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All of a sudden, I have new respect for Kelly Kapowski. But I still can’t forgive her for cheating on Zack with that creepy manager Jeff from The Max. Who cares if he was a sophomore at UCLA??
Or at least the last five hours in my neighborhood.
I rode The General’s bike home from work. She’s ridden it there and then drove back some furniture, art, and flower pots that I’d taken home from the Furniture Free For All we had on the 3rd floor of our building today. (Long story.) First off, when did this helmet craze start? The last time I rode a bike I was 15 and had to get to Vermont Park to play some basketball. I didn’t have time to strap on a helmet and if I did, I would have been the nerdiest baller there and never would have been able to call next. Second off, there are some weird dudes (and ladies) that ride their bikes in my neighborhood. Although, the dude that pedaled out of the yard ofd the halfway house a few blocks over was super friendly!
At about mile 2.1 of my ~2.2 mile ride, I noticed I was riding parallel to a girl that was either carrying a basketball under her shirt or a good 7 months pregnant. I watched her as she pulled into the yard of the light blue house about three houses down and across the street from our place. I don’t meet neighbors, so I couldn’t tell you anything about them. I just know that their neighbors in the pink house tend to use a charcoal grill in their upstairs bedroom. YES, I SAID BEDROOM.
By the time I got home and pulled the bike through out yard, I’d noticed the pregnant lady was having a very heated conversation with a dude wearing a short-sleeved flannel shirt and some JAMS. And by heated, I mean he was yelling at her and she was yelling “Nuh huh!” right back at him. Fast forward a few minutes later while I’m standing in my front yard and I notice her riding the bike down the street carrying a 3rd bicycle tire. She came back about 15 minutes later and then apparently all hell broke loose.
JAMS R. McGee started yelling at her about losing something, then yanks the bike away from her. Next thing I know, he’s throwing the bike across the sidewalk at her. Please keep in mind she’s very pregnant. When a mode of transportation gets thrown at someone, especially if they’re with child, I have to get involved. And by get involved, I mean call the police. I’m always a fan of CSI: Minneapolis!
The 911 dispatcher was crabby with me because I didn’t know the exact address of the house where all of this was going on and because I didn’t know if the house was East or West of me. DUDE. I’M NOT FUCKING TOMTOM. BACK OFF. The dispatched asked me what race the people were and I was about two seconds from going all “WHY THE HELL DOES IT MATTER?!” but then I realized they’d need to identify then should there end up being bodies.
Five minutes later (nice work, MPD!) a cop car drove down our street. Two cops were inside. One the size of Barbie’s niece Skipper and the other the size of the mom from that damn midget show on TLC. Now, wait just a tic. If JAMS R. McGee wasn’t too shy about throwing large objects at his pregnant girlfriend, what in God’s name makes these tiny little police women think that he’s not going to be afraid to punch them right in their necks? It sure isn’t the fluorescent yellow vests they were wearing when they went to knock on his door.
The dude never answered. No, surprise. And the girl had already walked about four blocks by the time Minneapolis’ finest got there. It took all of about five minutes for me to turn from Concerned Citizen to Let Me Release My Fury at the Cops on all of Minneapolis. Luckily, The General knows me well enough to tell me to go inside and we ordered pizza and now I don’t care anymore. It’s off the street; there’s nothing much I can do about it.
But then I went to the gas station to get some delicious 99 cent cans of Arizona Sweet Tea that I cannot stop drinking. And My Friend (that’s what I call my favorite cashier at the SA on Broadway and University) and The Girl That Hates Everyone were giggling about something when I got up to the cash register. Turns out My Friend had to bust some dude that was trying to steal condoms. From a gas station. This poses two questions:
I really do love this neighborhood.
You know what happens in just over three weeks? The 2009 3 Day Walk. Bet you didn’t even think I was doing it this year, huh? My bad.
The 3 Day started out as just a personal challenge to myself when I did for the first time 2005. I flew out to Boston and walked with an incredibly supportive group of friends. We walked from Nashua, NH, to the campus of MIT in Boston. If there’s one way to get to know a city/state, it’s gotta be walking 60 miles through it. 
I walked a couple more years here in Minneapolis, which involved things like two trips to Urgent Care in one day after the walk had ended or shaving my head after raising $5000 with the help of so many other people. To say participating in The 3 Day has changed my life is nothing short of the truth.
Last year, Jenni and I commandeered a 15-passenger van as part of the Sweep Team. We knew we needed a physical break from walking, but I knew there was no way I could avoid participating somehow in this event. On the day before the event actually happened, one of our co-captains pulled us aside and let us know how awesome we were. We spent the next three days trying to figure out what we were doing that made us so awesome and when it was all said and done, I’m pretty sure we didn’t care. We just knew what we’d done over the course of the past three days was awesome. So incredibly awesome.
We spent 14 hour days driving back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) along the route the walkers were on, making sure they were hydrated, medically sound enough to keep on walking, and, above all, reassuring them that every single step they were taking was making a difference. No way was it as physically exhausting as walking – not even close. Mentally? It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. One person we’d encounter could be a breast cancer survivor having the best day of her life, because she was just able to walk five miles before she needed us to pick her up. The next person could be someone in tears because they’d let down everyone that has sponsored them. When the walk was over and there were walkers that recognized us, thanked us, and told them we really helped them, that’s when I knew I had to jump behind the wheel of that 15 passenger van again.
Breast cancer continues to affect so many people in my life both directly and indirectly. It’s a disease that doesn’t care how caring someone is or how supportive they are of The 3 Day; it doesn’t care how many kids a person has or how young someone might be. I honestly believe that breast cancer is something we can cure. If I didn’t honestly believe that, I wouldn’t have spent the last five years walking 180+ miles, recruiting dozens of people to join in the cause, raising 
over $10,000 myself to support the cause, and continue to beg for donations each and every year.
This year’s event will be held August 21-23. If you’re in the Minneapolis, be on the lookout for a large van driven by two sleep-deprived 30-somethings. We’ll have it all decked out to match our “Vegas or BUST” theme and would love to see you out there supporting the walkers, too.
Thanks so much for anything you can donate. We can make a difference. We can find a cure. We just need a little help from you in doing it.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all. You know I’ll be more than happy to answer them.
Here’s just about the only crappy thing going on in my life right now: my memory card reader won’t read the fancy new SDHC card I bought for my camera. Granted, the memory card reader is probably from my Employed at Best Buy Days, but still — how the hell’s a girl supposed to get the pictures off her camera? I have things I need to share, dammit! (I realize the option is buy a new one, but it doesn’t seem as enjoyable when I have to pay full price and not the employee discounted cost + 5%.)
Right now, you’re missing out on pictures from the following:
I feel like I should do a whole recap of everyone/everything… mainly because I forgot sometimes.
It shouldn’t be any question as far as how much I like sports. Between the sports-related blogs that I read and all the obsessing I’ve been doing over ESPN’s Streak for the Cash, I can honestly say I could carry on a conversation about any sport out there. Except for cricket maybe, although we did see some guys playing a game (or is it match?) on the way back from the northern suburbs today. I wanted to stop and watch, but thought that might be a little weird.
My favorite fantasy season is just about ready to kick off, though, so I’m a little excited about that. I’ll usually do a little pre-summer camp reading about various teams, but since Brett Favre and his fat head have taken up so much of the football news around this neck of the woods, I haven’t really been paying a lot of attention to anything else NFL related. And then I found WaiverWire.
I like football, don’t get me wrong. I just can’t remember the last time in three years where I’ve actually turned on a football game and watched it all the way through. I tend to nap instead. And when you’re watching the Vikings each week, it kinda doesn’t matter most of the time. It just puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to my fantasy football teams. While I don’t go all out and actually pay money to enter leagues, I do like to win… especially when I know I’m playing with a huge group of guys. It’s just funny when the girl wins!
The thing I like about WaiverWire is it’s comprehensiveness on pretty much everything – player projections, stats from the red zone, depth charts, etc. There are some weeks when I need all the help I can get in the fantasy football field and knowing there’s one site that can pretty much help me out with most of it makes me pretty happy. Who knows… it might even help me out in the Pick ‘Em League I’m always in where I find it mandatory each and every year to beat my second-cousin (or possibly 3rd-cousin?) Russell.
Years and years and years ago (sometime in December of 2001), upon the insanely strong recommendation of a friend, I went to go see Michael Franti and Spearhead at a little joint called The Blue Note in Columbia, MO. I’d barely gotten a chance to listen to the music before four of us headed from Sedalia down I-70. I remember the show being one of the most amazing live shows I’d ever seen. The crowd was full of people that had followed this music for a while. And, quite honestly, their less than rhythmic dancing was a little awkward for me to watch, but there wasn’t a single person dancing that could have cared any less. And it was a really great experience – probably one of the best live shows I’d ever seen.
Totally took this at the show with my hot-to-trot Sony Mavica that stored pictures on floppy disks.
album, which is my favorite of his, by the way) for a long time:
And, then, the other day, a little part of me died inside. The same dude that had lyrics talking about not caring who politicians “were screwing in private” and the conspiracy behind Princess Diana’s death and wanting to “give the corporation some complications” is being played on 101.3 KDWB, which is one of Minneapolis’ 987908 stations owned by Clear Channel. It’s the same radio station that can be counted on to play no less than 13 songs by P!nk in the course of one work day. And the same radio station that’s been trying to give away tickets to something called BOOTY CRUISE.
Michael Franti, what happened, dude? I mean, nice work on bringing in some cash, but where in your darkened soul did you think it would be a good idea to appear at Sneaky Pete’s in downtown Minneapolis and actually be sponsored by the biggest mainstream radio station in the area? It makes me a little sad inside.
(Don’t get me wrong. I love his new song. I just hate that it’s turned him into mainstream.)
I do. I can’t even remember when I first had a Red Bull, but I just remember it taking like the most vile thing I’d ever drank in my life, with the exception of some moonshine Cindi had made for us. Or root beer. That’s pretty vile, too. But I’ve grown to love energy drinks so much that I can’t really explain it. I guess it’s an acquired taste. Like cheap beer.
Red Bull, RockStar, Monster, some stuff I found at the Dollar Tree… If it’s liquid energy, I’ll try it. I just found a new one online that I’m going to have to try as soon as I find it in my favorite gas station’s cooler: BluFrog. I’m a little scared that it’s blue, but the cuteness of the can makes me forget about my opposition to blue drinks of any kind. It boasts itself as wildly healthy energy, although I’m not sure there’s any kind of energy that I would call UNhealthy. The General may beg to differ, but that’s a whole different blog post.
They’re relying on the whole social networking/viral media thing to get their name out there, so based purely on the cuteness of that can, I’m gonna pitch in and help. I won’t be retweeting it or sharing it with my Facebook friends, because I promised myself I’d never do that in 140 characters or less. Instead you get nearly 250 words (give or take) of me telling you to enter the BluFrog contest. They’ve got some awesome prize options that range from NASCAR to a New Years Eve trip to Times Square.
You should definitely check it out.
