Around Town

I got a new bicycle last week and took Friday off from work to ride my bike and to take pictures of Minneapolis. I had so much fun riding, I only stopped twice for pictures, but the pictures I did take definitely show how awesome of a fall day it was. The first one is of the pedestrian bridge crossing over Minnehaha Creek just west of Lyndale Ave at about 9 am. It was just me and a few squirrels down there for a while. The second one is at lake Harriet looking towards uptown and downtown Minneapolis. The Twin Cities Marathon is next weekend and there were a lot of people getting in their last training run before the race at the lake.

Even though I don't have a picture of it, I rode the whole Midtown Greenway Trail to the Mississippi for the firs time. I highly recommended riding it! http://www.midtowngreenway.org/

Gravity

I was watching PBS the other day--one of those fun science shows with hip music, awesome graphics, and a cool narrator--and one of their topics was "Don't Hate Gravity," which the title alone glued me to the show. Up until then I had never thought about hating gravity before, nevertheless any other law of physics. I don't, just so we're clear, but it did make me think about something that I've never considered before.

Anyway, their point, and now mine, is that if it weren't for gravity, we wouldn't really just hover a few inches off the ground or be able to fly from one city to another. No. Instead, because of the centrifugal force of the earth and lack of gravity, we'd fly right off, through the clouds, through the atmosphere, into outer space and towards the object in our universe with the least mass. Sad thing is, no one knows what that object is with the least amount of mass, probably a black hole or something.

Thank you gravity, for making our lives a little more substantial than flying through space for 27 boring years.

Cucumbers

Every once in a while my "foods-that-I-just-don't- like-but-wish-I-did" list changes and shifts, sometimes getting longer, sometimes getting shorter.
It's usually not easy to scratch something off the list; it took me about 3 years of eating BLTs--not my usual BLs--to finally like fresh tomatoes, and I'm still unwilling to nibble sushi with raw fish on it. However, today it is with great pleasure that I tell you that I have removed cucumbers from this list by having eaten 8 cucumbers this summer with this classic recipe: Refrigerator Pickles.

Refrigerator Pickles
Ingredients
2 thinly sliced cucumbers
1 or 1/2 thinly sliced red onion
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons celery seed

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

Instructions
Combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well so the salt and celery seeds are well blended with the cucumbers. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Combine sugar and apple cider vinegar in a small bowl; mix until most, if not all, of the sugar is dissolved. Pour over the cucumbers and mix well. Eat immediately or let it sit for a few minutes, hours or days--either way they're delicious!

Thank you Refrigerator Pickles!

Art: who knew it was so neat!?

I'm sure someone along the way has told me how fun art can be, but I didn't listen. No, I just didn't think I'd enjoy it so I let their words of recommendation swirl over me like a Monet painting. I have to admit, however, that I had a blast at the Pablo Picasso exhibit at the Walker with my I-know-a-lot-more-about-art-than-Heidi-friend, Greta. That's not saying much, so that's why I added "a-lot-more" to that prefix.

I think that is what I needed to get me out to see some art, a friend who knows art, but has a great sense of humor, too. If Greta ever got frustrated with my infantile art mind, she never let on. In fact, she encouraged it, which made me admit--out loud--that I was having much more fun that I had imagined. Sure, the crowd was stuffy (it was about 90 degrees in there ;o) ), but it's easy to overlook that when there's so much great art around.

What really made me laugh was trying to guess the titles of the paintings and then trying to ascertain the title in the paintings--something that shouldn't be done alone!

But, it wasn't all fun and games. After Greta explained how the exhibit was set up, by the end of it, I felt artsy too! The Walker had displayed a Picasso piece and dozens of other pieces done by artists who were inspired by that particular Picasso. It was so, dare I say, cool to analyze the paintings and find the impact Picasso had on the artists. Sometimes it was pretty obvious, other times, not so, but that is what made it so much fun!

Good times are available at the Walker every Thursday night for free, thanks to Target. Thank you Target!

;o)

10k on Labor Day

My friend Melanie and I ran in a 10k race yesterday--my first time running 6 miles in one day. We had a well-cushioned lead on the back fourth of the runners. ;o) In fact, since I didn't have a camera with me, I took it upon myself to recreate part of the race in Illustrator, and if you take a look at the picture, you'll notice there aren't many people around us. Unfortunately, you will also notice a flattened squirrel on the road. All in all it was a good time, despite my inability to understand how to pace myself. Thus, I am a few steps behind Melanie in this picture with a more distressed look on my face. ;o)

At any rate, I think it is great that people sign up for things like this knowing full well they aren't contending for first place. They allow people to push themselves a little further than they would by themselves. If only we'd wear race numbers every day.

Muhahaha!

Not much time to post anything right now. I'm working on keeping it real so I'm sure you understand!!


:o)
Heidi