This city is love.

Mpls is a lot of happiness all rolled up into one. Tonight I walked in a parade on short notice (side tangent: I never get to watch parades any more!), and then afterwards, the Mayor and I were heading the same way, so I got to talk to him and explain 'Atticus' to him. And then after that I thought it was such a nice night out, I would just walk home. I did, and took a few snapshots of my city along the way. And fell in love with it, just a little bit more.

Mpls is the best city in America, I think. I often tell people that half my heart belongs to Hilo, half to Mpls, and half to the Central African region. But there’s a different kind of giving of my heart to each. The Central African region is where my activist heart belongs, where the barest pieces of my humanity come out. It is my passion, and my heart beeps for it. Hilo was the place where I was lost and found pieces of myself, and learnt to love. It was a place to start over, to find some peace. Mpls, on the other hand, is a place to live when you’ve got some sense of the rest. It has infrastructure, skyscrapers, an awesome bus system, more lakes than you can know what to do with, and the river (not to mention a really kick-ass mayor). At some point more than a year ago, I was walking down Nicollet Mall and I had the sense that this city actually belonged to me, in the way that we can get possessive about cities. I think it was the people along the Mall, and the scent of roasting pecan nuts that pushed me over the edge. Every time I leave the city and return to see the skyline, I’m filled with this sense of home, something I hadn’t really felt since Hilo.

It is mine, and it is love.

short story of mis-adventure

I seem to be quite good at having mis-adventures (and going to the hospital, but that's a far longer story for anyone who would want it). For instance, in mis-adventureland, the last time I attempted to come home after visiting my parents, the bus broke down on the freeway and we sat there for four hours waiting for them to get their shite together. That was last time. 'Never again,' I vowed. Ha. That all went to hell last night.

So I'm on my way to visit my parents, like good daughters do, my dad and I have just picked up my sister from Mad-town, life is great ... and then a tyre blows. No prob. (This was not the infamous tyre change on the Chicago Skyway of four years ago. More details on that if you're particularly interested.) So we're on our way again, we stop for some food, the drive now about an hour and a half behind schedule. We get back on the interstate ... and blow a second tyre.

Yep, you read that right. We blew two tyres in the span of two and a half hours.

Luckily we were about 45 minutes from my parents', so my mum was able to drive and get us while we waited for the tow to come. At some point Officer Noah (the nicest state trooper in WI) came to sit with us and stayed with us until the tow came. And then we were in Waukesha, the armpit of the world. Only about three hours past schedule.

Someone tell me why these mis-adventures keep happening to me?