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Month: May 2013

proud minnesotan

proud minnesotan

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tomorrow the governor will sign the mn marriage bill into law allowing gay marriage! i listened to some of the arguments against it streaming over the star tribune site. one of the biggest arguments is that there won’t be a mom and a dad for kids.
what. *record scratch*
let’s back up here. if you’re worried about kids having a mom and a dad, how about focusing on teen pregnancies and single moms, divorces, and widowers as well. i mean, all these situations involve kids who have only one parent. i was talking to my mom about this last summer before the marriage amendment was defeated and she said she couldn’t understand the hypocrisy of why the catholic church was so concerned with the family structure if they aren’t also as concerned about single moms. if they are shunning gay parents, they should also be shunning single moms because the kids themselves are in the same situation.
so before getting your panties in a bunch about two men raising a child, how about providing free BC and comprehensive sex ed.

5 days!

5 days!

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5 days til my timed 10k! i ran 6.4 miles last week in 1 hr 23 mins, so a little over a 13-min mile. i was lagging pretty good there at the end, as my foot had gone numb. not sure how to remedy that one. anyway, weather’s supposed to be decent – isolated thunderstorms though. but it should be good, and even if i come in last, i will have finished.
i bought some fancy sandals today – i needed something for work that wasn’t flipflops, so found these. they are pretty reminiscent of the early 2000s, which i am a-ok with. as long as we avoid the 80s, i am fine.
Photo 2013-05-12 08.16.50 PM
speaking of 80s fashion, OMG i saw a couple weirdos today at walmart. this one woman was wearing leopard print leggings, a short sweatshirt, mid-calf height converses and stupid hipster glasses, along with an almost side ponytail. wtf people. w. t. f.

contradiction

contradiction

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i had my interview with my cousin tom, which wasn’t so bad! he could talk for hours and hours if you’d let him. one thing it’s hard for me to wrap my head around though is that he and george are severe conservationists, yet severe republicans (more like libertarians, but that’s another story).
when they set up part of their land to be a part of a 15-year lease to pretty much give the land back to nature, they took government money for it. yet, the government needs to keep its fingers out of the regulations. but, if farming went south here, we’d have to import from countries where regulations aren’t held to a certain standard and there is no USDA. i’m so confused!!! *boggle* either you want government or you don’t. can’t have it both ways!
another thing that confuses me is how adamantly pro-land/pro-environment you can be, yet think tree-huggers are the devil (he also had some choice words to say about PETA that I had to agree with – hahah).
i’ve got to call my dad and see what his take is on this and see if he can explain the mindset to me.

shhh

shhh

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tell me about silence. all writers know about silence, even if they talk and chatter all the time. it’s at their back. silence drives them into the radiant light. 
(i love that.)
silence. if you know me, you know it’s my thing. my mojo. what you don’t know is that my brain is never, ever silent. i try to meditate before i go to bed to make my mind calm down so i can shut it off long enough to slip into slumber, and it doesn’t work. when i’m silent, you’d better know that my gears are running at full speed, probably even more so than a chatty person, because i feel this pressure to say the right thing.
but that’s not what ms. goldberg is talking about. she’s talking about the silence that pushes a writer: the silence of a blank page, of the next word that needs to materialize in your brain so it can flow through fingertips to paper or screen. when you write, there is this push, need, drive to fill a void with what you know or have to say. when you can’t find the words to put down, or you can’t put into words what you want to say, then silence – the blank page – is suffocating. it takes everything in you to push a little further and break the surface, silent white no more.

dreams

dreams

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what are some relentless dreams you had?
when i was young, i had a couple recurring dreams. one involved a circus or something at the hormel plant, and then i somehow ended up at the finnegans’ house where there were a couple weird clown statues. it wasn’t scary in any way; it was just really weird.
another common dream i had involved a very large sledding hill in the middle of the woods. there were always a lot of people there, and the hill was very steep. steepness seems to be a recurring theme throughout my life, because i have a lot of dreams about heights.
now it’s gotten to the point where if i am watching a movie or tv show and there is something on there about heights, i will most likely have a heights dream. a lot of them involve having to jump up onto platforms that are too far apart but above a huge drop. most of the time a family member is there telling me i HAVE to jump to the next step. or i am sitting above a huge drop with nowhere to go. yuck.
i also have dreams where i remember things from other dreams, but never remembered in waking life until i wake up from the current dream.
and then there are the peeing dreams 🙂 i always know i have to pee pretty badly when i use the restroom in my dreams and i STILL have to pee.

woo!

woo!

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corn-syrup free for 3 years! (for the most part!)

thanks huff-po for the image! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/corn-syrup-sales-sour-as_n_597257.html
thanks huff-po for the image!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/corn-syrup-sales-sour-as_n_597257.html

i never imagined i would move my month-long experiment to a lifestyle change. from eating mcdonald’s and drinking regular pepsi on a weekly basis and not caring about a loaf of bread’s ingredients to being an ingredients-list speed skimmer.
what do i miss?
trolli britecrawlers, sourpatch kids, gummy bears 🙁
pasta-roni angelhair pasta
mcdonald’s drive through (this is probably a good thing…)
ritz crackers
not caring
what don’t i miss?
regular pepsi (mostly because cane sugar pop is soooo good)
fake maple syrup
the chemical aftertaste of corn syrup. some things taste 100X better made with alternative ingredients (case in point: special K bars)
giving money to big corn
not caring (it’s a catch-22!)

prepared?

prepared?

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i have read 6 books on monsanto, corn subsidies, big agriculture, the farm bill, etc. i have read 2 memoirists i would like to emulate. i have about 20 sites bookmarked that i have yet to read, mostly current studies and news items that wouldn’t be in books yet. “the omnivore’s dilemma” is on my coffee table to read yet. may 3 is 2 days away! that’s my official start date for writing the big thing.
i think it sounds so pretentious to say, “yah, i’m writing a book.” at the same time i feel like a fraud: who am i to write a book? meanwhile mom says i’m writing my memoir, and i feel that’s a little too broadbased and STILL pretentious; i’m 33 – what do i have to write about, anyway? so, i need a code word for this project. extended blog entry? i’m writing a blog extension? hmmm.
and, i’m also trying to most of the writing on google drive, at least copy/pasta when i’m done for the day to have a backup. i can make it shared so whoever wants to read it can take a look whenever. i’m not going to promise new material every day, and there might be times when i ask some of you to take a look and give suggestions. let me know if you’d like the doc(s) shared with you!