One of my favorite things about the University of Minnesota is that downtown Minneapolis is visible on so much of campus, especially by the river.
One of my favorite things about the University of Minnesota is that downtown Minneapolis is visible on so much of campus, especially by the river.
Judd and I took the dogs on a walk around Lake of the Isles this morning. He now realizes that I do not exaggerate the craziness I run into on these walks.
There were vicious mini-dogs, creepers that went out of their way to talk to us, and a lot of awkward “why is the dog doing that?” moments. We survived with a lot of lysol, some silly string, and a taser.
There were also mansions. The Lake of the Isles is cluttered with them.
This is my favorite:
Bam! I know there are grander mansions directly on the lake, but this is my favorite. I will live here someday. I will wear a long, flowy bath robe and saunter out to the front steps to fetch the morning edition of the New York Times. The dogs are dead at this point, the bad-ass kids are away at boarding school and Juddson is off on business.
It is just me, my mansion, my coffee, and the lemurs…
The mansion straddles a hill slightly off the lake and is surrounded by dramatic old churches. Living directly on the lake seems inconvenient. The constant stream of cars, dogs, and gawkers is not worth the status boost. Then again, maybe my opinions will change when I’m fabulously wealthy and in need of a prestigious address…
Sassy Sue: “Are the dogs scared of bikes?”
Me: “I guess we’ll find out.”
Sassy Sue: “Oh hell nah!”
Me: “What did you say?”
Sassy Sue (getting off bike): That answer was unacceptable!”
I then ran into a pack of kids coming out of a youth center across the street.
Everyone has a syrupy facebook friend: the one whose status updates constantly mention their significant other in a cheesy, overly-sentimental way,
Syrupie Smith: “Off to lunch with my amazing boyfriend!”
Syrupton Bergsteiner: “Going to see my beau! Love you babe! Xoxo!”
Syrupy ~LOLZ~ Adams: “So excited for tonight! I get to see my sweety! Tee hee hee!”
Etc.
These are also the people with the preggers pictures and baby-profiles, or the gay guys who upload dozens of nearly-identical shots of themselves posing with their not-so-cute boyfriends. Hay!
We all know these tacky people, and I am trying desperately not to become one. But it’s hard. The new relationship is more Beyonce than Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
Today the temperature was well into the 50’s and everyone was waltzed around without coats, and most of us had shorts on.
I had time for the multiple dog walks because I left work early.
My coworkers and I are probably going to start boycotting most of the food options at work. Amber got food poisoning from a cafeteria salmonella salad, and I became deathly ill after eating a pack of sugar-free gummi bears from the company store.
I, of course, ate an entire pack of the jelly beans AND the gummi bears. And yes, the warnings are there for a reason. My goodness.
This coming week is Spring Break for my school. I will work a lot, but I have grand fitness plans. We’ll see if I can force myself into a Jillian Michaels workout routine, or if I will have Har Mar’s curves for another season.
This week was made far more dramatic by the fog. Downtown Minneapolis looks like Gotham at night and Eagan feels like a druid stomping ground…with Dodge 4x4s. Pictures:
I’m furious.
Remember last month’s epic Sprint customer service fail when it took me three hours to purchase my Blackberry?
Well, this morning Madre Jansen sent me an email:
Madre Jansen: “What is this $30 equipment charge on the phone bill? Here is the username and password for the account. Figure it out.”
So I call sprint:
Sprint Rep: “Hi stranger. What’s the 10-digit pin for the account?”
Me: “Erm… I have a password and username.”
Sprint Rep: “Credentials fail. That’s only for online.”
So I hang up, call mom for the pin, and call Sprint again:
Me: “Here is the pin…”
Sprint Rep #2: “Great. Did you call us recently?”
Me: “Yeah, like two minutes ago. I had to get the pin from a parent.”
Sprint Rep: “Okay Shady. So, because you just called I have to have my manager listening in and….”
Me: “Okay. I have a $30 ‘equipment charge’ on my bill, and I would like to know what it is for.”
Sprint Rep: “Yes. You do have an equipment charge. It’s for equipment!”
Me: “…how helpful. But what does that mean? What is the charge for? What equipment?”
Sprint Rep: “I dunno. You bought something at a store. I just have a sku number. It’s a mystery!”
Me: “…well, would the store know?”
Sprint Rep: “Hm. Maybe. Where is the store? What’s your zip? Let me call them. Hold. […] They said you bought a Blackberry and a charger. It might have been for a charger!”
Me: “Hm. I bought a car charger, but I guarantee it wasn’t a flat $30… and I paid for it with a credit card.”
Sprint Rep: “We are only showing one charge on your mastercard.”
Me: “I don’t think I put it on my mastercard. That was just for the blackberry. Hm.”
Sprint Rep: “Check your bank statements. I dunno…”
Me: “I think the Sprint rep was going to give me a $30 credit for it taking three hours to buy my phone.”
Sprint Rep: “Hm maybe. Call us back when you figure that out. Peace!”
I pull up my bank statements online. The car charger was on my Visa. The blackberry was on the mastercard. Sprint was full of crap, and the $30 charge was still a mystery.
I call Sprint back.
Sprint Rep #3: “Yes, we see that you have a $30 charge. Let me look into that. Hold.”
Me: “… ”
Sprint Rep: Yes. It looks like your blackberry was $291.51 and you only paid $261.51 with your mastercard. That’s why your account was charged.”
Me: “I’m pretty sure the $30 was the “pain in the ass/incompetence” credit the store rep. offered me for waiting 3 hours at the store.”
Sprint Rep: “Oh, well let me contact that store. Hold. […] it seems like Hank, the rep that helped you, is not in today. The store will call me back tomorrow and I’ll follow up with you and we’ll get this resolved.”
Me: “We have to wait for him to go into work?”
Sprint Rep: “Yes.”
Me: “This is frustrating. The point of the $30 credit was to compensate me for his bad customer service that caused me to be in the store for 3 hours and now I’ve wasted 30 minutes dealing with this.”
Sprint Rep: “Sorry that you’ve spent thirteen minutes on the phone. I’m going above and beyond here because normally you would have to deal with the store.”
Me: “Oh, I’d love to give them a piece of my mind. And I’ve only been on the phone with you for 13 minutes but you’re the third person I’ve talked to today. I’m taking this pain in the ass in aggregate. I just feel further inconvenienced by the store’s incompetence and I’m frustrated that I have to wait to get this resolved. Whine-bitch-moan, boom-shaka-laka, laka boom.”
I was seething by the end of the call, and then called Madre Jansen:
Mom: “So grasshopper, how’d it go?”
Me: “BAH!! Next time I need something from a Sprint store, I’m going to Wisconsin.”
Note: the conversation is obviously condensed and paraphrased. The point is, that I’m only a Sprint customer because of my parent’s longstanding relationship to the company…otherwise I’d already be with AT&T.
Things are actually rainy and muddy right now, but a few weeks ago we got some pretty hoar frost.
The images link to larger files.
The pictures were taken on my Blackberry.
I’m ambivalent about spring coming. The temperature is warmer but the dogs are muddier, and there’s no dramatic hoar frost.
The worst part of the thaw is that all of the trash, dead animals, and dog shit that has accumulated all winter is now visible. It looks like a big septic tank exploded all over the city. Ick.
See also:
Brilliance.
This is the side of Uptown’s Arise Bookstore. Many of Uptown’s buildings have cool street art, but the Arise flaming fart is right up there with the giant blue baby on the side of Cal Surf store near Lake Calhoun.
I plan to let my future kids tag the house for their school art projects so I can pretend to be a laid-back “cool” parent. We’ll see how that goes.
See also: The Creep Circus.
Things got a little weird at Dunn Brothers yesterday.
I first noticed a naked, oddly painted mannequin on the balcony of the apartment above the café.
Then, when I got inside of the café, I set my stuff down and went towards the restroom. I opened the door and surprised a little old man who apparently didn’t know how to work the door lock. I was horrified. I quickly closed the door as he started peeing on the wall in shock. SO embarrassing.
I then sat back down and recognized a nearby gay couple. They were at this Dunn Brothers cafe the last time I was here, last September.
They are an odd couple, not only because one of them looks like Tracy Morgan, but because they had one those “status of the relationship/our feelings” conversations that is WAY too intimate for a crowded café. It was gloriously awkward, and my friend Mike and I were amused.
So of course, five months later, I run into this same couple in the middle of the very same awkwardly intimate conversation. Déjà vu!
A hearse pulled into the parking lot as I left the cafe.
There was blood (hopefully) painted on the back window of the hearse, which was driven by a soda-toting hipster who I’m pretty sure lives in the naked-mannequin apartment. Somehow that’s not surprising.
We had a mannequin as our floor mascot in the dorms one year. The freshmen found it in South Beach, brought it back to campus in cab, and clothed it with stolen clothes from the laundry room. It rotated from room to room, and was pretty random, and fun. I kinda want a mannequin now…
My favorite Dunn Brothers cafe in Minneapolis is the Freighthouse. It is built in an old freighthouse and has a great upstairs loft.
It is also close enough to school that I can pop over during lunch, but far enough that I don’t have to worry about running into other law students.
I study at the Freighthouse often, and the hot baristas have nothing to do with this. Really.
Ugh. We can’t take him anywhere.
My parallel parking has never had a more severe critic.
My defense is that the roads are slick, so the cars are 4-feet from the real curb….and this makes it harder to mark somehow…and it’s dark…and, and, and, well, whatever. Wer schreibt, der bleibt.
I love sitting at the counter of the Nicollet Avenue Spyhouse Coffee Shop. It feels like sitting at a diner, without the sassy waitresses and smell of grease. Here is the view:
And who did I spy at the Spyhouse? Neighbor Nathan:
Nathan was on his way to pickup his brand-new Mac Laptop. I didn’t make too many indie-techie jokes. Really.
It snowed a bit yesterday.
Parking on the wrong street during a snow emergency means a few hours at an impound lot and a hefty fine.
The City of Minneapolis has a parking grid available online. St. Paul doesn’t. This was a problem because Trivia night is in downtown St. Paul, and I did not know if my car was safe because I could not find any “we plow here” signs.
I was scared of getting towed, so I left the bar to move my car to a garage.
The construction in downtown St. Paul and the random one-way streets caused me to spend at least 15 minutes driving in a huge, awkward circle. I ended up on the wrong side of the street several times. The cops got suspicious. It was a disaster.
I eventually found a parking garage near the bar. The garage was underground and looked like a basement from the SAW horror movies. The lighting was dim and the columns were unpainted. Rats somersaulted on the partially flooded floor.
I walked to the pay booth and saw a sign that read “Garage closes at 10pm. Plan accordingly.”
A random middle-aged woman enters the garage and I ask her how one gets into the building after 10pm.
Random woman: “After 10pm? I dunno. Just park in the covered alley.”
Me: “The covered alley?”
Random woman: “Yes. There’s a covered alley right on the side of the building that has parking spaces. It’s always empty. Here, let me show you. Follow me.”
So I let the random woman take me to the abandoned covered alley, and then park.
The “covered alley” is more of a tunnel. It is the kind of tunnel where a jogger finds a burned body on Law & Order. I leave my car with the understanding that I will be killed and eaten upon my return. Thank god Christopher Meloni will find my body and launch an epic investigation sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, a family company.
Trivia night was a sprawling conversation. Jake, Bill, and I exchanged stories until almost 2 a.m.
I then snuck back into the tunnel, fetched my car, and zipped back to Minneapolis, the city of clear parking restrictions.
I asked Eric how to describe this, and he said: “Make a funny reference about how you’re doing your laundry and the water isn’t in the tub.”
I think the pictures stand alone:
This will be used to contest any rent increases.
Minneapolis is one huge ice rink.
This morning I fell while walking the dogs down the hill. I fell on my hip and then crashed into the dogs like a human bowling ball. Yelping and shouting ensued. I then sat on the ground laughing like an idiot while the dogs looked at me like, “Why in the hell did you do that!?”
The skyway at school was soaked from people’s boots. I almost had a repeat of this morning’s fall and slipped 4 times in 40 seconds. I expect a tuition credit when I break my ankle.
Spring semester started, somehow. That means winter break is over.
I had this vision (delusion) of winter break as this slow, peaceful thing filled with vast amounts of free time. Instead, winter break was characterized by 10-hour1 workdays, epic nights out with long-neglected friends in Minneapolis and Miami, and a slowly deteriorating apartment.
The apartment was so disorderly by the end of break that I would only let Phillip see it. Then came the second dog, a massive apartment scrub down, and – yep – classes again.
This semester is more exciting and less cluttered. Two of my professors are partners at law firms, and one of my professors has reached an age and level of prestige where she just can drop F-bombs in class. I love it.
There are also no more 8am classes, ridiculously stacked2 days, and I started going to the gym again! I am beside myself with joy.
And no class on Friday. Oh yeah.
The only class3 I have yet to have is my housing clinic. This is my first clinic4 and I’m not sure what to expect. I guess I’ll find that out tomorrow.
Tonight I’m seeing Joel, who has been MIA, and we are going to the Colbie Caillat/Uncle Kracker/Theory of a Deadman concert. The concert sounds a tad less exciting than a Beyonce concert, but not quite as bad a root canal. We’ll see how this goes.
1 This was because I worked full time, but 3 of the 4 weeks of break were compressed. One week was compressed because finals ended on Tuesday, and the two weeks abutting the Miami trip were also shortened. This is why I had to work 10 hour days to get my time in.
2 Stacked days mean stacked books. Last semester I had to carry around an overnight bag just for my books. This semester I only have two 1-inch books. This is so awesome I might cry.
3 Class, ie, not moot court. I have no idea what’s going with that…
4 One thing I like about this semester is that my classes are very practical and relevant to my goals. I came to law school to practice estate planning, but I really like tax law, so I was excited when my estate planning seminar professor told me that estate planning is laden with tax issues.
The pilot came on the intercom.
Pilot: “Do we have any MDs on board? If you are a MD please touch your flight attendant call button. A passenger is ill and we need your assistance.”
Everyone looked around. No doctors aboard. A flight attendant rushed by with an intense looking oxygen tank.
The pilot repeated his request, and then asked if any nurses or medical personnel were aboard. No takers. Vet techs? None.
I felt pretty useless – “I can offer qualified legal advice!”
We arrived in Minneapolis and waited for the paramedics to fetch the ill passenger. I then stormed to baggage claim and wandered the parking garage1 for my car.
I hadn’t slept in 24 hours and was in a vicious mood.
I went to the University of Miami the night before. Trisha and I visited our old dorm and caught up on the student-life drammy.
The RAs chirped about homecoming and were freaking out about decorating their floors. Trisha and I looked at each other and laughed. We are both in professional school now, but just two years ago we were fumbling with construction paper and rubber cement. How bizarre.
I think I horrified one of the RAs who is thinking about applying to law school. Gloomy tales of the legal job market – dum dum dum!
Ben and I were posted at the main bar again. Blaring house music, strobes, bodybuilders, and periodic visits by the club’s manager and owner. Ben and I insisted on having a 4-hour3 conversation over the music, so I’m croaking like a seasoned smoker today.
I left the club around 5 a.m. and had a terrifying ride with a cab driver who was more familiar with the gas pedal than the road markings. I then showered and packed for the airport.
The airport was a disaster. The Delta Airlines area was understaffed and chaotic.
The baggage drop line was 100-people deep and crisscrossed the self check-in line. The result was that no one knew what line they were in until waiting in the wrong line for a half hour.
The lines moved at a glacial pace and we slowly realized that there was no way we would make our flight.
So many of us were late that they held the plane for us, but they didn’t tell us that the plane was waiting, so a pack of us tore down the terminal like we were being chased by zombie TSA agents.
After the airport sprint in Miami, the medical dramatics on the plane, and the 30 minute car seeking expedition in the Minneapolis Airport’s parking garage, I was so relieved to pick up Harley from the pet hotel and crash.
I slept for 8 hours, did laundry and some minimal cleaning, and I am going back to sleep so I can make it to work early.
It was a fun, exhausting trip.
Viva Miami, but welcome Minneapolis.
1 Parking was close to $75…bejesus.
2 Unofficial Lady Gaga night… they played “Bad Romance” at least three times, “Telephone” twice, “Love Game” and “Poker face.”
3 As opposed to the stand, pose, and smile routine that Carlos and I have mastered.
I came across this car during a dog walk:
This isn’t the only hand-painted car in the neighborhood, but the others are rougher floral jobs – whereas this looks like a tattoo. I wonder if this is an art car?
Why yes, it has gotten cold. Why do you ask?
It’s 19° with a “feels like” temp of 4°.
