minnesota chuckles

Mankato is a city ninety miles southwest of the Twin Cities... Maybe we weren't in such a hurry to get back home from our road trip or maybe I wanted to show Jerry my college alma mater, but we took the time to stop in Mankato and hang around there for a while on our way home from Iowa yesterday. I graduated from Mankato State University (now inexplicably renamed Minnesota State University Mankato) many years ago, of course, and some things have changed a lot, some things not at all, but I've always kinda liked Mankato and the university.

After touring the campus a little, we drove into downtown and stopped at an outdoor restaurant on the main street for some dinner... The live entertainment was at the next table: two guys and a girl who were obviously college kids who shared a house. We sat there for an hour or so and listened the whole time to the girl telling the guys what slobs they are to live with and the guys saying they weren't going to change and she was being unreasonable. For an hour! Talking about dirty dishes in the sink! It was hilarious to listen to, they were all so serious and earnest. Made me wonder if I would go back to that age again or not, if I could. Ha! Of course I would.

Mankato is also the place where the Vikings work out in the pre-season.. Didn't see them, but today we are seeing Brett Favre all over the news, as he has arrived here in the Twin Cities today to -- is anybody shocked? -- sign with the Vikings. Oh what a media hog! When will his next retirement be?

So anyway, here we are back at home. A nice little trip.

the monks in iowa

Here is some trivia for you... "Des Moines" in French means "The Monks", and apparently there is no reliable historical account of why this city was named for monks... But here we are, staying in another nicely restored old hotel, this time in downtown Des Moines -- that's the lobby of this hotel (the Renaissance Savery Hotel) in the photo...

***

and so far we like Des Moines, but our criteria for liking a place usually come down to whether a place has friendly people and some things to see, a diner that serves a good greasy-spoon breakfast... extra points if there is a gay bar or two... So all the cities that we stayed in this trip, La Crosse, Dubuque, Des Moines, met all those standards.

***

Today we head north, through backwoods north central Iowa -- we are avoiding all interstate highways on this road trip -- back into Minnesota. Did I say backwoods?.. Not many woods anywhere in this state... we'll drive through backfields Iowa.

a taste of philly in dubuque

Still traveling along the Mississippi... Stayed the night in a beautifully restored old hotel (the Hotel Julien) in Dubuque, Iowa -- a very friendly city, as it turns out... Nice people, a riverboat casino across the highway and a great local place for breakfast down the street... Last night, we found decent cheesesteaks at a strip-mall restaurant called A Little Taste of Philly.... Today we'll do the river a bit more and then start heading northwest and try to find something interesting in interior Iowa... Might be a challenge. Home tomorrow.

highway 61 revisited

Our long weekend out of town... We ended up heading down Highway 61 along the Mississippi, staying for a night or two in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, do a daytrip further down the River, and from there who knows where.... We of course love living in the Twin Cities, but oh how nice it is to be gone from there for a while...

Other thoughts:

Wisconsin: It's strange to see people smoking in bars and restaurants again.

Football: Oh, how could my beloved Eagles have hired Michael Vick??

get out of town, dude

We're thinking we need to be out of town for a weekend -- somewhere.... Just drive out of town, stay somewhere... Be somewhere other than here.

But then, for me, the guy raised on the East Coast, the dilemma is where do we drive to?.. From southern New Jersey, there were all kinds of places within easy driving distance -- the city, the country, the mountains, the ocean...

But from the Twin Cities, in a region where everything is so far apart, what kind of trip can we plan that doesn't include any airplanes? The normal default is up north a couple hours -- Duluth, the north shore of Lake Superior, whatever... It would be so nice to do something different than that for a change, though. How about south? Iowa? Des Moines?.. Well, actually, Des Moines is under consideration. So we could drive and drive through about five hours of corn fields, and what do we have to show for it?.. Des Moines! and what do we do when we get there?... Turn around and come back?

Or travel east through Wisconsin?.. to where?.. Milwaukee? Five hours of driving to see the brewery tours? (Milwaukee is also under consideration, sad to say)

And the option of traveling west is hardly worth even mentioning -- There is nothing but prairie for as many miles as you can even imagine.

Or does a destination even matter? Or should we just stay here and turn off our cell phones for a few days?

i just adore a penthouse view

What a week, but it is done.

***

And we didn't move that far, maybe a mile, just across the river to the other side of downtown Minneapolis, but the view, the perspective, is totally different. In our old neighborhood, we had many places to walk to, and now we have new places to walk to and get to know better and feel a part of. And we're above it all, here on our 26th-floor apartment, where we can take stock and figure out what is next. Or maybe not think about what is next, not yet anyway. Maybe just enjoy a simpler life for a while.

***

Saying goodbye to the old house was emotional, but I'm over it. The move itself was exhausting, but we are recovering. I just want some time to read a book again and to enjoy what is left of this beautiful summer. My feet are propped up on the ledge on our balcony in the sky as I enjoy the view and the sounds of the city. Maybe I can even get my brain working again.

the morning after the fireworks

It's a perfect Sunday morning here on our deck. Except for the fact that the movers will be here in about an hour to take away the deck furniture that I'm sitting on.

Last night, we took a break from the final packing and sat here on the deck with Tom and watched the Aquatennial fireworks, which are always the best fireworks of the year. Before that, we had dinner with our friends Dina and Norby and their two little boys, Lucas and Dante. They thought we needed that dinner break too, and at this point we are taking advantage of any breaks we can get. We took them over to see the new apartment (that we have started moving in to), which of course is just a basic apartment, but they liked it and envied the freedom that we have right now, that we are in such a good position to take our time to find that great new home.

(Then last night when I went back to the apartment, I was talking to two people in the elevator, and they told me they too had moved into their apartment for just a couple months -- and that was two years ago, and they're still there.)

So I will miss this house terribly, but I know we got a good price for it, I know we have lots of great memories.... and now it's time for the next adventure.

And the next time I blog from these deck chairs, it will be on our balcony at the new place.

oh, what a circus!

Much of our packing for this double-move is done, but it's hard to make that final push.

***

Three sets of movers will be arriving within the next week: first, Sunday, the guys who will be moving some of the larger stuff that we're taking to our interim (or not so interim?) apartment; then, Monday, the piano movers to gently (I hope!) move the Steinway into climate-controlled storage somewhere; and finally, next Wednesday, the company will pick up all the rest of the furniture and boxes that, at least in theory, we will not be needing for an unknown number of months.

***

Tomorrow morning, we pick up the apartment keys. Our plan is to start setting up there so that on that final moving day, next Wednesday, we can go just collapse into our new temporary home (but, really now, aren't all homes temporary?). Sometime after that, we'll house hunt. After we catch our breath.

***

We took a break from the ongoing moving stresses last weekend to take Tom to the latest visiting Cirque du Soleil-in-a-tent show, Kooza. That's me, Jerry, and Tom in the photo, in case you just happened to stumble onto this blog and are wondering, who the heck are these clowns? Jerry and Tom, Tom especially, are big Cirque fans. It was a great show and a nice diversion. Life under a tent riding a unicyle on a high wire? There are worse things.

sneaking me across the border

I spent a couple days this week at a conference in Chicago, and when I say "in Chicago", I use the term loosely. It was held at a hotel out in the suburbs by O'Hare Airport, so all I saw of Chicago was the hotel and freeways and airplanes flying overhead. Downtown was of course nowhere nearby. It was kind of good to get out of Minnesota for a couple days, but somewhere along the way in my life I became an urban guy, and, if I have to spend too long in the 'burbs, I get the shakes.

Which brings me to a situation.

Jerry and I, as you remember, are moving into a furnished apartment very temporarily (we think) while we house-hunt. We've looked at some houses and condos, mostly without specific direction but presumably (in my mind!) within the city limits of either Minneapolis or St. Paul. Jerry, though, has a certain kind of house -- a 50's-era rambler -- that he loves. The problem is that very few of those homes are located within the urban core. So he talked me into at least looking at 50's-era ramblers in Golden Valley -- a suburb. "But it's the first suburb west of Minneapolis!" he says. "Parts of Golden Valley even seem like they are part of Minneapolis!"

So I looked. And there are some cool houses. But it's still the suburbs: Chain-restaurants and a higher-than-desirable number of Republicans per capita. Get in your car to go across the street.

But we didn't find just the right house in Golden Valley. So he showed me a house just a couple blocks outside of Golden Valley, in Crystal -- two suburbs outside of Minneapolis. Do you see a pattern developing here?

So as I push for "location! location! location!" and he searches for a certain style of home, we may find ourselves staying in that downtown apartment (26th floor, not 20th) longer than we would have predicted!

billie jean was not his lover

I'm home for lunch, so I've switched on the Michael Jackson memorial service.

It's been interesting over the past several days to see the overwhelming worldwide reaction to the death of Michael Jackson. I was never a major fan (to me, the Jackson 5 marked the unfortunate end of the great Motown sound of the 60s), although I had my moments -- I thought "Billie Jean" was a great song (and video), and I thought that Michael was the best part of the movie version of The Wiz. But the story of Michael Jackson, with all its musical milestones and bizarre behind-the-scenes personal behavior, perhaps made him not a real person -- more like a product or an institution. Maybe that's why people are so affected by his death.

And the stories will continue, as long as his supporting characters live on -- the strange family members (Joe Jackson? LaToya?), the ex-wives, his children, the doctors who wrecked his face and those who medicated him to death. And his fans, as long as they live and remember the music they once loved, never can say goodbye.

(wow, Mariah Carey looks awful)

(but Queen Latifah is cool).

Cheers, Michael the person: a bit screwed-up but kind, which is a whole lot better than screwed-up and unkind, and there's plenty of that out there.

meanwhile, back at the coffeeshop (again)

It's another 4th of July at the coffeeshop. The Bolshevik-looking guy is at the table by the window with the professor-looking guy, both talking nonstop while the professor's teenage daughter looks on. The cops are sitting behind me having their coffee and muffins, and other familiar faces are scattered around me. Jerry is sitting across from me reading one of the local weekly papers.

A year ago right now, I was sitting in this exact spot ruminating about whether the British were really all that bad. Compared to george w. bush, Queen Elizabeth was looking pretty good. But things change (thanks, Barack!), and it's been a whole year that quickly flew by, and Independence Day is on a Saturday and everybody seems confused about which day to celebrate. Some people were off work yesterday, some on Monday, and for some reason the grocery stores are open today, so some people didn't get off at all.

The week was wild, but the merger of my business happened painlessly on Wednesday and, on the home front, we think we have found an apartment downtown (20th floor) to live in as we house-search over the next several months. I've slept better the past couple nights. A Tylenol-PM helped.

untitled, part two

As I'm looking around this house, I'm thinking, Should I start packing? Where the heck do I start?.. Should I think about selling some of this stuff on Craig's List? How does a person even sell stuff on Craig's List?.. Does anybody know? Do I really want people calling to ask if they can come look at the junk I have to sell? And how much downsizing can I, a sentimental person, handle?

Or, instead of writing to you good folks, should I be on the web trying to find us a place to live as of a month from tomorrow?

It's funny, though, people have ideas for us. "I have a friend who has a friend who is looking for renters", that sort of thing. We could end up living with a State Senator for a couple months (Really). And we have friends who have offered to have us move in with them for a while. Probably not a good idea?

And what we will do is probably live in a short-term situation (month-to-month furnished rental?) for a while, with our furniture and our boxes and, gulp!, the Steinway in storage somewhere, so that we can take our time and find exactly the right house for us.

But it was a long day and I'm tired, so these decisions are just going to have to wait. Is there some room on the checklist for some chilling-out??

untitled, part one

And you thought maybe I hadn't blogged lately because I had nothing to say?.. Ha!

You knew I had a merger of my business coming up July 1st, which is taking scads of my time with details and catch-up and stress. It's been a while since I've gotten a whole night's sleep. I wake up way too early magnifying some minor business tidbit in my head and can't get back to sleep. You can understand that, right?

And you also knew that Jerry and I own two townhouses, one that we live in and one that we used to live in, and that we had both of them on the market for quite a while with the intention of eventually living in the one that didn't sell, letting fate decide our future. Then fairly recently we took the house that we currently live in off the market and decided to stick it out right where we are.

Well, the house where we used to live sold a couple weeks ago, with a closing the middle of August. Good news. We didn't get as much for it as we wanted, but, hey, it's a down market. So we were happy with that.

But then, this past week, people who had looked at our current home while it was on the market came back and made us a pretty good offer, and, for some ungodly reason, we accepted it. For this, a house that we love (but which has a mortgage balance that is more than we would like to have). They want to close the deal on July 30.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that we have sold both our homes and that we suddenly have a month to find somewhere to live. A month that happens to be the first month of my new business venture, which already had me stressed.

And we are telling ourselves, as best we can, that this is a good thing, that we will be able to re-group, to maybe downsize, to make our lives somewhat simpler and less financially precarious. But these days, it is hard to wake up early and realize we have to move on to what right now is a great big unknown.

sometimes the ending is the best part

I hate those weeks when I'm either too busy to blog or wearing a head filled with garbage unsuitable for my blog-reading public... This was one of those weeks, juggling between a merger that I need to make happen by the first of July and the normal real work.

But it's a beautiful Saturday here in Minneapolis, and I spent most of the morning on the deck reading a book and drinking coffee and un-cluttering my brain. This afternoon I went to the gym and worked off some of my week's frustrations and then, what do you know?, ran into my sister Joan downtown as we were both waiting for busses home.. (Is the plural of bus buses or busses?) And here I am, sitting on our front patio writing to you all. The week ended nicely.

Say, did you watch the Tony Awards last Sunday night?.. Of course, you didn't, and I bet you can't name one new Broadway show from this past season, can you?.. But we always watch the show, and this year my niece Ruthie and my grandnephew Corey came over to watch with us since Ruthie never has anybody to watch the Tonys with, and what good is watching an awards show if you have nobody to make sarcastic remarks to? So we had fun with it and shared throwback Pepsi (which of course Ruthie hated) and potato chips, and maybe that was the highlight of the week, sad to say. This week will be better.

and since you, like most of the world, missed the Tonys, here's a clip of the highlight of the show: Neil Patrick Harris, the host, singing the closing number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-cB2HpNQ2k

tschaikovsky, kushner & plath

Tschaikovsky, Kushner & Plath?.. a local law firm?.. No, it's sort of a summary of what I've been able to squeeze in in-between a busy work schedule the past few days: Two Minnesota Orchestra concerts -- one last week showcasing Tschaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and the other (tomorrow night) doing his Piano Concerto No. 3 (I didn't even know there was a #3); a series of plays by Tony Kusher (who wrote Angels in America) being done at the Guthrie Theater; and, somewhere in between, I read that novel about depression, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Good escapism?.. actually, yes!

throwback

It's a beautiful Memorial Day evening back here in Minneapolis. I'm sitting here drinking a "throwback" Pepsi, trying to get myself ready to be "thrown back" into the office routine tomorrow after a great vacation at the Jersey Shore and in Philly.

*****

(Have you tried the throwback Pepsis yet? They are, apparently, a temporary nostalgia gimmick -- made with natural sugar like Pepsi used to be instead of with corn syrup. I admit that I like them a lot, and, let's face it, Pepsi is one of the great pleasures in life. Can't have it too much, but when we do, let's have real sugar!)

*****

We spent the last 24 hours of our trip in center-city Philly, which I hadn't visited in a number of years -- we usually just see the airport area. We stayed in a great little "boutique" hotel at 12th & Spruce Street, the Alexander Inn, which is located in a wonderful area, probably the best and most fun area, of the city. For me, growing up in South Jersey, Philly was always the nearest big city -- fun to have nearby but at the same time intimidating and kinda scary. Walking around the city this time, I realized how eerily at-home I felt. Made me wonder if maybe I should have spent most of my life in Philadelphia.

the boardwalk - OC, NJ, 05.16-23.09

If you watch this video, sorry about the wind "sound effects"... (I hate wind!).

banging on the pipes

Our rental car is a Toyota Prius, but we're not straying far from the condo and in a small state like New Jersey, "fuel efficiency" goes a long ways, believe me. The condo we're renting: location is perfect; it has way more space than we need; the decor is way over the top, kinda feels like it might have been decorated by a 70-year-old drag queen. It's great! The week is going fast.

We did drive the twenty miles north to Atlantic City a couple times, where we both came out ahead, gambling-wise. We also took a three-hour tour of Atlantic City Convention Hall, the tour mainly being centered around the hall's historic pipe organ, which happens to be the largest pipe organ in the world. It takes that long to tour because the pipes for the organ are placed literally throughout the building (The largest pipe is 64 feet long). I happen to love pipe organs, and if I ever start going back to church again one day, a primary reason will be that I miss hearing (and occasionally playing) a pipe organ (Of course, these days that awful contemporary music, with guitars and drums and garage-band-reject singers, has taken over the music programs at a lot of churches, but that's a topic for another blog).

Back to the Convention Hall pipe organ. I played it once (briefly!) in 1969, which apparently was one of its last years of being fully operational. At present, the organ is being totally restored -- finally -- and I hope to get to hear it again sometime. The highlight of this tour was being able to sit at it again and at least pretend to play.

the gadgets in my backpack

Traveling used to be so much easier, and I'm not talking about what a pain security is or how awful the airlines are. I'm talking about all the stuff you gotta bring with you these days. There's the laptop and the cords; the digital camera and the cord and the charger; the cell phone and the charger; the iPod and the cords. I mean, I forget one of these items and I'm screwed. I get so obsessed with remembering all this junk that I'll probably forget something essential (?) like underwear! And how many of those items will I accidentally forget and leave in New Jersey??

Anyway, here's the plan: tonight we arrive in Philadelphia, stay overnight in NJ with my sister Mary and brother-in-law John; the next seven nights after that we'll be staying in a condo at 14th & the Boardwalk in Ocean City, as well as visiting relatives in Millville and vicinity; then one night in center-city Philly at the Alexander Inn; home the next day.

I'll blog from Ocean City. Unless I forget my laptop.

brother in a strange land

My friend Barb, the leader of my book group (that I am usually AWOL from), was surprised several months ago when I mentioned that I had a brother who lived in Shanghai. Barb, one of the select few people in the world who read my blog, said she only knew about my sister Joan, who gets a frequent mention here in these meandering lines, so Barb assumed she was my only sibling. Actually, I have five siblings, and what's amazing is how well we get along and how much we still like each other and keep in touch with each other. Joan just happens to be the only one who lives nearby.

It's my brother Davy who mostly lives in Shanghai. He teaches English there, loves China, is very fluent in Chinese. When he is back in the States between semesters, he lives in San Antonio, Texas. He's in San Antonio right now, skipped a semester to take care of some medical issues, which thankfully he came through great.

But it's funny to think of a brother in a place that is so foreign. No, not China. Texas. Yes, I know what you're saying, it's one of the 11 states I haven't been to yet, so I shouldn't judge a place by pre-conceived notions. Well, why can't I? And then last month the governor of Texas suggested that Texas should secede from the United States because it's so out of touch with what's happening in the rest of the country. I say, why the heck not?.. (although I say he should have to take all the states between him and South Carolina with him)... I really can't picture the rest of the country bothering to fight another Civil War to keep them in the Union.

So, if I don't go visit Davy sometime soon, I might be visiting him in a foreign country. Who knows which one?

And I need to get down to visit my sister Nancy in North Carolina sometime soon also. It's been a year already.

Next week, though, I'll get to see my brother Ronnie and sister Mary when Jerry and I vacation for a week in our family's home state of New Jersey, the only state that's totally in touch and of which nobody ever has pre-conceived notions.