I don't care about the ATV, I'm back in

Okay, just when I think I couldn't possibly adore Eric Bergeson more than I already do, he goes and writes a weekly column extolling the virtues of bleu cheese dressing, paremesan reggiano, pickled herring and Reuben sandwiches. I mean! How is a girl supposed to resist?

Best. Workday. Ever.

Yesterday I got paid to create a Sudoku puzzle.

Many thanks to Puck, Jaysan, The Sexy Blonde, Yeti and T for test-playing it last night.

NaNo starts in one week. This may be a "start typing and see what happens" year.

boo

We Can Ride ended for the year last night. :-( I'm really going to miss it! (Though of course the free time will be appreciated.) I'm already looking forward to spring.

Weekend in Review

Southern Wisconsin is so pretty in the fall!
Minneapolis to Mineral Point to Madison to Mineral Point to Minneapolis in two days is too much time in the car.
I will never complain about the clay in my soil again. (Well, I probably will. But I totally shouldn't.)
Artists make neat stuff, and microbrewed beer is still the best.
New shoes, new slippers, and two new pair of winter boots, all Lands' End, for $24. Yay Bargain Nook!
Lingonberries are tasty.
Rude girls on skates in fishnets and elbow pads make me happy. Anybody want to come to the roller derby with me?

Do kids still say "woot!"?

Few things make me feel so old and out of touch as proofing stuff for our account geared to college students. The 30-something writer puts in "hip" slang, and I'm always like, do people still say that? "Sweet"? Really? Of course, I was never up on current slang even when I was in college, but you could still always tell when things were written by 30-something copywriters trying to speak your language, and it was always sad. Still, it provides me with entertaining things to Google. (What gets more hits: "Whoooo!", "Woo hoo!", "Woot!" or some other variation?)

Is it wrong of me to already be looking forward to next year's Oktoberfest? I seriously don't know why it's so damn fun (other than the beer), but I just adore it. I was thinking about doing a riff on the Concord Singers for this year's NaNo, but I think I would rather save the making up stories about random people we see at Oktoberfest for the event itself. Waltz on, Tiny Laurence!

Honeycrisp

They grow on trees!

...I'm just sayin'. And look, dwarf! Easier picking, less space required. I may put one of these in if my Zone 5 trees inexplicably fail in my Zone 4 front yard. ;-)

Post-party cheese

This week for lunch I have been having a Honeycrisp apple, a couple chunks of leftover party cheese (today it was triple cream brie and aged gouda; yesterday was Bucheron and Mixologist's melty cheese, which I may never manage to remember the actual name of again) and a handful of pistachios (thanks, Wog!)

YUM.

And it makes me wonder why I don't eat like this more often? It's easy, I like it, and yet...

Oh UPS, why do you taunt me so?

Yesterday when I got home from work, there was a UPS slip on our door. The XBox! Guitar Hero!!! So I called, and they said I could come pick it up that very night! SWEET!

So right after supper, I jumped in the car and zoomed over to the UPS center in Minneapolis. Then I stood in line for 20 minutes. Then I handed the guy my slip and stood around for another 20 minutes. Then I was informed that, while my package had come off the truck, it was not on the shelf and was probably somewhere on the conveyor system, which I immediately pictured as some huge, twisty, Terry Gilliam-type construction of DOOM. This seems to be not entirely inaccurate, as they could not locate it on the conveyor system, and I was sent home empty-handed.

I get to try again tonight. I really hope the line is shorter this time. And I would just like to say, I consider it a testament to my work ethic that I haven't developed a mysterious hacking cough and had to go home (by route of the UPS center)...

Best of all, later tonight I get to go pick up the Mixologist and the Wog! HOORAY!

Liveblogging the MIMA Summit

...okay, not really. I'm at this Minnesota Interactive Marketing Ass'n summit today, and I brought Puck's computer because there's a project that absolutely cannot wait until tomorrow. (Thanks Puck!) I've been having nothing but problems, but at least the summit is reasonably interesting and lunch was good. (I think I've started to like squash. At least, I like squash curry and the squash ravioli I just ate. Pumpkin pie is apparently a gateway drug to the world of gourds. Or I'm just getting old.)

Killing time til the Project Manager figures out a way to get the piece I'm supposed to be proofing off the internal development site, because hey! I can't access that unless I'm in the office. Yes, I am rolling my eyes.

Minutes

Puck and I hitched a ride with Jaysan & The Sexy Blonde over the weekend to go visit Temp. It was all good. The scenery, the wine margaritas, Temp's constantly rearranged living room, the too-abundant food, and the Swamp Castle in real life, not just pictures! I covet Eric Bergeson's headboard, but not as much as I covet the tiled area of the living room where he has a grand piano set in front of floor-to-ceiling prow-shaped windows. The catwalk was pretty cool too.

Fall kind of snuck up on me this year, and now we're smack in the middle of it and I still have so much to do! Like, to the point where if I hadn't already burned almost all of my vacation, I'd probably be planning to take a couple days off to work on some outdoor projects.

Not that that's going to stop me from spending an entire weekend day driving to New Ulm to drink beer and watch old guys in black knee-pants sing German folk tunes. Priorities, people!