Happy May Day, workers of the world!
Today I am so very glad I was ocupado most of the weekend and didn’t have the chance to really suffer from the ongoing raininess. Everyone is all tired and depressed today. Me, I’m just not looking out the window, and I’m counting on the fact that tomorrow’s forecast features a sun icon. Friday night, I went over to Cindi’s with my 20th anniversary edition of Purple Rain. We watched the mini-documentary about First Ave, the feature on Prince-inspired early-80s fashion, and the MTV premier party from 1984, over which we died laughing repeatedly. Then we watched most of the movie, the point being that we saw Morris Day and the part about Lake Minnetonka, which is really all that matters. OH MY GOD, it was so funny. Afterwards, we went to Lyle’s, which has the supergenius idea of holding happy hour from 9-11pm. It was crowded and we spent most of the evening speculating on which girls were actually drag queens (conclusion: most). But eclipsing even Purple Rain fashion and drag queens in hilarity: we realized that two years ago, we were dating the same guy at the exact same time. HOLY CRAP, that’s the funniest thing ever. Saturday, I hopped up bright and early because my apartment had magically turned itself into a dump in the week-or-so since I’ve really spent much time there. I’m not sure how it happens, exactly, what with the papers and bags and boxes everywhere, but I feel safe in blaming the cats because they can’t form a well-crafted rebuttal. So I cleaned like a maniac and then ran to IKEA to replace the french press I cracked in overzealous dishwashing, only to discover they were out. This tragedy means I either have to continue to go to Caribou in the morning even though I hate it, it’s just that it’s so damn convenient being next to my parking lot and all, or I have to buy a new one elsewhere, which is almost inconceivable since it’s only $13 at IKEA. Seriously, I have pondered this for far too long already. The fact that the coffeepot issue coupled with my ‘not enough wall space to hang beautiful things’ issue are my predominant concerns lately is quite indicative of the unbelievable amounts of awesome in my life. I stopped at T-Mobile to exchange my phone for the SDA instead, because it’s pretty much the same phone as the MDA, but without the qwerty keyboard (um, I’m pretty damn fast with a regular keypad) and stylus. I am currently digging it a lot, although I still have a contacts-issue, which perhaps one of you smart people could help me resolve, and it goes like this: – I moved from Yahoo to Google calendar, but Google doesn’t have an address book yet (I looked at the one on Gmail, which I don’t use, and it’s not great).– I can sync contacts from Outlook onto my phone, so I’ve been doing that, only I have a ton of people in my address book that I DON’T want on my phone. I call probably 25% of the people in my Yahoo address book, so I only want the people I talk to in my phone contacts, obviously. There doesn’t seem to be a way to tell Outlook to only sync certain contacts with the phone, though. Do I need my great-aunt’s home address in my phone? No, I do not.
– If anybody has suggestions for 1) a way to make this work or 2) a great online contact manager that’s easy to use and possibly export, you should let me know. Stephanie and I went to REI to pick up my new superlight sleeping bag for the 3day, and discovered REI Adventures while we were there. We are currently so excited about this that I have to force myself to stop thinking about it or I hyperventilate. We can’t decide what to do first: the Galapagos or Cinque Terre. Afterwards, we drove out to the far reaches of Lake Minnetonka (see, a theme!) for my Aunt Kelo’s 75th birthday party. We hung out for a while and played foosball and I noted that the downstairs pool room was bigger than my entire apartment. Dang. I went to pick up Kaye, and we headed to her parents’ house in Wisconsin. We walked in, put down our stuff, and her mom started pulling food out of the fridge, asking, “Do you want a cocktail?” I LOVE KAYE’S MOM. So, the short story is that Kaye knows when to say no to her mom and I do not, so we stayed up too late, got drunk, and then had to get up at 6:30 the next morning. Which really wouldn’t have been so painful if it weren’t cold and neverendingly rainy. We drove to Eau Claire, stopped at the coffeeshop in Shopko (I LOVE SHOPKO), and went over to UWEC for the walk. I don’t know how many people were supposed to be there, but I’m guessing the attendance was pretty low based on the weather. It was fine on the walk, but the cold, squishy shoes afterward were kind of unpleasant. I got a tour of Kaye’s old haunts and we also visited the Paul Bunyan of Eau Claire, even though it totally doesn’t make sense since everyone knows he’s from Minnesota. Hello. Back at their house, I got to meet her grandparents, who are so hysterical it was hard not to laugh the whole time. I saw Greta, the hottest car on the planet, and then we headed back to Minneapolis, being careful to follow the rules imposed on me by the Mini dealer: do not go over 4000RPM until the engine is broken in. DAMMIT. Actually, that means I have to stay under about 85 for a few hundred more miles. I can probably handle that. Maybe. I was supposed to go out with grabass boy last night, but he got stuck moving until late, so we rescheduled again. I’m totally fine with that, because as much as I like meeting-and-dating, I also fear the result of dating in true commitment-phobic fashion. The schedule change meant I got to do things like unpack and take a bath, which was indeed glorious in its extreme rarity lately. Tonight I had tentative plans that I think may not happen, which means I may actually have a portion of a night off. I’m going to rush to the gym and then run party-errands. I haven’t really started planning for my party Friday yet, and I have a responsibility to uphold the awesomeness. I think I’ll make a list. Today I am starting a daily gratitude journal, because I’ve been thinking about it since Chele told me about hers. She’s one of the most positive and inspiring people I know, and I think that consciously recognizing the things that make you happy is a really great idea. What’s unique about this is that it’ll be the first time I’ve had a private journal just for me. It hadn’t occurred to me til last night that all of my writing-about-my-life is for public consumption in some way. Interesting. Aren’t you lucky?
Jenni