Now loving...

watching all ten seasons of Seinfeld

birthday cake ice cream

my Let it Be necklace from at Patina

Special thanks to Sara and Carrie for getting me hooked!

Luxury Modal Cotton Jersey Knit Sheets from Walmart
I love these so much I never want to leave my bed.

Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Mary Tyler Moore outside Macy's in Downtown Minneapolis

I love this iconic lady. She's right up there with Lucille Ball in sitcom history. First the beloved Dick Van Dyke show and later a show with her own name. She's the inspiration to every apartment dwelling, single, career girl with an eye for fashion. Whenever I start to feel a little low, I just remember... You're gonna make it after all!

Dear friends...

I am in love with this idea!

Type a message to a friend, family member, pet, politician, or lover, and email it to snailmailmyemail@gmail.com. Then sit back and relax while your email is handwritten, sent out, and delivered to the recipient of your choosing, completely free of charge!

Snail Mail My Email is a month-long (July 15 - August 15), interactive community art project which seeks to both share the warm-fuzzy feeling of receiving a personalized letter as well as inspire people to send their own snail mail. Anyone with internet access can partake by simply sending an email, after which the very same message will be handwritten and physically mailed to the chosen recipient anywhere in the world, completely free of charge.

Like a Candy Store!

Legoland, Mall of America

Minneapolis, MN

Delicious!

The Rumors are True

I've been hearing about this place for ages and finally had an opportunity to try it out. I'm not going to lie, the Dante's Inferno English teacher part of me really enjoyed the trip to hell.

Pretty sure my lemon pancake tasted like a little bit of heaven, not a fresh piece of hell.

More menu humor -- I like good coffee too!

Artwork by Ralph Steadman, of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson fame.

Eating my Way through the Summer...

The best part of traveling is discovering new restaurants. Recently my pal Julie and I were in St. Paul and we followed up a recommendation from Rebecca who has her finger on the pulse of all things gluten free and good to eat in the Twin Cities. Neither Julie, nor I required the GF menu but that didn't stop us from enjoying Pizza Luce!


I love a good pizza and they had a wide variety of deliciousness to choose from. I got the Pizza Athena -- fresh spinach, tomato, feta cheese, Kalamata olives, Greek oregano, artichoke hearts, red onions, with toasted garlic and light mozzarella on Bianca sauce. I'd highly recommend it!

Even their menu had a sense of humor. I love that in a menu.

Tool-Time

I was just reading Design*Sponge and was reminded of my incompetence when comes to your average DIY home improvement project. I have decided it's because I don't have the proper tools.

I am frequently attempting to do something like hang a shelf or assemble a TV stand or an oscillating fan and if there's a witness to the madness I usually hear an incredulous cry, "You don't have a level? Who doesn't have a level? Where's your pliers? What? You don't have a pliers." Sigh. So, I think those may be the first things on my list of purchases. However, based on the Design*Sponge recommended tools I do have a surprising number of them. Just never the ones I need. And as it turns out, the "stud finder" I bought is pretty useless.

Swedish Storage Solutions

God bless IKEA. Where else can you get a breakfast like this for $2.67. Of course, the rest of my trip cost nearly $200.00. That's how they get you... Lure you in with tasty inexpensive breakfast items, seduce you with good deal after good deal until you're buying extra blue IKEA bags to haul your booty away.

I set out to buy a CD storage set up... something to house my 500 CDs and I found it, but I couldn't haul it home in the Civic. Also it cost about $120 and that seemed a bit much. Earl's solution was to upload the CDs and ditch the hard copies, but I'm old school. I like cover art. I like to be able to hold my music in my hand from time to time. I needed to buy two of the BESTA shelves and an additional 7 shelves for each of them in order to make this work. Instead I invested in drawer liners that hold about 100 CDs each.

When I got home I discovered my mom had an unused 5 drawer dresser that matched the wood of my TV stand and I was sold. Here you have it. Chockful of CDs all cozy and alphabetized in my new somewhat Swedish storage solution.

The black shelves are ALSO from my IKEA trip.

DIY -- HD Antenna

Supplies: Wire (this worked better than coat hangers), washers, screws, and a transformer/co-axial/deelybobber. Though I would recommend buying your deelybobber at Radio Shack rather than ACE. Mine seemed defective so I swapped it out.

No worries, I was heavily supervised. In fact, I could not make this at home... as I do not have a drill, square, wire cutter, pliers, sawhorses or large plank of wood or a metal grinder/sander thing to smooth out the points on the other side. Heck, I don't even have duct tape.

Here's my Jedi-master, Noel who guided me (read -- did all the work) through the entire process. Apparently this is a video that shows one how to make your own. There's also an instructable available here.



I tried it in my living room with my new TV and had some trouble getting it to work, so I opted for my less fussy TV in the bedroom and the old school girl worked. However, I did have to alter the design a little using a clothespin to lift the deelybobber up off the antenna some. That seemed to do the trick. Either way, I am now pulling in ABC and CW which are from a tower that is 90 miles away. Go antenna! This is unprecedented. No store-bought antenna has managed this feat!

A Handful of Highlights from the Tour of Friends

Me in Sioux Falls, SD

Rebekah and Jenny at Utopia cafe at the Falls.

Josiah teaching me how to play Settlers of Catan
(He also taught me the basics of chess.)

An afternoon of visiting with the Jenny (i)s.

Me and Ang

Delicious cafe in Rock Valley, Iowa

Levi and Me taking off

A view from the cockpit

A yummy breakfast in Hospers, Iowa

In the center of the street sits an elaborate patriotic statue

Loving the library here in Hospers, Iowa.

Impressed by the Meteor they have on display

Despite the heat, the awesome pool in Hospers was mostly empty.

Cinco de Mayo in Orange City, Iowa

One more in a series of MANY margarita shots
over the past decade or so. It had to be done.

The pool in Sioux Falls was plenty busy.

The boys

the girls

A more posed reunion shot of the whole crew. So, my school didn't manage a twenty year high school reunion like one might expect. Instead I had a 19 year reunion of my college pals. I think this worked out pretty well. We met up in Larchwood, Iowa and neither of the boy or girl action shots were comprehensive in the kid count but were still reflective of the good times that were had by all. Good food, good conversation. Frankly, I would have driven the 5 hours just for a round of hugs.