Minnesoter

I love Minnesota. I applied to law school there while I was living in DC, because I figured I loved the Midwest, I had been there once to be in a wedding and twice to catch a plane to Mexico for Spring Break, Minneapolis seemed like a nice city, and it was a top-20 school at a really cheap price.

Plus, I was kind of sort of seeing this guy and he lived there.

Anyway, I applied, I visited, I got in. I was set. So, I packed up my apartment in DC and sent most of it home to Pittsburgh with my dad, then I packed the remainder (including the pink guitar) and set off on my Colorado trip.

Interestingly, Sarah and I were supposed to go to the Blues Traveler concert with the aforementioned guy. As faithful blog readers will recall, the concert was cancelled, so we all hung out in Denver for the evening. Somewhere between the brewpub and the Diamond Cabaret (no, I'm not going to link to it, you can Google that one for yourself), he mentioned that he accepted a new job and was moving to Texas.

Huh. How 'bout that.

When I got to Minnesota, I was still not interested in having a boyfriend, I mean, really not interested. I was 23, and just wanted to go out and have fun and kiss boys. Then the first week of school I met a guy from Minnesota and he invited me to the Mill City Music Festival (he said it was supposed to be a "group outing", but interestingly nobody else showed up. Hmmm.). Fast-forward a year and a half, and I was engaged to my (now) husband, and we've been married for more than ten years.

So I'm thinking it all worked out for the best.

We planned to stay in Minnesota forever, but jobs (or lack thereof) took us to DC, then New York, and now Boston-ish. And my husband is very sad that his eldest daughter doesn't seem to have much of an affinity for the Twins or the Vikings, although he had hope for a while there because her favorite color was purple.

Alas, it didn't stick, and she now wears both a NY Yankees cap and a Patriots t-shirt with pride.

But I still love the Twin Cities -- I love the view heading north on I-35 as you see Minneapolis, all glassy and shiny looming in the distance. I love the houses on Summit Avenue near our old apartment in St. Paul, and lunch and coffee at Cafe Latte (and the orange ricotta bread - they still serve it on Fridays). I love walking around Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun, in every season. I love the drive to St. Cloud to visit my in-laws, where we would spend an hour and a half detailing how we would spend Powerball winnings. I love Lund's and Byerly's, because they're like Whole Foods but you can also buy things like Pop-tarts there. I love Rice Park and the Landmark Center in the winter, all twinkly with lights and covered with snow, because that's how it looked the night we got married.

The Nats

Strangely, I probably know more about the Washington Nationals than I do about any other baseball team, because the Washington Post is my very favorite newspaper of all time, and I read it each and every day. I can't help but read the headlines, even the ones in the sports section, and it is my understanding from carefully poring over the Lifestyle section that Ryan Zimmerman is both hot and a very nice guy.


I lived in DC twice -- once right after college (technically, I lived in Arlington [right across the street from this] and then in the barrio Alexandria), and then again after law school. I was graduating from law and grad school, and my husband and I both needed jobs, and what better place for lawyers who have public policy degrees than Washington, D.C.? My husband's first trip to DC was when we went out there, on tax day, to find an apartment with a lease that started on June 1st. He loved it, like I knew he would, and 6 weeks later we moved into the teeniest-tiniest apartment ever. It was right by Dupont Circle, and it was two stories with a beautiful wrought iron spiral staircase separating the living room from the bedroom. The staircase was fabulous, unless a) you fell up it and almost broke your knees (Matthew), b) you chose not to wear shoes and it left painful patterns on the soles of your feet (Bethany), or c) you were hungry or thirsty or had to use the bathroom and climbing or descending it was simply too much to bear (Bethany and the cats). The apartment would have been perfect for 1 person, or 2 people with not that much stuff.


I have lots of stuff.


Plus, two cats. It was pretty cramped. Luckily, we spent a lot of time taking late-night walks around Dupont, Kalorama ("If you don't know where it is, you can't afford to live there"), Georgetown, Woodley Park, Cleveland Park, and Embassy Row. We'd stop at Starbucks around 10 and then head on out, and not get home until 2-ish. Sometimes we'd stop for water or a Popsicle, just to liven things up a bit. We'd wander around and look at the embassies and talk about everything and nothing. This was pre-kids, btw, if you haven't figured that out yet. I liked to say I was going to faire l'exercice Français, because I would drink dark roast coffee and smoke cigarettes while I "worked out". If only I wore high heels while doing it, the look really would have been complete.


I have lots of fun stories about living in DC, and more memories than I can count. I would absolutely move back there because that's where every job that I really want resides, and there are many many people that I love who live there (or in the surrounding burbs -- yes, you, Jill).


Ok, here's the baseball part - the Nats came to DC while we were there. When we lived on Capitol Hill (after the Dupont apartment, this was a townhouse near Eastern Market and it felt like a mansion in comparison) we walked to the games at RFK Stadium, and it was awesome. 


Even the part where we kind of ran home in the dark so we wouldn't get mugged. 

Upcoming Blog Challenge

I found my new blog challenge. It involves tv, and that's all I'm going to say about it now.

But once the baseball challenge is complete, I will post the challenge and we will begin.

It will be SO WORTH THE WAIT...especially if you have cable or Hulu or small children or other indicators that television is your premium form of entertainment.

I guess this is about the Cardinals

I have so very little to say about this team...here goes:

The Cards play in St. Louis. My [very large bank employer] has a campus in St. Louis. If I win the half a billion dollar MegaMillions jackpot on Friday, I will quit my job with [very large bank employer] before the weekend is over. Frankly, before Saturday even begins. I will leave a voice mail and mail my computer back.

I am classy like that.

Speaking of classy, did you know that the Cardinals have some sort of "spirit squad"? I don't know much about MLB (obviously), and I'm always watching the dance team or cheerleaders at a sporting event rather than the actual "sports," but this seems weird to me.

Apparently I'm not the first one to wonder about this. As usual, Slate has some answers:

For decades, baseball spurned pompoms. The first American cheerleaders were men who worked the crowds at college football games in the late 19^th century; women didn't get involved until the '20s and '30s. In the years that followed, football and basketball players had their feats heralded by organized squads of cheering women, but baseball players had to make do with hollers from the crowd.

Baseball historians aren't sure why the sport went without for so long. But it was a handful of entertainment executives from the Walt Disney Company who helped initiate the change. When Disney purchased the California Angels in 1996, it added some bells and whistles: a six-piece Dixieland jazz band, zany sound effects for foul balls, and the Angel Wings Cheerleaders. The Angel Wings danced on the top of the visitors' dugout between innings, attempting to rile the crowd.

The crowd got riled. Apparently the Angel Wings dancers frequently blocked the views of season ticket holders behind the dugout; from the very start they were heckled and booed. Disney management quickly moved the dance team to a platform in the stands out in right field. From there they continued to lead "dance-offs" that tested the crowd's skills at the macarena and the chicken dance. The Angel Wings Cheerleaders were abandoned the following season.

Despite the shaky start, the Toronto Blue Jays have since brought in the J-Cru Fan Activation Team (now known as the J Force), and the Florida Marlins have introduced the Marlins Mermaids. San Diego has a dance team known as the Pad Squad—pronounced "Pod Squad"—which runs around the field at Padres home games, clapping and tossing T-shirts into the crowd. (Reaction from San Diego fans has been mixed.) The Expos had cheerleaders, too: Indeed, there were those who felt that the Molson EX Girls (who danced to Bananarama on top of the dugout) were an excellent reason to keep baseball in Montreal.

With such a motley record, it's unclear what the future holds for American baseball cheerleaders. But cheerleading already has a firm foothold in the rest of the baseball-playing world. It's de rigueur at games in the Dominican Republic, where women in body stockings dance to recorded merengue music on top of the dugouts. In Korean baseball, football-style cheerleaders with whistles, megaphones, and pompoms get the crowd excited, while college games in Japan feature women dancing quietly with pompoms while men dressed in black lead the cheers.

The next time I go to the Dominican Republic, I am TOTALLY going to a baseball game.

That other town in PA

The Phillies.

Us Pittsburghers have an interesting relationship with Philadelphia. On the one hand, they are a built-in sports rival -- so we kind of hate them. Nothing makes a Pittsburgher madder (and belies a dearth of knowledge of mid-Atlantic geography) than when someone says, "Oh, you're from Pennsylvania! Are you an Eagles fan?" On the other hand, it's the cradle of liberty and all of that, and we have a bit of an inferiority complex that makes us play up our "blue collar" side in comparison to Philadelphians, who are effete or something because their city is bigger and older and richer and more prestigious (I guess). Then again, we acknowledge that between Pittsburgh in the west and Philadelphia in the east, in the middle lies Pennsyltucky...but even they didn't re-elect Rick Santorum last time he ran for Senate.

ANYWAY...Philadelphia is lovely, I've heartily enjoyed it every time I've been there. I love a good cheesesteak, and their street pretzels beat the hell out of New York's -- plus, they're shaped kind of funky, which is interesting. 

Their team name is dumb. They used to be the Quakers, which is way more interesting in my opinion. I would not go and see the Phillies play. But I WOULD go and see their AAA affiliate, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, who play in Allentown. But the most fascinating fact about Philadelphia sports team names comes from football, and I'm going to share it with you now.

Back in 1943, for one season, there was one professional football team in Pennsylvania (P-A, to those of us from there), and it was called the Steagles. Most of the football players were fighting in WWII, so they had to improvise. 

That may have been one of the last times Philly and Pittsburgh actually collaborated on anything other than the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or trying not to elect Pat Toomey.

Hey-ohh!!

Schlemiel Schlemazel, Hasenfeffer Incorporated!

We're gonna do it!



I love most things about Milwaukee, including (but certainly not limited to) Laverne and Shirley. I still want a sweater with a big swirly cursive "B" on it.

I used to go to camp in northern Wisconsin every summer, and spend a week or so in the Milwaukee suburbs (Brookfield and Wauwatosa) just hanging out with my friends. All through high school, those two weeks in Wisconsin were the highlight of my summer. (My parents have never met these people -- I had gone to a national church youth thing and met these kids and they said, you should come to camp with us. They sent me the form, I told my parents I simply had to go, and they filled it out and sent a check and bought me an airline ticket. Again, in retrospect, quite permissive, although it helped that I was pretty independent. At 13. The curse of the only child.)

So Milwaukee. City of festivals, technically, but also of brats and cheese and beer. I loved my time in Wisconsin so much that I went to college there (Go Badgers!), and if someone told me I was moving there next week I wouldn't complain. Great people, beautiful place.

The Wisconsin State Fair was my first real midwestern state fair. Probably not as much food on a stick as the Minnesota State Fair (simply not possible), but it was still fantastic. The cream puffs are to DIE for.

And the beer...oh, the BEER!! Everyone knows Leinie's, but not everyone knows Gray's. Gray's is the microbrew that got me hooked on really, really good beer. Made in Janesville, you simply can't buy it here on the East Coast. I know, I've tried.

I went to a few Brewer's games in the old ballpark, and had a blast. When you're 15, and it's a sunny day, and you're hanging out with your friends eating brats and nachos and drinking icy cold cokes, you're going to have a good time. Even if you know jack about baseball.

Wisconsin forever.

Seattle Morning

Did you know that the Mariners are owned by Nintendo? I think that's really cool.

They're also one of the only two teams (the other being the Nationals-formerly-the-Expos) that haven't ever played in the World Series. 

Poor Seattle. That's got to suck.

But Seattle is a fantastic city. I was out there in high school for a church thing and spent about a week and a half also visiting a friend of mine from high school who lived with his dad during the summers. His house was on Bainbridge Island, so I got to take the ferry out from the city and visit this fabulous place. It's remote, but not -- beautiful views and trees and the ocean all around...just, wow. 

His dad is an acclaimed architect, and his work was featured in one of the Not-So-Big House books. If you haven't seen these, I highly recommend them. They are beautiful, and I love the idea behind them, that functional space is more important than sheer square footage -- a concept that I think has been lost by most American home builders (and most Americans, frankly).

I have heard, but don't really have time to confirm right now, that for all of its reputation for rain, Pittsburgh has more overcast days per year than Seattle. If that fact is true, I would not be surprised.

I was really into David Benoit in high school -- I'm really not sure why, the music is kind of cool but looking back I don't understand why I latched onto it so hard. But I do remember descending into Seattle, seeing Mt. Rainier sticking up through the clouds into the sky and cuing up this song on my Sony Sport Discman (you remember, the bright yellow one):

Clearly, I was a bit heavy-handed with my allegory, but that's kind of who I was when I was 15. And 21. And 24. And...

Anyway, I would live in Seattle - for a while, we thought about moving there, because there are lots of job opportunities for my husband and a surprising number of federal jobs that appeal to me there, as well. One downside, though, is that it's SO FAR from everyone we know, and now with the kids that would be pretty hard, I think.

Easy access to Whistler, super-fresh sushi, and reasonable commutes via ferry would ease that pain somewhat, however, so I'm not saying "no".

 

 

Diamond[back]s are a girl's best friend.

And I'm super excited that tomorrow is Monday, because Smash is on!!

 

Why can't we have a tv blog challenge? I promise my posts would be so much more on point.

Arizona baseball, yadda yadda...KATHERINE MCPHEE!!!

If the promos are any indication, it's going to be a good episode.

Monday nights at 10, on NBC...after the show where my boyfriend sits in a chair wearing a sweater and there are singers The Voice.