Oh, man. Michelle Obama at the alma mater. For free. On Monday afternoon. Gaaaaah.
ObaMac
Category: Minnesota
Still Thinking Snow
The crisp early-October morning weather is heightening my eagerness for some snow, so I was excited to hear Mark Seeley, a U of Minnesota climatologist and state celebrity, say last Friday on Minnesota Public Radio that the Twin Cities have received measurable snowfall in forty Octobers since 1884, most recently in 2002. October snow is actually pretty late for some parts of the continent, of course. On August 31, the Canadian cross-country skier Devon Kershaw blogged about significant snowfall in the Rockies, and a couple of ski teams in Alaska actually did a bit of snow skiing in September. And this weekend, the forecast for Spearfish, South Dakota, is nicely white:
As my post last weekend showed, here in southern Minnesota it’s still rollerski season. My workout hardly compared, in topographical or physical demands, to the incredible-sounding (and amazing-looking) “Climb to the Castle” uphill race on Monday in northern New York. Then again, it was still better than using this cool but pretty weird cool invention: a synthetic surface so much like snow that you can ski on it.
When I get rich figuring out how to profit on the Wall Street collapse, I’ll use my third million dollars to install this on my woodland estate in northern Minnesota. (The first million will go in the bank, the second to buy the property and build a modest 9 BR, 8 bath shack in one corner of the lot.)
Surprises at the Mall
I had to take the car to the shop today ($800 repair, covered by the warranty: thank god for a consumer economy) and occupied myself during the repair by making the short trip over to Burnsville Center. Apart from having dinner at the Mall of America with a blog friend a while ago, this was my first visit to a real mall (note: the “Faribo West Mall” in Faribault does not count), and I felt a little bit like the hick in the big city. A few surprises:
- The myriad oppotunities for free ear piercing.
- The prominence of lingerie in shop windows.
- The ubiquity of Packers gear.
- The thorough co-branding.
- The law office near the Cinnabon.
- The Somali-based workforce.
- The prevalence of kiosks.
- The prevalence of kiosks selling cell phones, sunglasses and accessories, and dubious-sounding health care “solutions.”
- The sheer number of vending machines, although they only sold Coke and Coke products.
- The high prices.
Little Post about Jack & Diane
For whatever ’80s-cosmic reason, I have heard John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” twice in the last week. Good god, what a fantastic song. From the metallish guitar riff that dissolves into those stark chords to the miniaturist verses, it’s a perfect few minutes of song. I remember thinking, in my 20s, having heard this song my whole life, that the aphoristic line at its heart was painfully true: “Oh yeah/Life goes on/Long after the thrill/Of living is gone.” Now I think it’s irredeemably, adolescently maudlin – and still more than slightly true.
Little Pumpkins
Just like we did last year around this time, today the Tassavas headed out to Thorn Crest Farm, a lovely little homestead southwest of town. Once the littlest member of the family emerged from her post-nap funk, we had a blast trooping around the piles of pumpkins and gourds, choosing a few apples for later, petting the cow and the horse, and generally soaking up the fall-on-a-farm ambiance.
I’ll leave to Shannon a more detailed account, but suffice it to say that the girls were happy to find some pumpkins for the house
while I had to make do with a couple of nuts.
Overdistance Rollerski, or, Thinking Snow
This morning, the female fraction of the family attended a friend’s birthday party, giving me the opportunity to do an “overdistance” rollerski workout – going longer, in terms of both time and distance, than a normal workout, with the aim of really taxing the body and forcing it to work harder than it does in regular distance or interval workouts.
Judging by the all-day throbbing in my shoulders, back, and upper legs, it worked.* More importantly, both the weather and the scenery were fabulous. After making my way through a crowd of surly road-users
I was out among the endless brown and green fields broken only by a few strands of trees or farmsteads…
Not a bad way to spend a couple hours.
* Final totals for the session:
- 29.77 kilometers (18.50 miles) skied
- 2:03:52 total ski time
- 139 beats per minute average heartrate, with a maximum HR of 162
- 1440 calories burned
- Three energy gels and 56 oz of energy drink consumed
- One gel packet dropped but later recovered
- Four bike riders and one runner encountered
- Zero crashes committed
Alpaca!
On the spur of the moment, I took Julia and Genevieve to a nearby farm for “National Alpaca Farm Day” this afternoon.
I’m not kidding.
The girls had a blast, and as it happened, two of the other three playdate families were there, too, so the farm was swarming with squealing kids who loved the alpacas (so soft!)
the pygmy goats (they ate dry leaves!)
and even the cows.
The fauna was interesting, but the flora was nice, too.
Amber Waves of Grain
With fall now incipient, I restarted my rollerskiing regimen this weekend with my usual route on the country roads around our place. The weather was agreeable, the roadkilled animals were few, the traffic was very light, and the scenery was amazing. I almost crashed admiring this view (the “Kane Avenue High Point” on my rollerskiing map):
Not bad at all.
Fall Fun
The new playground in our neighborhood is worth its weight in gold – or in the sweat of the volunteers who assembled it. I think we’ve visited it every day since it opened last week, and never been disappointed. While, amazingly, pretty much every part of the play structure is suitable for both girls, they are currently enamored of the double slide:
On the way home from the park, the girls are now asking to call Mama to tell her about what they did there. Julia actually holds a conversation, while Vivi pretty much just says, adorably, “Iiiii, Mama!” and then “uh-huh” or “no” until I hear Shannon ask her to give the phone back to me. It’s still cute.
Car vs. Bike
After getting nearly hit twice in ten seconds by the same woman in a white Sequoia SUV this morning, I was in the mood for some bike propaganda today. The guy (?) who writes the Bike Snob NYC blog helped out with a couple of great posts and a video of his race against a SmartCar through New York City. It was a point-to-point competition; I’ll give you one guess as to the winner.
(What’s more, I’ll bet I reached my destination this morning before Sequoia Driver reached hers – and without endangering anyone else.)
Falling for It
My friend Todd pointed out this tree, catercorner from the starting line of last Sunday’s race. It was, for both of us, the first tree we’ve noticed to have significantly changed colors. It’s not a bad pioneer.
Cold and Snowy
Bring it!
The Farmers’ Almanac predicts below-average temperatures for most of the United States this winter. According to the publication, “numb’s the word.” The 192-year-old publication has an accuracy rate of 80 percent to 85 percent for its forecasts and is prepared two years in advance.
The almanac’s 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures this winter, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings. The almanac predicts above-normal snowfall for the Great Lakes and Midwest, especially during January and February.
Oncoming Autumn
September seems to have slammed the door on summer like a toddler experimenting with the door to her room. This morning when Shannon headed out for her day o’ presidenting, it was about 75 degrees F with 95% relative humidity. At about 10:30 or 11:00, the temperature dropped more than 15 degrees, and – I think – fall began. Not only the weather suggested this. For their morning snack, the girls and I went to the downtown coffeeshop, where a group of middle-aged women at the next table oohed and aahed over them (partly because Vivi wouldn’t take off her sunglasses) and then mentioned that they were celebrating-slash-mourning that they had just sent the last of their girls off to college. Traipsing around town and then playing at the park after snack, we crunched through plenty of fallen leaves. We got home just in time to catch Julia’s favorite PBS.kids show (Dragontales), which is on at a new time for the school year. At 3:30, I drove to an appointment and passed a score of high schoolers running (or, actually, walking) through their cross-country practice. After the girls went to bed, I headed out for a run that was pleasantly chilly and that ended in the dark (even though it was only 8:20!). Friday is Julia’s first day back at preschool! It should be a great autumn…
No Need for Parody
As the Olympics show over and over and over, Americans as a group are prone to inadvertent self-parody. Blogging offers a wide field for this kind of dubious accomplishment, but it’s easy to find other examples. Athletes, for instance: on Wednesday, I laughed as two American hurdlers held up “we’re number 1!” index fingers during an interview after the 110m final in which they finished second and third.
A certain kind of Christian comes up close behind the grandiose athlete, and even overlaps him to some extent:
Someone smarter and meaner than me can figure out a funny way to combine turning the other cheek while clad in sparring equipment.
And then there are the real-estate developers. Worst of the lot.
Exhibit 1: The only “shores” are the sides of the cement-lined drainage ditches. Nice big-sky views, though…
Exhibit 2: “Now Renting”? Really? Don’t you mean “Now Accepting Deposits on Which We Hope to Earn Enough Interest That We Can Prevent Foreclosure on This Half-Completed Pile”?
Mystery Coil
In my numerous walks and couple runs around Moorhead, I’ve noticed objects like this in the overhead lines.
I naturally wonder what the hell it is. Some options:
- It’s part of the city’s (decent and cheap) municipal wi-fi service.
- It’s a way to manage the civic problem of the many, many people who are sticking their bare feet up on the dashboard of vehicles using Moorhead byways.
- It’s an attempt to make the grass grow on any, some, or all of the incredibly patchy lawns in this town.
- It’s a public-health effort to prevent suicides among the readers of the horrific stories on the front page of the Fargo Forum. (Thankfully, the paper requires registration to read the articles, so I can avoid hyperlinking to the gore.)
- It’s a means to try to help the city’s coffeehouse baristas remember more than one item in an order. On three different occasions, I’ve had the barista need me to repeat a two-item order two times; on one of those occasions, I had to say it a third time. Gawd.
What’s that? People are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan? Perhaps that’s related to these mystery coils, too…
(Update, 8/22: According to a well-informed commenter, this is a “fold-back” created with “extra fiber optic cabling that has been relooped on that strand” to make repair or replacement easier later. I LOVE THE INTERNET.)