Just my little corner of the Interweb
As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in MN, so the 35W bridge crash hit close to home for me. My friend, Sweetie, is helping to organize a craft sale to benefit the families of the victims of the crash. If you are in the Minneapolis area, please consider going to the sale next week, September 6, at Grumpy’s downtown.
For more info, check out the announcement at Crafty Planet.
I sent off a few contributions to the sale last Friday:
My new baby niece, Anya, who was born August 16. Dad finally uploaded pics:
Check out Dad’s other pictures of the girls here.
It’s all of 6:30PM, and I’m already in my jammies. We’ve had a couple of raining, spitting, drizzly days and cool nights, which can only be combated with snuggling with a kitty or two on the couch with ordered-in Chinese food and bad TV. There may be some scrapping in my near future, though I might be overcome by couch-potato-itis instead…it’s difficult to say at this point.
Sweetie and I spent the day playing, and our first stop was to Lane Bryant. Why LB? Certainly there are LBs at home, and I don’t need to pick up more clothes here. But, Sweetie had heard about a new line of jeans at LB that are made for real women. According to this article, LB invited women in to their stores to be scanned to determine how real women are built.
You see, men’s jeans are based on two measurements – waist and length. This works because a man’s waist and hips are pretty much the same size. Women’s jeans, however, are based on sizing determined by studying women in the 1940s. But, our pants have always been based on one number (sometimes a length is included, but only three choices – tall, regular and petite). But this rarely works well for women. For one thing, women have hips. Oh, and not all of us have the same proportion of hip-to-waist measurement. Odd how clothing manufacturers haven’t figured that out.
The new LB jeans are an attempt to rectify the situation. They have three types of fits that account for different amounts of “curvy-ness”. Certainly, LB is not the first to try different fits for women. A couple of years ago Eddie Bauer introduced different fits. However, I have yet to try EB pants, because the ones that would work for me have not come in styles that I would actually wear.
I haven’t worn my new LB jeans yet, but they seemed to fit pretty well in the store. I’ll update when I’ve tried them for a bit.
We went out to the Minnesota Centennial Showboat this evening to see Sherlock’s Last Case. This was Andrew’s first time at the Showboat, but hardly mine.
Back when I was in high school, my aunt Maggie would visit once or twice a year. This meant that my Mom was always looking for fun things for us to do when Maggie was in town. I don’t remember what year it was, but one summer Mom found an ad (or review) for the Showboat. We decided that it sounded like the perfect thing to take Maggie to.
Honestly, I don’t remember what shows we saw there. The experience, however, was always fun. The Showboat has generally played melodramas (at least in the summer shows we’ve gone to). This means that the show is generally a little campy, but also that the audience gets to participate by “boo”ing the villain and “yay”ing the hero. More than that, the show is always accompanied by “olio”s between the scenes. These olios often outshine the show itself. They defy explanation that will do them justice, but suffice it to say that they are silly, often hilarious, comedy-musical shorts.
I remember the Showboat being an old-fashioned paddle boat, complete with a large paddlewheel. I was a bit disappointed by the new showboat, which is really just a floating theater. According to the Showboat’s website, the boat I remember was shut down in 1993 for repairs. Sadly, it was destroyed in a fire set by a stray welding spark in 2000. A new showboat was commissioned, and opened in 2002. I suppose I can’t blame them for designing a new venue which would maximize stage and seating over a design with a paddlewheel, but still.
The current play is the first I’ve gone to at the new theater, and I must say that they have upheld the high standards I remember from my youth. The play was very well done, even if it was hard to tell sometimes who, exactly, the villain was. (At one point, the audience actually boo-ed Holmes, and egged on the man trying to kill him.) The olios were, as usual, a highlight, with the “Cover Girls” a personal favorite.
If you happen to be in the Twin Cities area and looking for something to do one evening, I highly recommend a show at the Showboat, no matter what that show might be.
By now, most of you have probably heard about the bridge over the Mississippi that came down in Minneapolis yesterday evening. Regular readers know that I grew up in Minnesota, and I still have friends and family there, so this tragedy hits close to home. (And, oddly enough, Andrew and I are heading to Minnesota today to celebrate Sweetie and Jeff’s wedding.)
I’m relieved to report that my family is all alright (though Dad had driven on that bridge yesterday morning <shutter>). Sweetie sent out an e-mail last night, and she and Jeff were safe at home at the time of the accident.
The family and friends of those lost in this disaster are in our thoughts and hearts.
Just saw this in an ad for some medication:
Let your doctor know if you are allergic to anything to do with birds, like feathers, eggs or poultry.
Feathers?
We took a trip into DC today to see a couple little things that I’ve been wanting to see. First on our list was an R2-D2 mailbox. I’d heard rumor that there was on at L’Enphant Plaza, so our first stop was there. Sadly, we walked all around that area and couldn’t find it. It may well still be there, but I didn’t have any better directions, so we gave up.
We trekked up to the main DC post office near Union Station from there, stopping along the way for Jo to take a look at the Capitol. We did stop at a shop and found the 5 best motorcycle jackets ever, but alas we didn’t come for that so we left empty handed. There was some kind of police event downtown, as we saw bunches of police cars and motorcycles on the Mall. And the police cars were from many non-DC-area jurisdictions.
The second place I’d heard there there was an R2-D2 mailbox was the DC post office, so we popped in there, but still didn’t see one. Andrew asked at the counter, and they told us to go to the Union Station post office. Fortunately, Union Station was just across the street (I’m not sure either of us could have walked much more before lunch!)
And it was there! Cute as everything! Andrew had even saved one of our outgoing pieces of mail so I could mail it from there. He took a picture, but hasn’t uploaded them yet.
From there (and after lunch), we went to the Bead Museum. We’d tried to get there earlier this year, when they had a Shakespeare bead exhibit, but a migraine kept us from going. (Damn migraines!) They’ve now set up and exhibit on cowrie shell beads. The museum is rather small, but then, beads are generally fairly small. There is a permanent collection tracing beads back to 12,000 BCE to the present. It’s an impressive collection, especially the beads made before modern times.
On our way back to the Metro, we stumbled upon a cheese shop – Cowgirl Creamery Cheese Shop. Naturally we had to stop in, and we came home with a couple of stinky cheeses (yum!).
My officemate is complaining that I haven’t updated this blog enough. Of course, he could just talk to me, but that’s too much trouble.
So here are some random bullets of stuff that I’d thought about writing at the time, but never got around to:
Anyway, Andrew wrote a cool little applet that I’m trying to work into my blog sidebar so y’all can keep track of how much biking we’re doing. I’ll let you know when I have it working.
The trip had some fun quirks, though. The trip out was fun because we ended up sitting on the airplane on the tarmac for 2.5 hours. They then brought us back to the terminal so we could get dinner (and the plane could refuel) before we finally got underway. The trip home…well, let’s just say that I was up in the bathroom the entire night before. Fortunately I slept for the plane ride, but it was a bit scary, if you know what I mean.
I think that’s it. I don’t promise to be better about posting – my heart just isn’t in it right now, but I’ll pop by from time to time.
Sweetie tagged me for this…
INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.
Now… select five people to tag:
Err…not going to tag specific people – if you feel like doing this, just let us know in the comments (or with a trackback).
Summer, 1997: This was my second summer in New Mexico – my first summer I actually spent at home, but this one I decided to stay in NM, working as a grader and taking a couple of classes. I was in a biology class (I think…Mushi, weren’t you in that with me?) and a ceramics class. I showed up for the bio class, but I think I only attended the ceramics class a couple times. As I recall, it was a pretty good summer. Mushi and I would meet for lunch most days at the alumni fountain, and if it had recently been cleaned, we’d wade in it.
Same damn thing I’m doing now: working part-time as a contractor, working part-time toward my PhD, biking, going to movies, playing video games, scrapbooking.
(I’m assuming several million, as one would go way too fast!)
Copyright © 2025 My Silly Life All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek.