{"id":2534,"date":"2010-12-14T13:54:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T19:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2010-12-14T13:54:04","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T19:54:04","slug":"living-on-the-tundra-part-859","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/?p=2534","title":{"rendered":"living on the tundra, part 859."},"content":{"rendered":"

First, and as usual, work is insanely busy. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully it’s not luring me to my death), but it’s still been nuts. I’m writing custom handlers for the F2 key today, so you can see just how fascinating my work can be.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, because I had a sales presentation and nothing nice to wear (seriously, I have ultracasual clothes and dresses, nothing in between), Matt and I ventured to the Mall of America. I got a sweater, and ended up buying another dress at Macy’s. I almost bought a wedding dress, too, and I’m still considering picking it up. It’s returnable for half a year. That’d be smart, right?<\/p>\n

Thursday was bowling, and as usual, our team sucked. We’re totally going to have a turnaround one of these days, I know it!<\/p>\n

On Friday, we had tickets to a Timberwolves game, so we went to dinner at Wondrous Azian Kitchen beforehand. I ordered the mock duck steamed buns, and it took one bite of them to realized I wasn’t eating mock duck at all, but pork. GROSS.<\/p>\n

The staff was very apologetic and comped a few things, but it still sucks. Also, that one bite made me throw up. Kind of unexpected. I really want to like that place, but after being nearly pickpocketed last time and then served meat? I’m thinking it might not happen.<\/p>\n

The Timberwolves game was fantastic. It was no surprise we beat the Pistons, but it was the way they went about it in the 4th quarter: the crowd was going crazy. It was so much fun to watch. I hope there’s more of that this season. Also, I’m a fan of the free jersey tshirts we got there!<\/p>\n

After the game, we rushed to Smalley’s to try to catch the end of the Gophers-UMD game. We expected the worst, re: UMD being the #2 team in the country. There were 2 minutes left when we walked in, and the Gophers were winning 3-2. NO WAY.<\/p>\n

Once that was over, we fled the suburban bro-fest and headed to Bradstreet at 10pm. When we left there at midnight, there was at least 2″ of snow on the ground. In 2 hours? It was obvious the upcoming snowstorm was no joke.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, the rest of the news this week has been about the snow. 16.5″ in Minneapolis, transportation stopped, Metrodome done fell down. (I’ve seen the video at least 40 times now and it’s awesome every single time.)<\/p>\n

We couldn’t get our landlord’s snowblower started, so shoveling was an adventure. Saturday wasn’t too horrible, because it was in the 20s. We did as much as we could, then walked to the store 6 blocks away. We had to walk in the street because nothing was cleared yet, but there wasn’t much traffic to contend with.<\/p>\n

Kowalski’s was full of people with skis and snowshoes. Minnesotans are hardcore.<\/p>\n

\"skiers<\/a><\/p>\n

Sunday’s shoveling was far less entertaining, because it was zero degrees. The snow solidified and required chopping before removing it. Also, with our 6″ boulevard and short driveway along the alley, there’s nowhere to put the snow. We even considered pulling my car out and piling it all in the damn garage.<\/p>\n

Our boulevard is now a steep mountain of snow about chest-high, and the normally wide sidewalk is reduced to a single-person path. If the city fines us for that, I will invite them all personally to come up with a better solution. With a stick.<\/p>\n

\"matt<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt’s car was buried along with several others on our street, so all the neighbors were out excavating and moving them. The plows hadn’t touched the side streets (they wouldn’t for more than 2 days), so everyone dug their way through the mountain of snow at the end of the block, made a space wide enough for vehicles, cleared them all out, and helped people navigate to spots along the snow emergency route. It was a pretty awesome effort from everybody. (I dropped cookies off yesterday for the neighbor who snowblowed our front walk, too.)<\/p>\n

Being stuck at home all weekend meant I did a lot of baking. I made 20 dozen cookies for the Aliveness Project, and homemade english muffins for brunch on Sunday. These are amazing!<\/p>\n

\"homemade<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, the snow kept me at home working, which was excellent: I got about 200% more done than usual, and my kitchen is really clean. The plows showed up at 6pm and freed us from the disaster that might have occurred once Snow Emergency II: The Reckoning began at 9pm. Matt and I went to Grumpy’s to watch the Vikings game, and the best part of that was the half-price Minnesota beers. And the tater tots.<\/p>\n

Also, something I mentioned only in passing on the internet this weekend: I finished writing about our trip to Hawaii<\/a>!! Go look!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, and as usual, work is insanely busy. I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully it’s not luring me to my death), but it’s still been nuts. I’m writing custom handlers for the F2 key today, so you can see just how fascinating my work can be. Last Wednesday, …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minneapolis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9qt-ES","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/cm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}