As A Follow Up to My Entry Below...

Thank the lord! I'm not alone! And there's science to back it up!

Winter Hasn't Gotten Long Yet, But That Doesn't Mean It's Awesome

I'm going to put myself out there and be totally Minnesotan and write about winter today. What I'm not going to do is act all tough and self righteous and brag about how oh so cold it is here and how oh so snowy it is here and how it's totally winter and we are a hearty people for putting up with this sort of weather for 6 months out of the year. Can you say pet peeve? I can.

Ever since I moved to Minnesota so many years ago, I noticed that the people here are very into exaggerating the woes of winter into something I find completely extraordinary and ridiculous. Did you know it gets to be -80 degrees in Minnesota during the winter time? Did you know they get 2 feet of snow in one sitting? I didn't know these things either! But luckily I met people who told me these things in a manner that had the essence of forced aloofess so I would be prone to gawk at how they weren't phased by the fact that they live in the next best thing to Antarctica.
That's it. I'm making a list.

Exaggeration: Winter in Minnesota lasts six months out of the year.
Reality: While it depends on the winter, I usually bank on it being between four to five months long. Usually it starts getting pretty wintery sometime in late November/early December and eases up in mid March. A six month winter would mean that snowy and cold winter weather would start in November and not end until the end of April. While I have experienced strong winter storms both at the beginning of November and at the end of April, they are few and far between and wouldn't happen in the same winter. My April blizzard experience, which can be re-experienced here was a one off situation that is not normal. In fact it was pretty ridiculous.

Exaggeration: Anything above zero degrees is balmy.
Reality: This is stupid. Of course it is going to be balls to the wall cold if it is 1 degree outside. You know what? It' also going to balls cold if it is 14 degrees outside. I know this because this morning it was 14 degrees outside and I wanted to die during my one block walk from the bus to work. Yes, I have experienced those cold snaps that last a week or two where it does indeed get to be 20 below, and in the following weeks 14 degrees doesn't feel too bad, but that's not how winter is in Minnesota. It only happens a couple weeks out of the year, usually in January. After that we continue on with shivering through at average temperatures in the teens and twenties.

Exaggeration: Yeah. Try living in Minnesota where it has 40 below zero winters.
Reality: This is a flat out lie. I went to school in Bemidji, Minnesota which tends to be roughly 10 degrees colder than most anywhere else in the state. The coldest it got during a snap one year was maybe 40 below. And you know what? It was for a week. It wasn't for months and months on end. It was a week. This shit happens every year in January or February and the weathermen can't contain themselves. From the way they talk about it, you'd think they'd never seen a temp drop below zero. It happens every year. Then the Minnesotans go and travel to places that are kind of warm and insinuate that we all live in ridiculously frigid temperatures for months on end. No. We don't. It's usually 15 - 25 degrees in the winter time. Yes, this is still cold and I explained above, but don't get too excited about deadly cold happening all the time. It's a lie.

I think I complain about this every year. But it just bothers me! Why can't people accept their surroundings and just realize that they live in a state that has crap weather for 4 to 5 months out of the year, but it's not crappy enough for special recognition? There are plenty of other places that have it much worse than Minnesota. Ever hear of Canada? Alaska? Siberia? Just to name a few. I may hate winter, but I really when people brag about it.

Beer makes everything better.

Santiago and Variations

Despite the busy happenings of my job, I will post this post. I realized I started this blog with an exorbitant amount of pictures of Santigo Falk, my boyfriend's dog. I decided it's been too long. Just much too long since we've seen a picture of my dogboyson. So without further ado, I present Santiago and Variations:

Oh man. That is so fun to see all the variations of Santiago in his hat. I bet you are all jealous of how I got my hands on such awesome variations of my simple photo I took of him looking miserable in his winter garb. Well, let me tell you my secret, blog. I know a guy who knows a guy. Actually, I have a friend. One of my best friends. She's an artist and a pretty good one at that. She's got mad skills for making art as you can clearly see. Check her out at her website on Etsy or maybe her other website that she has created all by herself. I'm sure if you contacted her with a picture of your dogboyson, she'd be happy to create such variations for a reasonable negotiated price. Her name is Carly. She's also tall and lives in England. Jealous yet? Ok. This will get you then. She's BFF with ME!

Was this entry a plug for Carly, or just an attempt to begin writing regularly in you blog? Well, I guess that's for you to decide.

I'm Inexplicibly Back

I have inexplicibly stopped writing for the past month. I wish I could explain, but I can't. I do believe this is the longest writing drought I've had in my past 3+ years of blogging. I'm frustrated with myself. I feel like I've let my thoughts down by not giving them the attention they deserve. I feel like I've let you down, blog, by not giving you my thoughts. I really shouldn't feel this way since you are of my domain. I control you, I've named you, I've decided your fun, yet simple layout that is generic in blog world, yet dear to my heart. What's more frustrating is that I had to start this entry over again since a slip of the mouse caused me to accidentally hit my favorites button for a grant writing site that I was looking at once in an attempt to research a career for myself. Luckily I've got enough determination at least to start a new, different entry. One that is slightly modeled from the original, but really not the same entry at all.

Enough of my sentimental blog blabbering. I have 5 minutes of my lunch hour left. What's a girl to write in 5 minutes? Anything I have to say will certainly take longer than that. Maybe it's a good thing I have nothing to say.

I'll say one thing. This whole living in the suburbs thing has led me to need an extra curricular activity that is more than my once a week improv. I need to find a group of people where I feel accepted. I feel accepted in my group at my job, but that is... well, it's my job. I need something on the side that is fun where I can be myself and not have to worry about what people think of me or about where some random conversation about jello is going to go. Hopefully not into playing characters who wear nothing but jello, because that sounds like something that would happen with the improv group. I like my improv group, don't get me wrong, but I don't feel accepted. I don't enjoy myself a wholly as I have in the past when around improv people. While I'm on a team with improv people, I don't always feel like I am working toward one common accomplishment with them. We perform every time we meet. It's more like hang out, rehearse, perform, call it a night, do it next week. There's no end product really. I want to work something from the ground up and say "I can't believe how far we've come" when it comes time for it to be shared with an audience.

Basically, I'm fancifully saying that I would like to be part of a theatrical production. I did a little internet research today and found that there are auditions for a show by the name of As You Like It by this guy called William Shakespeare. Maybe you've heard of him. I know I took a few courses with his name in them back in college. These auditions are for a community theater. As much as I have a negative view of community theater, I have no other options for theatrical experience at this time since I am an inexperienced actor in the career sense. I figure I might as well try to go out for a show since I have a little Shakespearean acting (rusty as it may be) under my belt. It's been a whole 5 months since the Fringe. It's time to satisfy my theater urge. I might as well try, right? And you never know. Maybe the people of this As You Like It production are fun and non-improvvy in the sense that they can carry out a conversation without creating and being a character in a hypothetical situation pertaining to the subject of said conversation. I'm not sayin', but I'm just sayin'.

Who am I kidding. Actors are all the same.

I'll be sure to put up more interesting posts about the more mundane things in life. I just wanted to get that little plan down on cyber paper for all but no one to see.

Air Base Tour #2: I Love My Brother

I didn't mean for this to be somber, but I'm scared. Sure my brother joined the Air Force because he didn't know what else to do. His first year of college at UND for some reason didn't do it for him, so he turned to the military. Fine. He's been in for going on three years now. He's stationed in Italy. It's all good. However, about a month ago I found out he's being deployed to Afghanistan in May for 5 months. He assured me he's just going to be doing what he does now which is load bombs onto trailors. He won't even be allowed off base. He's not going to be poking around in any caves or anything like that. But I can't help but be scared. He's my only brother. My only sibling. And after visiting him last week I was reminded of how much I love him. Even though we haven't really spent a lot of time together since we were kids, I still have a connection with him. I don't want to lose that. I'm glad I visited, but man. It's making me cry a lot at night now because I miss him a lot even though I haven't really had him in my life on a regular basis since I was 18. I cried when I got on the plane that was leaving Italy too. Maybe it's a big sister thing to cry when leaving your little brother who was once your only playmate in a foreign country, even if he has lived there for over two years. It's not easy. Not when you actually take the time to face the fact that your only brother lives 4,000 miles away from you. I can't help but regret a small part of my trip where I only visited him for a day. I should have made more time for him. He's still there in a small Italian mountain town, preparing to go to an even more remote mountainous landscape that is so much more unforgiving.

Ok. I just had to vent that. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep now. And hopefully the rest of this blog will be less depressing than this entry.