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.

Farmer's Market and Thunderstorms

I was already planning on waking up sometime between six and seven, but it was really nice to wake up to a thunderstorm. Rain! Thunder! Lightning! More rain! And then I willingly went out in it to the Mpls Farmer's Market!

The farmer's market, by the bye, is simply amazing. Yes, there are some booths there that sell grocery produce, but most of the booths sell delicious, home (mn) grown fruits and veggies. For a very good price, too! For $20 I got ...

six cucumbers (grown in MN)

a bushel of sugar snap peas (grown in MN)

a handful of yellow potatoes (grown in MN)

a honeydew melon (grown in MN)

a watermelon

a quart of strawberries (grown in MN)

I sampled the sugar snap peas from all the booths that had them, and then went back to the booth with the yummiest tasting ones. I was going to do that with the strawberries, but it was obvious which booth has the best ones. (Ohmygod, yes, in-season, locally grown, non-watered down and grocery-storeized strawberries are one of the best things on the planet.) The woman I ended up getting them from, told me after I sampled one and told her I would be back that when I came back, they would be gone. And she was close! When I bought them another woman there was buying up quart after quart after quart of them! And I was there at 7am! I'll bet she sold out well before 9.

I wanted some rhubarb, but a) I only had $20 on me and b) no-one had any that looked decent. Ahhh, maybe next week.

Rummage Hopping!

Otherwise known as garage sales, for those of you not from my little corner of the world. I was back down in Milwaukee this weekend, seeing my parents, my sister, and some friends who still happen to live there.

It all started so innocently. Ali and I didn't intend to spend Saturday afternoon rummage hopping, but that's how it ended up. Quite by accident. I wanted to take pictures. Ali can't resist a 'sale' sign. (No, really, she can't. She will stop her car in the middle of the road, jerk it into a U-turn, and chase the sign down.) And it being a rather fantastic Saturday day, there were plenty of brightly coloured signs for us to chase. Most of them were bust. In fact, I think just about all of them were bust. Except for the one with the very lonely old woman who wanted to talk our ears off. We ended up getting candles and a coffee mug from her. That house was particularly funny: you had to follow a set of brightly coloured signs to get to her house, nestled in some winding sub-division. At one of the corners, another family had taken advantage and had set up their own rummage sale. (Crappy one, though. Ali and I didn't even stop. We could tell.)

I walked away with ... a Maxine coffee mug, a beeswax candle, a candle shaped like a castle, and two Avon body washes (some woman was clearing out her extra stock). And something else, I know I'm forgetting. Alas. All in all, it was a good Saturday. And Ali time! I do miss (and love) my Ali time!

The end of school means ... projects!

My first project was scrapping off an old table on our front porch, sanding it with as much sandpaper as I could find, and then painting it light green. I don't promise pictures any time soon, as I'm not done with it- there's a few other things left to do. Possibly a second coat of paint, and definitely a seal coat or clear coat or some sort of top coat to make it not-so-rough.

Then I might actually finish up a milk-poll that I took among my friends (and others- the response rate on that thing is phenomenal), mapping the price of milk with location so people can see nationally- and possible internationally, though I'm not sure if I want to convert all the international data- how much a gallon of milk costs. Or how much a gallon of milk cost back when I did the poll, way back when.

At some point I will attack my summer reading list ... which mainly consists of books that I've bought but have not read, as well as a few books that people have recommended to me. Currently I'm reading this book about Charles Schulz (Titled Schulz appropriately enough) and it's fascinating because he grew up in St. Paul and worked in Mpls, and then moved his family back to Mpls. What's awesome is I can recognise all the street names.

School starts again on the 15th, and I'm ... not at all excited. I just want this degree and to get school the hell over with.