The biker

August 9, 2010

I bought a Schwinn bike from Target during my 1L year.

I had no car, lived in the Gamma eta Gamma house in Dinkytown, and biking seemed like the collegy thing to do. $150 felt pricy… but I bought the bike and used it until winter came.

The bike came back out this summer and last week I biked over 100 miles. Most of the biking was to work, which is 15 miles out in the suburbs.

I also somehow managed to break the bike. A pedal snapped in half. The kick stand unscrewed halfway. The handlebar was bent. The seat hurt my butt.

It was a disaster.

So I went to Freewheel bike shop, which is by campus, under the shadow of the Stacks:

overheard / Uptown Apartment / Whittier / Uptown Minneapolis

KeKe ain’t coming.

August 8, 2010

I’m the caretaker for my building. Part of the caretaker job is showing open units to the ghetto and the crazy, most of whom don’t show up for their appointments:

Me: “Hello, I’d like to speak to KeKe.
Old Lady: “What? Why? Who?”
Me: “KeKe. We had an appointment for an apartment showing at 1pm. It’s 1:15 now…”
Old Lady: “Oh, THE GIRL! Lemme find her…”
KeKe: “Yea?”
Me: “Hi Keke. This is Dennis from the Whittier Apartment building.”
KeKe: “Okay.”
Me: “…uh, well, we had a showing scheduled today for 1pm. It’s 1:15 now. Do you need directions?”
KeKe: “Oh I couldn’t find it.”

dogs / humor / memories / overheard / Uptown Apartment

Krakens v. Hamburglar

August 7, 2010

The krakens and I surprised one of the apartment maintenance guys:

Maintenance guy: “Woah!”
Me: “Sorry.”
Maintenance guy: “Those are some big ass dogs!”
Me: “Yeah, I moved to the garden level apartment, so they are necessary.”
Maintenance guy: “Two dogs and a shotgun for city livin’. That’s what I say.”

So true.

And the krakens finally earned their keep re: the city livin’ part!

blackberry pictures / humor / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day

Moody day at the lake

August 4, 2010

Dear Lake Calhoun/Minnesota weather/Sven Sundgaard and his form-fitting-dress pants:

If it’s going to be overcast, then I need it to be cooler and less humid.

2L Summer / fitness / humor / Minneapolis-St. Paul / Thomson Reuters

The not-so-short cut.

August 4, 2010

I biked to work on Sunday. I work 16 miles in the suburbs, and the distance doesn’t bother me, but I hate going up the hill near the office.

The hill is on a street named “Yankee Doodle” which makes the whole situation seem even more ridiculous. But do not be fooled! Yankee Doodle has a massive, half-mile long hill that hurts. The hill is so large that I expect a Buddhist monk or a mountain goat at the top.

So I decide to get cute, take a short cut, and promptly get lost in this Ozarky town named Mendota:

2L Summer / Minneapolis-St. Paul / overheard

Margie’s hot flashes.

July 31, 2010

I am in line at one of the many Starbucks in the Mall of America.

In front of me are two African women. In front of them is a middle aged woman. She’s soaked with sweat.

Of course she turns around and addresses the African women:

2L Summer / 2L Summer Summaries / dogs / Uptown Apartment

Best Summer Ever Week 10: Shit.

July 26, 2010

So I knew things were out of hand when Harley looked at me, hunched over, and spewed diarrhea all over my living room.

This was the week of shit. The dogs kept breaking into my 3-tiered plastic food shelf, gorging themselves, and then crapping everywhere.

I would come home to find a chocolate rendition of the Bavarian Alps in my living room, and the dogs passed out in the kitchen. The dogs also figured out how to open the toilet lid and drink the blue-water, so they had the runs most of the time.

The steamer and cleaning spray barely kept up. I spent most of my week flustered and disgusted. Ick.

And although I finished moving to the new apartment last week, I had yet to clean out my old apartment because I thought that I had until August 1st to move out.

So I was horrified when my landlord left me a voicemail: “I showed your apartment today. It’s trashed. I’m also showing it tomorrow. Can you clean it, you filthy slob of a man?”

As a rule, any unexpected entrances into my apartment happen on the ONE day that it is trashed, so I should have expected that call.

2L Summer / Alesus / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

Unlikely Allies

July 24, 2010

One of the first things I noticed about my new apartment was the fruit flies. The apartment was clean, and there was no exposed food in the kitchen, but the fruit flies were everywhere.

There were even fruit flies in my bedroom closet! I don’t even want to think about why…

So I turned to my blackberry, googled fruit-fly trap concoctions, and set my trap.

The fruit-fly trap was a glass of pear juice with a plastic cover (with holes) stretched over it.

A few days later Alesus was over, and I told him about my trap. He noted that there were no fruit-flies in the kitchen, but there were also no flies in the trap. Hm.

I didn’t figure out what was going on until today:

2L Summer / dogs / Minneapolis-St. Paul / Uptown Apartment

A summer thing

July 23, 2010

This is the high water mark of the summer.

In May, I finished finals and managed to survive the relentless hanging out with my law school people before they went off to their summer clerkships, study abroad countries, and odd family vacations.

June was all about reconnecting with the non-law school friends I neglected in May. And birthdays. It felt like every-other-day was someone’s birthday. I ran out of cards. Oh, and there was some dating too…. a pride parade, and some business about music production.

July started with loud-ass fireworks, my birthday, and heat. Lots of heat. And thunderstorms. And tornadoes. And hairspray (this is all very dramatic.)

There was also the epic move to the downstairs apartment and a dozen trips to Ikea, Target, and Home Depot. You can call me Tim Allen. Where’s Pamela?

In addition to drilling and the crap-load of cleaning associated with moving, I also became the building caretaker. That means I have to field the craziest phone calls from people who want apartment showings.

2L Summer / blackberry pictures / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day

Picturebooth, sorta.

July 21, 2010

I took this during Pride, but forgot to post it, which is a shame because she’s fabulous.

And, for additional randomness:

blackberry pictures / humor / Just Sayin / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day

Fast, cheap, and full of cheese

July 20, 2010

So the worst part is that the first version of this billboard featured a heavily made-up woman.

2L Summer / 2L Summer Summaries / Minneapolis-St. Paul / Uptown Apartment

BWE Weeks 8 & 9: The Great Move

July 20, 2010

Moving to my new apartment consumed the past two weeks. My move can be summed up with two quotes:

“Knowing what you got, knowing what you need, that’s inventory control.” – Frank Wheeler, Revolutionary Road.

“The more things I threw away, the more I found.” – Jack Gladney, White Noise.

After drilling fixtures into my new apartment, I confronted all of the crap that I accumulated over countless trips to Wal-Mart and Ikea. I have a lot of random packs of garbage bags, travel-sized tissues, and cords for things I chucked a long time ago.

2L Summer / blackberry pictures / dogs / Just Sayin / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

The moving clowns

July 16, 2010

This blog needs a redesign. I have more unfinished laundry than a women’s penitentiary. My bike, rollerblades, and gym shoes feel neglected.

I am one check-in from becoming mayor of McDonald’s. (My love handles don’t lie.) My progress on my album is underwhelming. And, and and.

2L Summer / dogs / Uptown Apartment

Drill master

July 15, 2010

Moving is like¹ losing your keys or your cat dying: an all-consuming time suck that is completely uninteresting to everyone else. All of my free time this week was spent hauling things downstairs, dusting, carpet cleaning, standing in line at Home depot, and constructing things.

I took off work yesterday and spent about 9 hours drilling. I probably have lead poisoning from all that paint. I think I’ll develop a cough that will earn my some street-cred at my local VFW.

The drilling was necessary because my apartment was almost completely devoid of fixtures like kitchen hooks, shelving, toilet paper holders, etc.

blackberry pictures / picture of the day / Whittier / Uptown Minneapolis

In my white T

July 14, 2010

Some of my neighbors have very strong themes in their wardrobes.

blackberry pictures / dogs / Life / picture of the day / Uptown Apartment

The carpet steamer

July 13, 2010

I don’t know how I lived this long without a carpet steamer.

I finally bought a steamer and cleaned my rugs before moving them down to my new apartment. And oh my god, look at that filth!

The steamer has gotten a lot of use. My new apartment is carpeted, and my dog trainer told me that I have to re-potty train them because dogs don’t generalize well…so being house-broken in one apartment does not mean they are 100% house-broken in another apartment.

This makes the moving process…delightful.

Most of my furniture is in the new apartment but I still have clothes and hundreds of books to move downstairs. I’m slightly worried about leaving the dogs out with books because Harley has a taste for literature. We’ll see if Harley has grown out of his book-eating phase tomorrow.

blackberry pictures / Life / Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day / Whittier / Uptown Minneapolis

The bike

July 12, 2010

I have some awesome neighbors.

2L Summer / Life / Minneapolis-St. Paul / pictures / Uptown Apartment

Itinerant

July 10, 2010

I am exhausted.

I decided to move to the garden level apartment in my building. It is a two bedroom apartment with carpet and a huge kitchen.

The apartment does not have air conditioning or fans, so I keep the windows open. Open windows make a garden-level apartment far too easy to burglarize, so I installed protection bars on all of the windows.

Of course installing the bars was not as simple as getting the bars from Home Depot and putting them in.

My landlord approved of the protection bars, but then had fire-code concerns, so I went to the Minneapolis development/permit office to figure out what the rules were.