sure that I won’t be acing all of my classes if that’s the case. I’m going to go dance about the office now. And then get lunch. |
             Strange Neighbors (Strange Neighbors, #1) by Ashlyn Chase  Compromised Hearts by Hannah Howell  Woman of a Thousand Secrets by Barbara Wood  A Bride for Tom by Ruth Ann Nordin  The No-Nonsense Guide to World History by Chris Brazier
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copyright © 2012 wonderment - all rights reserved |
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and I, we have 4, if we only count parental units. 
is so lucky – this year she can just make everyone come to them.
and I are getting 
and 
went to a concert together for… someone’s birthday or Christmas or something).
while they were still dating. It’s olive green and only a little bit baggy on me, which just goes to show that 
