My time in the Twin Cities (but mostly Minneapolis)

Work is so slow right now that I could be asleep and no one would notice, so I might as well update my blog for the 3 people who always bug me to update it.

From Thursday to Sunday I pretended I was rich and famous, and along with that fantasy came a jetsetting weekend whirlwind trip to the great state of Minnesota. I flew Midwest Airlines, which was somewhat annoying because I had a stopover in Milwaukee (a very quiet, grey airport where the food selection is minimal.) The great thing about this airline though is that they give you "baked-on-board" chocolate chip cookies. You can even have two or three if you want. I realized pretty quickly that the cookies were pre-baked and then just heated up in the miniscule oven at the front, but warm cookies are always better than cold ones, so I'm not complaining. This is supposedly what it looked like.
But in reality, the armrests were regular size, and not huge with trays like this one.

So when I arrived in Minneapolis, my friend Naomi picked me up and we stopped at her apartment to drop my stuff. Her apartment is HUGE and gorgeous and she barely pays anything for it. These are the "perks" for living in the midwest United States. It's tempting. Then we walked around the neighborhood, watched some court tv shoes including Judge Judy, and went out in the evening to a place called "The Shout House." This is their logo:

Pretty cool, I know. Definitely wouldn't have classified it as Rock 'n Roll, but I'm positive there were two pianos which seemed to be dueling. They had pints of beer for 3 dollars (!!!!) so we enjoyed a few, along with a pizza that might've been previously frozen. We nicknamed one of the piano players "Featherhead" because his hair was light and feathery, and the other one, we called him "Farm Boy" for obvious reasons. The music was pretty decent, and people made lots of requests on tiny slips of yellow paper.

The crowd in the Shout House was kind of odd, especially a table of dudes right at the front. At first it looked like a few regular guys out for a drink after work. Then odd things started happening. First, the guy we called "Mock-Turtleneck" (again for obvious reasons) fell sideways off his chair. Then his friend SkiJacket started flirting with all the other guys in the group and dancing really sensually. Mock-Turtleneck ended up getting on stage and dancing up a storm. I took a few photos but they're not on my work computer, so I can't upload them. Just picture a short asian guy in a white mock-neck and baggy Dockers (pleated) having the time of his life.

The next day (Friday, for those of you keeping track) we spent the entire day shopping, first at Target and then at Mall of America. The mall was kind of a mecca for country bumpkins, but had some good stores and we both SPLURGED on shoes. The spending wore Naomi and I both out, so we rented two movies from this thing at McDonald's called Redbox. It's such a great concept, and I can't figure out why we don't have it here. Every McDonald's there had a huge red box, aptly named Redbox, where you just select the movies you want to rent via a tv screen thing, then it drops them out of the box. When you return them (at ANY McDonald's location) you just pay $1 per night per movie. SO CHEAP.

Unfortunately we picked horrible movies. The first one was The Women, which I chose, featuring all women. The characters were annoying (especially Jada Pinkett-Smith's character) and the lack of men was simply maddening. Then we took a break for some brie and crackers and a quick Scrabble match. On to movie number two: Nights in Rodanthe. Naomi picked that one. Man, what a bad movie!! I actually cried at the end, but mostly because of how bad it was.

Saturday we went out for a delicious brunch, then ran/walked around Lake Calhoun in the gorgeous weather, then went out for numerous beverages in the evening and met some delightful new folks. Sunday I went home.... not a fun travel day. Felt kinda sick and took some anti-nausea pills which made me feel like I was 20% awake all day. I fell asleep on each flight plus in the Milwaukee airport and almost missed my flight. The free cookies were pretty good though.

If I've left anything out or you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.