We could start a company and make misery

Today a man grabbed a bike and ran from the back of the store to the front of the store and then right out the front door. Not even kidding. It was amazing. Especially when Christina saw him hit that door and, with a mighty roar, thundered after him. She got the bike back. I have no idea how. I mean, that man was really moving, and you'd think as soon as he hit open parking lot he'd hop on that bike and pedal off like a bat out of hell. Or a thief out of Savers, as the case may be. Apparently he forgot this crucial step in bike thievery.

Well, nobody ever said shoplifters were smart.

Today was pretty beautiful out, though, all sun and breeze and cerulean skyline. I was off at six today so I walked home from the bus stop in the daylight, which was nice. Then I passed two guys in a crosswalk. One turned to me and said, with a smile like the sun, that he was going to get his thirty-day coin today. His buddy clapped him across the back and they both grinned cheerfully as I wished him well and walked on. By wished him well I mean I said something eloquent like "Congrats man!" but I suppose it's the thought that counts.

Then I went home and made mac'n cheese with hot dogs and filled my new cookie jar with cookies. It was a good day, I think.

They say misery loves company

How do they do it? How do they mess up the store with such thorough abandon? It's amazing, it really is. I mean, horrifying, but amazing. It's like as soon as I turn my back, there they are, tap dancing madly up and down the aisle as they fling about anything and everything their sticky little fingers can close around. Tip tap tip tap tippity smash smash THE BOOM BOOM THE POW POW tap tap tap! It's like that godawful Cat in the Hat, where the eponymous Cat and his hedonistic hellband of little blue-haired gremlins raze an entire household to the ground, and I'm that fish shrieking helplessly from a fishbowl.

I always hated the Cat in the Hat.

We missed you hissed the lovecats

Oh, plans. I make them with such optimistic fervor. I work out everything just so in my head and then I wake up and it's all like, ha ha what?

So I got up and Mara got home from her last day of class and drove me to my operations meeting at Savers, which was mostly cancelled because they fired a supervisor and were understaffed so I just picked up my paycheck and left. Then she drove me to the state fair. Actually we kind of drove everywhere but the fair for quite a long time. Honestly, this thing is enormous, how is it so well hidden? Anyway we finally found it and she dropped me off and I narrowly avoided being run down by a wild pack of unicyclists (I guess I accidently wandered in front of the tail end of the parade or something) before finding the friends I was meeting there. Then I ate a deep fried candy bar on a stick (diagnosis: delicious) and rode the MAGNUM.

Oh, the MAGNUM. It was a pretty generic ride but they were very obviously trying to opt for an off-brand Magnum PI design scheme, complete with badly airbrushed Tom Selleck mural along the back. What could I do but ride it? I mean, you find a Magnum PI ride at the fair, you ride it. It's almost compulsory. It's the mustache, I think. When a mustache like that tells you to sit in a chair and be spun in five different directions at once, by golly you do as you're told. Even if it's badly airbrushed.

That was pretty much the extent of my state fair adventure. I dunno, I don't really get it. It's like the county fair, just kind of bigger and more expensive. Woooooo.

Then we all drove to Rochester. Without stopping off at my apartment like I had Planned.

And that's the story of how I would up here at home with a dollar in my pocket and not so much as a change of socks.

How could we miss someone as dull as this?

In other news I have a strange taste combination of garlic and molasses lingering in my mouth.

I guess this is what happens when you decide to make cookies and guacamole at the same time.

Not broken in pieces like hated little meeces

Today I left the apartment at 4 to catch the bus to work. I arrive at work at 5:05, which is LATE.

How did it take over an hour to travel what is basically a seven minute car trip and normally a thirty minute bus/light rail ride? I'M TALKING TO YOU, MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.

There was one woman who spent the entire time engaged in what I first thought was an animated conversation on a cell phone with one of those hands-free headsets, but she wasn't really. She just talked for an hour, sometimes indignant, sometimes amused, like an old chatty cathy doll spilling out the words of years to everybody and nobody in particular. She talked while she walked to the bus stop, talked the whole ride, talked as she got off the bus and trudged down the block as the bus rumbled on. She's probably still talking now. I wonder if anybody's really ever listened. Maybe Cappy. Maybe not.

Always the right way 'round

Wow. Just, wow.

For future reference, angry screaming lady, when you try to steal crap from us and we catch you at it and you're angry, don't try pulling the race card. Especially when your cashier is Habiba.

Talk about the pot and the kettle. I mean honestly woman do you have two brain cells to rub together.

Hand in hand is the only way to land

Today Mara and I ordered pizza. But not just any pizza. We ordered pizza bianca from Galactic Pizza. If you have never ordered pizza from Galactic Pizza, and you probably haven't, then you have never had a man wearing tights, silver boots, a helmet, and a cape deliver a box of pizza to your apartment complex and then speed away in his little electric scootercar thing. So essentially you haven't lived at all. Because IT'S AMAZING.

Sure, the pizza is good too. But you don't order Galactic for the pizza. You order it so some poor guy in a stupid costume has to give you food. And that makes me happy.

And that one is you, no other will do

Last night Mara and I went grocery shopping, which might sound super exciting but it's actually pretty typical around here. Yep, believe it or not it's how we spend just about every Friday night. I know someday I'll have to give up this crazy lifestyle, but for now, I'm gonna whoop it up and clip coupons like it ain't no thang.

Anyway, we were prowling the produce section at Rainbow (there's another thing, for being twenty-year-olds we spend a ridiculous amount of time in the produce section. We did not actually remember to buy chips or anything snacky like that until the second or third shopping trip, when we both agreed it was probably not normal to not have at least one bag of junk. I do not know how this happens. It is a mystery to me) when we walked too close to the organic peanut butter.

Normally I sneer at organic stuff. "You hippies can keep your spotty apples and bendy celery," I say scornfully, "my whole family has been eating the regular stuff for years and they're perfectly normal
none of 'em have grown any extra arms or anything
in the end you're just a stinky hippie
well honestly who can afford that stuff anyway."

But the peanut butter...I've heard people extoll the virtues of organic peanut butter for years. It seems perfectly reasonable that maybe organic peanut butter would be better. I mean, if you're talking organic carrots, don't be an ass. It's a carrot. Maybe organic carrots are a little dirtier, but it's still a carrot. Whether it's pulled from the ground by a robot or a patchouli-scented guy named Moonbeam, it's just a carrot. Peanut butter has to get processed, though, one way or another. Maybe the hippies really have something here.

So of course we broke down and bought a little tub. It's ok to break down and buy things if they come in little tubs, I think. If that isn't in legislature, it should be. Then we finished our shopping and went home and gingerly placed the little tub in the pantry and called it a night.

This morning I excitedly shuffled into the kitchen (that's the only step I know in the morning, excited or otherwise) and made the little ants-on-a-log thing with celery and raisins and (fancypants organic) peanut butter, then took a bite and waited for something amazing to happen.

After a few puzzled minutes of experimentation, I discovered that if you eat a substantial amount and wait, a few seconds later you'll go "oh, peanut butter, I think I taste it now."

WHAT. I spent money on a little tub of this and the best it can do for me is remind me of those peanut butter kisses the uncool houses give out on Halloween?

Go stuff it, hippies, I'm gonna do what Big Peanut Butter wants me to do and buy into the Skippy propaganda next time. Not only is it way cheaper, but hee hee, skippy! Just say it, skippy. It's the greatest name ever! Yippee Skippy, hippy.

In my heart I have but one desire

I just pulled something out of the oven that resembles and tastes like something suspiciously similar to banana nut bread. Which is fortunate, because that's what I had intended when I put it in there in the first place.

Fascinating.

edit: Well, crap, it looks like the top center bit right in the middle didn't do the ol' switcheroo from goo to bread. What the heck do I do about that? The discovery made me a little ornery and I toyed with the idea of just flipping the whole stupid loaf upside down back into the pan and sticking it in the oven for a little while longer, but something tells me that wouldn't work out so well. I dunno. I think it tastes all right.

I just want to start a flame in your heart

Ugh, pesto flop. I felt compelled to scribble a few sharp comments in the recipe book after that mess. Honestly, cookbook, what are you trying to do? Kill me softly with basil?

However, in true Minnesotan style, our guests did not complain about the nuclear green pasta paste other than making the occasional noncommittal "Oh goodness, this certainly has bite to it" and "Please can somebody pass the bread PLEASE" sort of remarks. Some of them, out of stiff-upper-lip politeness, even had seconds. I am heartily impressed. Minnesota 4 lyfe.

And I think my blender is going to taste like basil hell forever. Anybody for a glass of basil flavored lassi? How about a basil smoothie? You know where to find me if you do.

I don't want to set the world on fire

Attn: everyone

I have had my first Crazy Person on the Bus encounter! I feel like I really live here now!

I was waiting at the Nicollet stop for the 2 to come whisk me away to the light rail when this tall, lanky guy comes beboppin' across the street. Every step he took was a kind of sauntering, bendy, Gumby-with-rickets sort of lope, and I could not figure out for the life of me if he was doing it on purpose or if he just wasn't very good at walking for some reason. He was also wearing the fascinatingly original ensemble of a black sportcoat over bleach spotted overalls, which is not a fashion statement I have encountered before or since. I'm seated on one end of the bench, he sits down on the other. But whatever, he's just another odd guy waiting for the bus. So we wait. After another ten minutes a few more people have collected around the stop and nothing much is going on when a plane flies overhead and our man Rickets flips.

"GAWD'M MUTHFUGG'N PLAAAAAANE MAKIN' THE BOOM BOOM, THE POW POW, MUTHFUGG'R KEEP IT DAYOWN, PEEPS TRYIN' T'SLEEP ROUND HEAH, POW POW BOOM"

By this point he's standing on the bench and shaking his fist at the villainous plane. I, on the other hand, have gone into "OH GOD IT'S A CRAZY" mode, which means I am staring at the purse in my lap like it's the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my life and studiously avoiding making eye contact with anything. One part of my brain is going "Yip yip yip, my first crazy guy! :D" while the other is thinking "Ok, don't move, he can't see you if you don't move."

I don't know if that's actually true, crazy people not seeing you if you don't move. But it worked in Jurassic Park with dinosaurs, and frankly dinosaurs make as much sense to me as people who holler "POW POW BOOM MUTHFUGGA" at planes, so why not.

He settled down a bit after that and contented himself with rocking himself back and forth in little figure eights. I thought about discreetly getting up and joining all the other people who had backed away to a respectful distance, but I was afraid it would be obvious enough to draw his attention and while I was pretty sure I was really in no danger from Mr. Rickets or anything, I didn't exactly want him to, you know, acknowledge my presence or anything. So I just kind of sat there examining my fingernails until the bus showed and I had an excuse to tapdance up the stairs and into a seat where he almost sat next to me but didn't. Then he got off at the next stop, exactly three blocks away from Nicollet.

I would say, "Who does that? Who waits fifteen minutes for a bus to drive you three blocks?" but I think it's fairly well established that this man would be a very plausible candidate for exactly that sort of thing.

Good bye, Mr. Rickets, wherever you may bendily be. Don't take the 2 anymore while I'm riding it kthxbye :)

Give it to me ... NOW

Oh man. So I see this guy walking towards my register to check out, right? And I'm thinking, gee, I think I recognize him, maybe not. So I decide to be neutral and see what he says to find out if I do. So it goes:

Me: Hi, how're you doin' today?

Him: Pretty great, thanks, you?

Ok, sounds pretty standard. I must've mistaken him for somebody else, whatev--

Him: I thought I saw you working at the Savers in Rochester. You living here now?

Me: (OH NO he does know me and I can't remember who he is) Yeah, I just transferred here a few days ago. (I hate not remembering somebody. I could say that I never forget a face, and I suppose it would be true enough, so long as you include the addendum (I just spelled that as "addendumb," which I think is sort of funny) that I sometimes forget that I haven't forgotten a face, and other times I remember only the face. It's like having a song stuck in your head and you've forgotten half of a line and it makes your brain just itch like mad to know it. Except when your brain itches for a song lyric, you just go home and google it. How do you google a face?)

Him: Oh, yeah, that's cool. You like it up here?

Me: Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Still getting used to everything. So what've you been up to? (I felt pretty clever with that one. Maybe I'll figure out who he is now!)

Him: Oh, you know. The usual. Nothing too exciting, I guess. (Or maybe not.)

And that was that. MY BRAIN WAS ITCHY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. After some pretty intense and drawn out musing, I have determined the following:

1. He probably went to Mayo, and if he didn't go to Mayo I'll never figure this out, so it had better be Mayo.

2. I think he was involved in either Journalism or TV Production. I'm leaning towards Journalism, but it may have been both.

3. His name is a dark color, and I think it's Dan. I think.

4. He graduated in '04 or '05.

And that's it. That's all I've got. I broke out the yearbooks but that's pretty slow going, considering the index is pretty shoddy work and very rarely lists all of the pictures any given person was actually in. I searched through Facebook, too, and didn't find him there, and there is no way I'm going to try tackling Myspace with only a suspicion that his first name was Dan and nothing else.

ITCH.

I want to lock it all up in my pocket IT'S MY BAR OF CHOCOLATE

So I'm really tired and I have to get up at 8 tomorrow for work, but I don't want to go to bed. Because if I go to bed I'll fall asleep and wake up and it'll be like no time has passed and I'll have to go to work already. And if I've only seven hours between now and when I have to work, I sure wish I could feel like there are seven hours instead of, y'know, a brief period of stupid dreams with Johnny Depp only in them at the very end. And then go to work.

Laaaaaame.

I want the world. I want the whole world.

I've decided I really like riding the light rail. I'm totally not enamoured with the bus, but the light rail just makes me feel so metropolitan. It probably helps that I really only ride it for two minutes at a time to get from Franklin station to Lakestreet and back, but it's just so neat. It's like riding the subway except it's not half as convenient and it's above ground. I wish Minneapolis had a subway like New York. But in lieu of that, I will enjoy the fancypants comfort of the light rail.

That dream I posted about earlier, I take issue with the fact that I woke up when I did. I mean, come on, I had to put up with getting shot at and chased after and there were people with big feet and all this stupid crap and then, finally, Jack Sparrow shows up and it's like, kickin' rad, now thing's'll get awesome! Let's go steal a ship Jack! EXCEPT THAT'S WHEN I WOKE UP.

THANKS BRAIN. THANKS A LOT.

You are so off my Christmas card list.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

So when the evil firefighters caught me trespassing on their evil convention grounds after jumping through the plastic subway took me directly into their evil hq, they gave chase and I ran like mad through field and forest until I found an abandoned cabin reputedly frequented by smugglers. There I met some friendly people with feet too large for shoes who offered me asylum if I would just come with them and try out some boots they had made, but as we were about to leave a pack of gangsters drove into the front lawn and shot the cabin up, killing everybody. I crawled behind the sofa and found a really small vent that I managed to fit through and hid there while they prowled around looking for me. Finally the leader, who looked like a really hardcore Wayne Brady, had the bright idea to calculate the actual "weight densities relative to the infarcted quantum properties of transubstantiational copper" and punched numbers into a calculater to determine that the cabin was off by precisely the weight of one other person, which had me worried so I snuck out the back and ran for the hills with Jack Sparrow.

Weight densities relative to the infarcted quantum properties of transubstatiational copper. I love it when my brain tries to get smart with me and thinks it can get away with it just because I'm sleeping.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Ok, pretty sure I'm either going to have to cover every square inch of the underside of my loft with foam, or get a helmet. Because something here just isn't working. I hit my head on one beam, curse and bounce directly into another one, ricochet off that into a third...

The highly scientific studies I have been conducting in this regard indicate that hitting your head against things until your brain is a runny pudding just isn't as fun as you might think.

FOR SCIENCE!

I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair, and I'm wonderin' how I'll get down the stairs

First day at work was an enormous success! And by enormous success I mean it was pretty much ok and I didn't get mugged or anything. Which is super!

The Savers on Lakestreet really is kind of a dump, but it's still within acceptable parameters. It's big and shabby and very very busy and has no public bathrooms and the shopping carts all have vertical mounted bars on them so you can't take them out of the store and everybody is way hardcore. By that I mean they don't put up with half the crap we'd passive-aggressively tolerate back at the store in Rochester. No tag? We will not sell it to you. You don't like the price? Go shop somewhere else. You really really have to pee and it's an emergency PLEASE? There's a bit of landscaping with some shrubberies in the middle of the parking lot, help yourself. It's like every vindictive little "customer ARRRGH" dream has come true! And when we close at night, we CLOSE. If you have not made your purchases by the stroke of nine, drop them and leave, because we aren't sellin' you anything, we are closed.

:D

PLUS as I was walking past some storefronts on the way to the light rail I was thinking to myself, Gee! I sure hope somebody hits me in the face with a door. And what d'you know, just as I was passing the liquor store, somebody did! All my dreams came true and then Santa brought me a pony.

Ok, I wasn't actually thinking anything of the sort. But it sure would've been pretty neat if I had. I would probably have said something like "Kickin' rad! I got hit with a door!" instead of what I really said, which was "Unnnf...?"

Well, what else do you say to that sort of thing?

THEN after the light rail ride I got on the bus and met this guy who knows a guy I met in New York. I think that was my favorite part of the whole day just because, well, what are the odds that I would meet a guy while he was on a break from Cooper Union and solo road tripping around the US who also happened to be friends with Yuliy?

Stop. It's cookie time.

Well I don't know why I came here tonight, I got the feelin' that somethin' ain't right

I made like fifty pounds of molasses cookies yesterday, which is pretty darn sweet. Except then I remembered we don't have anything even resembling a cookie jar, so now there's a stack of noodles containers full of cookies just kind of hangin' out on the counter. Pretty classy. Plus it took me over two hours to do it because we only have one dinky little cookie sheet so I could only bake six cookies at a time. And my arm almost fell off at least twice. Creaming shortening and sugar by hand kind of sucks. A lot.

BUT I HAVE PILE OF COOKIES NOW HURRAH

And just to make things even more exciting, right in the middle of everything Mara calls to tell me that Erik and his mom are coming over to see the apartment. OHHHH NOOOO

So I spent five frenzied minutes whacking flour dust out of my black skirt and running from room to room picking up this and straightening that and kicking things under other things and scooping that junk into a drawer and turning off Reservoir Dogs and generally doing my very best frenzied '50s housewife imitation and had just gotten back to cookie preparations by the time the door opened.

QAPLA!

A rebel without a clue

So, wait. When the washing machine starts to sound like it's fully intending to blast into orbit, is that bad?

Out in the great wide open

Today I got a whole mess of stuff (read: one shirt, one skirt, one pair of stretchy capri things) on sale at Lane Bryant, which means I got to carry a big ol' Lane Bryant bag full of stuff around the mall and feel all snooty and nobody had to know that it contained exactly $15 worth of merchandise thanks to coupons and discounts. I think that might be the American Dream right there folks, getting to act all snooty for cheap.

Also we have discovered a delightful Greek restaurant along eat street, Cristos or something. It was delicious. I had mousaka and tomato basil soup and hummus and this amazingly good mashed cauliflower with garlic stuff. Did I mention it was delicious? Plus there were a lot of pictures of places in Greece along the wall and I got to point out all the ones I recognized ("Oh, yes, quite, I was there, hmm, yes.") to Mara and feel snooty. THAT'S TWO SNOOTIES IN ONE DAY. I win.

Then we went grocery shopping, which was pretty unexciting. I don't really like grocery shopping. I prefer more immediate results, like restaurant shopping or putting-on-shoes shopping. Also, in an unrelated event, I boiled eggs for lunch today for the first time in my life, and it worked. I felt smug. Kind of a stupid smug, because honestly, boiled eggs? But I didn't burn anything down so there you have it, smug. And then I made egg salad. It was horrible somehow. I dunno, maybe it was the miracle whip, but whatever it was I disliked it a lot but I ate it anyway because I BOILED EGGS DAMMIT. Then I forgot the rest on the counter all day and had to throw it out when we got home. My life is so hard.

Time to get my laundry out of the machine so nobody horks my undies. I liked laundry better when it was free. And I use "like" very loosely here.

Under them skies of blue

Even my superman pajamas didn't seem to help me get in or out of bed. I have a plan, though. I'm going to buy an old leather belt, bolt it to the wall side of my bed across from the ladder, and then use it to haul myself up. This is my Plan.

I actually just typed that as Plam and now I'm wondering what a Plam would be and how it would be mine. Would I be proud of my Plam? Would I dress it up in little outfits and send it off to play with the other Plams or is it something I would plug into the wall, or perhaps both? More importantly, would it make it easier to for me to get into bed?

Serious questions which must be pondered over eggs. Scrambled. With ham and cheese.

Into the great wide open

So I went to Ikea and found a significantly smaller desk for $20, and I am pleased to report that in exchange for a projected 50% reduction in space for stuff, I have a 20% increase in space for Betsi. I don't actually know what happened to the other 30%, but at least I don't have to use a shoehorn to get into my office. Now what I want is one of those fancypants plastic floor things so my chair can actually try to wheel around instead of sinking into a depressed rut in the carpet. Also a curtain for the side of my bed so I can be all snooty about my office. "Hey," Mara will say, "don't you have some dishes to be doing?" And I will deftly tug the curtain closed and say, "Not now, roommate. I am in my office."

I'm tired so I think I'll kill myself trying to climb into bed. Will the fun never cease!