at my last physical, i got bloodwork done to check cholesterol, triglycerides, etc., which were pretty good. unfortunately, i tested a weak positive for arthritis. woo for getting old.
i go in for xrays when i can, and they’ll do some additional testing with the blood they already took. if it’s rheumatoid arthritis (not sure which kind i tested positive for), that’s an autoimmune disease.
huzzah.
if i’m going to do one thing this summer with my blog, it will be to counter every single “minnesota” list that’s really a “twin cities” list with a REAL minnesota list. this one, however, is limited to places in MN i’ve actually been, so i’m sorry if there’s an awesome place that i’ve missed because i haven’t been there. (especially sorry to duluth and other northern cities – i need to get up there more and EAT [i get up there, but it’s mostly for family events where food’s provided]! i’d love to get to pizza luce.)
1. for sushi – ichi tokyo in rochester is really good. there’s a reason i get the all you can eat option.
2. the best eggs benedict – EB is my go-to breakfast food. some places do it well; some places really suck; some places don’t even include the hollandaise!! the BEST EB i’ve had was at jerry’s other place in austin (now closed!!).
3. the best crumbly burger – speaking of austin, that’s the home to the best place to get a tendermaid, at the small, old-school tendermaid place with 20 seats around a bar counter.
4. muy bueno fried ice cream – ok, so i KNOW that fargo is not in MN, but it is darn close, so we’ll call it ok. anyway, melissa and i would frequent paradiso, which had pretty darn good mexican food and fried ice cream.
5. the best lemon cream (supreme) pie – kay’s kitchen in st. joe, hands down. they also have awesome hashbrowns that i really miss.
6. the most mouth-drooling tiramisu – ciatti’s in st. cloud is probably the best italian restaurant i’ve eaten at, and their tiramisu is to die for. yum-o.
7. the best chicken – ok, so rochester gets this one. chester’s has the best restaurant chicken i’ve had. they also have a killer chocolate cake. nomg.
8. best pizza (eat-in) – bilotti’s in roch. it’s awesome. love the crust and overzealous cheese.
8.5. best pizza (delivery, pick-up) – jimmy’s pizza, new london, cold spring, st. charles. you can’t beat jimmy’s on a friday night!
9. best bloody mary – i’ve been on a search for the perfect bloody mary ever since drinking my first one. i’ve drank a lot of bloody marys at a lot of places. the best one i’ve ever had is at o’neil’s pub in spicer. nothing even holds a candle.
10. so you just want a burger and fries – i think this is going to be my only big-time chain restaurant recommendation. while i would definitely recommend ANY greasy spoon burger and fries, given a choice, i would go to five guys’ burgers and fries. the only thing that could beat that at this point MIGHT be in-n-out, but that requires some travel.
i think i’m going to ask my mom if she wants me to make some tiramisu for her birthday. i made a fancy baked alaska for my dads bday, and i make macaron all the time; tiramisu shouldn’t be difficult at all.
and it’s delicious.
i might use the pioneer woman’s recipe.
i got season 6 of trueblood the same day the new season of orange is the new black was released. aaaahhhhh choices. but i’ve got 2 eps of TB left then i can start on oitnb. #firstworldproblems amiright?
liz, doug, hannah, nate, and i went to suncrest farm where we got a couple pizzas that they bake in a stone oven. lots of people there and the pizzas were yummy. got some pics of hannah and the pizza! and a chicken.
there has been some brouhaha on twitter regarding a lovely slate article that says adults should be embarrassed to read young adult novels.
“These are the books that could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers. And that’s a shame.”
you know what’s a shame? that it took me 3 weeks to read 50 pages of infinite jest because i canNOT get into that book. i have tried. it does nothing for me. that i cannot read anything written prior to 1900 because it just bores me to tears. literary fiction authors i do like? steinbeck and hemingway. o’brien. they write short sentences.
“Most importantly, these books consistently indulge in the kind of endings that teenagers want to see, but which adult readers ought to reject as far too simple. YA endings are uniformly satisfying, whether that satisfaction comes through weeping or cheering.”
what is wrong with a satisfying ending? i hate that most stephen king novels are on the edge of unsatisfying at their ends. i gave “gone girl” 4 stars instead of 5 because of the crappy ending. i loved that “the goldfinch” actually managed to pull off a plausible, satisfying ending. on the other end, “the book thief” (YA) had a pretty unsatisfying ending. my mom does not read any book that doesn’t have a happy ending. she says, why waste her time.
“But mature readers also find satisfaction of a more intricate kind in stories that confound and discomfit, and in reading about people with whom they can’t empathize at all. “
the only book i gave away because i hated it was because i hated every single character in the book. (the memory keeper’s daughter.) i have told people to stay away from it. now, there is something to be said for intricacies; “gone girl” is miles ahead of “divergent” when it comes to intricacies, and my brain likes to make the connections as they come. i could also argue that “looking for alaska”, YA, is more intricate than the “wool” series (adult novels) or a whole slough of romance novels.
the author lambasts “the fault in our stars” throughout the article because that’s the big movie coming out based on a YA novel. apparently she read it (probably against her will), and thought it was neat, trite, and eye-roll-inducing.
in the spirit of john green*, i leave her this: “When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible,’ with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we ARE. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing.”
*author of TFioS, whose books i started reading while he was still underground. i’m hipster, y’all.
EDIT: OMG how could i forget to mention the MOST DISAPPOINTING ENDING TO A BOOK EVER, and it was a YA novel – mockingjay. take that, boring slate author.
i’m not a huge drinker, and i generally like my beers to go down easy – none of this heavy stout stuff for me. lately i’d been getting bud light lime because it’s tasty and light. i knoooooww that i really need to branch out in my beer habits, especially since it’s made from, you know, CORN. i assumed it was GM corn, and when my sister liz shared this link, my assumptions were confirmed. on top of that, who knew that some beers have DEVILS SYRUP in them??
the bad
sigh. well, i’d been leaning more toward ciders lately anyway, a local one called ciderboys and also angry orchard, which is made by samuel adams.
it might be time to move to wheat beers, which wouldn’t be bad. i do like shocktop, and summit makes/made an organic beer i wouldn’t mind trying. unfortunately, for a person who likes to drink swill, the organic/local brewers don’t really brew swill.
every big-time list i read about the top 10 things to do in minnesota or the 10 best restaurants or the 5 most excellent concert venues, or blah blah blah is really a way for the twin cities to affirm its existence. so let’s do a REAL minnesota list.
the best thing about each minnesota region.
northwest- this is true north. home of lake itasca, the headwaters of the mississippi river, and the lakes in the region are awesome. plus, bemidji is in the northwest, and we can’t forget about mr. bunyan and babe.
northland– duluth, boundary waters, lake superior, tons of pine trees. nate’s hometown of international falls.
west central– home to NL-S – represent! (seriously though, the new london-spicer area is a great tourist place.)
central– lake woebegone – need i say more?? nothing beats the st. joe-avon-albany-holdingford area. plus, the colleges in the area bring in a lot of big artsy talent, especially at CSB|SJU, and the the lakes region is awesome.
southwest– i love driving through the southwest part of the state after a long drive through south dakota. it’s so refreshing. anyway, this prairie part of the state has the lutefisk capital of the world in it, the schwann’s headquarters in marshall, and awesome wind power for wind turbines.
southeast– bluff country. check out the root river trail and the little towns all along the rivers. also, this area of minnesota has the most local, small-time farmers willing to sell you their stuff.
metro– moa. that’s all you get.
anything else you’d like to add to outstate?
one of the highlights of my summers is going north to leech lake for my mom’s family’s reunion. we spend 3 nights up north, hanging out together, spending time on the lake. for a person like myself, who doesn’t normally have a lot of money to spend on travelling, this is my summer vacation – the only time of the summer i officially call vacation. i love it.
this year, two of my cousins are getting married within a month of each other (like my cousin matt and i did in 2005, and liz got married six months later; oh and charlie and karl graduated from high school in there, too). unfortunately, the reunion was called off this year due to some family members being committed to a lot of weddings.
with the warm weather, i always start to think about lake time, but every time i think about it this year, i get all sad and mopey because it’s not happening this year. sure, i’ll see my relatives at the weddings. i might see a lake at some point this summer (there sure aren’t a ton down here). but it just isn’t the same.
so, here’s a repost of something i wrote 7 years ago before the reunion, which makes me über sad.
So I’m looking forward to boat rides and swimming and eating Grandma’s donuts and hanging out by the fire and drinking beer with my cousins and the smell of sunscreen and getting sunburned and OFF and wearing sunglasses and swimming and seeing my siblings (minus Liz 🙁 ) and eating decent food and not wearing shoes and laughing and did I say swimming and the smell of lake and the sun and the breeze in the trees and riding in the boat and not working and hey, swimming and my toes in the sand and nummy drunken sandwiches and the anticipatory drive there and watching the trees turn from oaks and maples into birches and pines and swimming….
so last weekend you know how nate and i put in the flower garden box at the front of the house? well, we had to jack it up to make it even. now the dirt is shifting and it’s been raining, and it’s pushing out the wood. i’m fully expected a blow-out tomorrow morning after all this rain tonight.
i’m not quite sure how to fix it! it would make since to push a stake of some sort deep in the ground to keep it in place or to drill something into the foundation. not sure how to go about this.
will have to use my google-fu to figure it out.