Life in the Cheese Drawer

it was a bad blogging month. two vacays and low motivation levels will do that to a person. next month will be better! in the meantime, some updates!
1. suddenly everyone is moving. jane moved back to MN right after july 4 – she is now in st paul and maybe 5 miles from megan’s place.
2. liz and doug and nate’s favorite niece moved to lacrosse, a quick hour away.
3. my parents’ house sold! finally, after months and months and months (…according to my mom – in reality, their house sold in less time than mine) they accepted an offer on the house and will be dervishly looking at houses for sale in the area.
4. speaking of buying houses, i think nate and i will start looking for a house and land to buy this fall. i’m excited to be not living here.
5. july is almost over. where did the summer go? slow down, life.

things i like about warm days finally showing up:

1. flippy floppies
2. rolling the car windows down
3. going outside without having to worry about bundling up
4. running outside without feeling like my throat is freezing*
5. sweat
6. not feeling cold ALL THE TIME
7. driving barefoot
8. light past 6 p.m.
9. grilling**
10. slow greening

* my 5k today, for those of you who don’t have FB, went awesome! i ran it in 38 minutes, and i did a 12:19min/mile, which is my best time yet. i really booked it the first mile; i will really have to watch that during my 10k next month so i don’t get worn out too soon.
** so our gas grill is on the front porch, but i’m afraid if i bring it out; it might disappear. we’re in the not so great part of town on one major road and two blocks from another major road. options i’ve considered: 1) bring the grill out and buy some bike locks to secure it to the gas line/handrail or 2) buy a cheapo charcoal grill for this summer. i can’t imagine with everything it would cost more than $35-40 (which is about what i pay for propane during a summer anyway…). only drawback to charcoal: wait time. hmmmmm.

after 4 months of living in rochester, i KIND OF have a hang of where things are and how to get places. i’ve also had a chance to poke around at the overall scene of the place (as scene as i get, anyway) to get a sense of how things compare to ol’ cloudtown.
surprising things about rochester:
1. the generic shopping is not that great. i feel like i have to drive all over town to get the same experience as i did at crossroads mall in STC. maybe it’s because there’s no target anchoring one end, but the mall in STC is grossly superior to apache mall here in roch. not that i am that enthralled by malls, but when i’m christmas shopping with my mom, the mall is the mainstay.
2. the downtown is awesome though. downtown STC is all about friday and saturday nights and the bars. sometimes the paramount. and mexican village. but downtown rochester is full of people, mostly because mayo is downtown. there is a galleria mall down there as well as some upscale clothing stores and some fancy schmancy restaurants. plus it looks better.
3. the amount of bike/walking trails around here is AMAZING. not surprising since it’s the health capital of the world, but i still shocked me, especially when i went into the running store and they HANDED ME A MAP of the trails. 😮
4. the amount of post-secondary education opportunities is astoundingly low. STC has 2 private universities, state university, state 2-year tech, rasmussen (for profit?), MN school of business (def. for profit), not to mention the beauty schools. here in roch we have RCTC, MN school of business, UofMRochester. i think it’s odd there are no privates here (well, SMU has a “presence”) and no 4-year state school (UMR is very medically oriented, and WSU has a “presence”). but winona is only 45 mins away and that town has the missing pieces. just weird,though.
5. the library here is abysmally outdated. not in books terms, but in terms of look and construction. granted, STC just built a brand new library, but you would think a town of this size would keep the look and feel of its library up-to-date. it could certainly use a facelift.
6. the cost of a house here is on par with, if not lower than STC, which i find really really really confusing. rentals are about the same, if not a little bit higher, but from looking at houses in the area, i feel like i could get more of a house down here than up in STC.
7. my outside running routes here suck 🙁 i miss st. joe traffic.

this year marks 3 years since i’ve been at st. ben’s. i really liked that place. here’s why:
mcglynn’s
mcglynn’s had awesome mozerella stick wiht a little plastic thingy of marinara sauce. they also had very good subs or wraps or whatever youw anted and their crab salad was excellent!
vincent smiles
when i was a senior i took my required JC class (judeo christian for us catholic kids pope points) with vincent smiles on a recommendation from someone my first year there. paul’s letters. it was THE BEST class i ever took at that school. well, not the best class content-wise, but the best class prof-wise. vincent smiles is awesome.
parking passes
at the time, i thought the price for the parking passes was horrendous: $40 to park in a lot for the whole year!! i wasn’t happy. BUT when i compare it to say, SCSU, $40 is CHEAP. don’t knock it. plus, you dont’ have to walk five miles to get to your dorm.
sidewalks
the sidewalks were cobblestone! at least i knew where my tuition $ was going.

Old Navy
eBay
Half.com
The Internet in General
any shoe store
Target
Best Buy
MOA (any store is fine with me!)
Gap is ok for their sales
Prints Plus

ok, let’s get the obvious out of the way:
Xena
Hercules
onward:
sex and the city
simpsons
friends
craig kilborn
family guy
the endings of X-Files (i would watch the last 10 mins before herk/xena came on)

-use the internet as a play thing but scrunch your forehead so it looks like you’re concentrating
-type up fake reports on your roommates and print them out-
-have your friends call you and act like it’s a business call
-scribble on a piece of paper frant