The dog walks haven’t gotten difficult yet. Only a slight chill over the bridge.
This is the same bridge with the Frankenstein monster. There’s a Dunn Brother’s Coffee at the other end, so it’s worth it.
The dog walks haven’t gotten difficult yet. Only a slight chill over the bridge.
This is the same bridge with the Frankenstein monster. There’s a Dunn Brother’s Coffee at the other end, so it’s worth it.
I know, I know. I watched Food Inc. a while ago and didn’t make the switch to organic meat. It turns out that rampant animal abuse wasn’t enough to get me to switch to organic meat, but salt was.
My grumblings about salt started a few weeks ago and culminated last night when I realized that our canned soup from Target had 111% of the daily recommended allowance of salt in it. I also realized that every processed thing in our house was bathed in sodium or high fructose corn syrup.
Even our 98% fat free turkey hot dogs are packed with sodium. One turkey hot dog link has 470mg of sodium or 20 percent of the daily recommended value. I was grossed out so I decided to switch to organic meat. Besides not having the hormones and animal abuse associated with it, organic meat also has considerably less sodium.
Buying organic meat at the local grocery store was difficult. I couldn’t find it at first until the butcher lady informed me that they only had “natural” chicken and small packets of organic ground beef hidden somewhere amongst the normal meat.
I eventually found it. What a miserable little package.
Despite the cosmetics of the package, it was delicious.
I then had the problem of a pantry full of canned food that I wasn’t not going to eat. I looked over the cans and realized that seven were already expired. Canned food takes a long-ass time to go bad, so I obviously don’t eat enough of it anyway. I gathered the good cans and brought them to the Aliveness Project, the local HIV/AIDS food shelf.
And yes, I realize the irony in donating unhealthy food to sick people, but I didn’t want to waste it and the food shelf doesn’t accept fresh food in anyway.
Also, to ease my guilt about donating the sodium-filled cans, I called the food shelf and offered to buy the kitchen fresh food. The cook thought it was a rather bizarre request and told me that he’s never had anyone offer to buy food for the kitchen before. He only requested lemons and cilantro, so my healthy contribution was rather meager. Maybe they’ll want something more substantial next time?
And the snow came.
That’s the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, one of my favorite buildings. I haven’t seen the Occupy Minnesota protestors out there for a while. Maybe winter has done them in? Anyway, the building looks even better in winter.
The gig’s up. Tomorrow it snows. That means I’m spending as much time outside with the dogs as possible today. I took the dogs on a long hike by the Mississippi.
Raspberries, ice and rum.
Diet sprite is a good mixer to thin it down. Tre delish. Makes The Tudors easier to watch too.
Thanksgiving hasn’t come yet and there’s no snow on the ground so why the heck do my neighbors have Christmas lights up?
Sometimes it’s more fun taking the side roads:
Of course the boyfriend brings this home on the week I start delving into The Theory of the Leisure Class.
My friends think that it is was bizarre that I still walk from Nordeast to the bars downtown. I’m desperately trying to enjoy Minneapolis before the snow and cold. Plus the view isn’t bad because there are no trees to hide the buildings anymore.
This one is on the Hennepin Bridge somewhere near the bird.
It’s fun, but not as exciting as the Uptown sticker art.
There’s a mustache growing contest going on at work. I got a head start. I swear I’m not a trucker.
It’s called Movember (Moustache + November) and the point is to raise awareness of men’s health issues. More details are here.
And regular readers aren’t shocked by my ‘stache. Memba this and this?
Last year I noticed the darkness around October. Today I was shocked that it was pitch black before 5 p.m. and by next month the sun will set around 4:30 p.m.
The darkness was awful during law school because most of our classes did not have windows. Now, it just means that I can light the vanilla candles early.
There are some intended consequences of the early darkness. Clubbing is awkward because it is dark for six hours before anyone shows up to the bar. I also wake up a lot earlier to maximize my daylight.
I feel like I’m 65 but I can’t order from the senior citizens’ menu at Denny’s. Sigh.
What a lovely two weeks. Fall was extended this year so Minneapolis still has temperatures in the 50’s and 60’s. The colors are amazing and the morning dog walks have become sprawling two-hour events because it is so nice outside.
Back in Florida Carlos and I would trek up to Wilton Manors to the T. Palace drag show.
This is one of the best performances we saw:
I remember thinking how strange it felt recording the drag show. An amazing performance was going on in front of me but I was watching it on my camera screen. It was a tradeoff though because without the video, no one would remember the show.
This implicates that whole art vs. life / creation vs. consumption dichotomy that I spent way too much time thinking about during undergrad. It’s something that Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote grappled with too. It goes like this: you can either be out partying and socializing or you can be at home, working and creating. Each can fuel and yet compromise the other.
So my experience at the Noel Leon show was compromised by the recording, but that recording preserved the memory and allows me to share the experience years later. Fair trade?
This happens almost every day – I buy cow knuckles for both dogs but after about 20 minutes Harley drops his bone and stares down Gerturde’s cow knuckle.
It does not matter that Harley has a perfectly good cow knuckle behind him because Gertrude’s cow knuckle seems more desirable.
He wants it because she has it.
Dunn Brothers is a common stop on our morning dog walks. The dogs are incredibly patient.
