Midwest Trip Round-Up

Full disclosure: I cry a lot. I don't think of this as a negative characteristic, I just have a lot of feelings and sometimes they come out, for example, when I'm driving through Minneapolis and "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" comes on the radio, and I start thinking about being a tourist in the place where I live, which, coincidentally, is a lyric to a different song by a different Ben Gibbard band. Anyway, so that happened yesterday, and then it sort of happened again while I was flying into DCA, when I just started thinking about that song. I try to keep it together when I'm in front of people, because I've been told seeing me cry makes them uncomfortable, which is fair. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that I'll probably write a lot about crying on this blog, I don't want you to be alarmed.

I left Fargo yesterday morning, but not before I went to see the Fargo Walk of Fame. It was not exactly what I was expecting. At first I wasn't sure where it was, but after walking around for a few minutes I found it next to a patch of sidewalk. The visitors center where the Walk of Fame is located is situated between a strip mall and the interstate, so only slightly less glamorous than the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. I couldn't find KISS, but I did see Aerosmith, Garth Brooks and Joyce Carole Oates, so that was fun.

I hopped on the freeway after that, and headed back to Minneapolis. The drive took me a bit longer because I made some more out of the way stops. At one rest stop, before I got into the car I paused for just a few seconds and noticed how good the air smelled. I was thinking about that today on the roof of some friends' apartment, that the air in DC doesn't smell bad, it just smells like... things. Food, cars, other people. They're not bad smells, but it's not fresh the way it is out in rural Minnesota. Which, duh, but it struck me at the time. I made it back to Minneapolis just as Lia, Emily and Jimmy were getting to the market where we were meeting for lunch. It was wonderful to see all of them, especially because I hadn't seen any of them in over a year. We ate and caught up and it was great. I dropped off Jimmy, and then Lia, Emily and I went to Whole Foods where we ate free samples and talked about the weird things I eat now.

We all went back to Emily's apartment, joked about drunk driving, and then went with Julia to the St. Paul Saints minor league baseball game. You guys, I love minor league baseball. This game may have been my favorite thing that I've ever done in the Twin Cities. It also may have been my favorite thing that I've ever done, full stop. There was a pig, there were many costumes and races, there were many things being sponsored by the Minnesota Subcontractors Association, there was cheap beer and buckets of nachos and stocking hats and a booth sponsored by the Onion and a version of the National Anthem that sounded sort of like the National Anthem, and vendors selling "cracker jack, peanuts, beer, wine, 7Up, Skittles." It's hard for me to express how much I enjoyed it.

I spent the night at Morgan's apartment (thank you, Morgan, your couch was super comfortable, sorry I didn't get to say goodbye!), and woke up very early this morning to meet Lia and Emily for breakfast. We ate at this place that I would go to all the time if I lived in the Twin Cities with all kinds of vegan food. Vegan food at restaurants does not have to be good for me to be excited about it, and this was pretty good. We did the normal chat that you do when you're about to head to the airport, but it felt good to know that I would be back in just a couple of months.

I dropped my car off at the airport, got talked into buying some slightly more expensive than normal headphones, and caught my flight back to DC. Uneventful. I'm having some friends over for dinner tomorrow, so after I dropped my stuff off at my apartment I went out to pick up some things at the grocery store. Well, I walked to the Whole Foods in Tenleytown, and immediately started feeling overwhelmed. There were quite a few people shopping there, there were no small-ish shopping carts, and there were no organic strawberries, and all of a sudden I started freaking out and I had to walk out of the store. Patrick texted me to invite me over to his apartment to watch some "Arrested Development," and the thought of being around some DC friends calmed me down significantly. I took a bus over to the Glover Park Whole Foods, where they did have organic strawberries, had a great conversation with a bus driver about veganism, and went over to Patrick's apartment. Talked a bit about my trip, got into an argument about recycling (the initiation into true friendship with me), and watched a couple episodes of AD (btw, how much plastic surgery did Portia De Rossi have? Yikes.). At home I cleaned up and ate a bunch of mushrooms. No, no, portobello mushrooms. That's very amusing, well done.