Phew, it has been quite a week for me. Laura and Sam are permanently on the East Coast now, tragically, but I'll be seeing them in a week and a half, and it was such a good weekend that I'm not too upset about that. On Friday, after Laura and I helped Sam move out/stood around and watched other people helped Sam move out, I drove down to Minneapolis. People were going to all kinds of places, so I just hung out for a few hours in Julia and Emily's apartment until Morgan told me to get on my party dress, and the two of us went out to prom at First Ave. Remember the 90s? The 90s were pretty great. We did quite a bit of dancing and some singing and surpassed our goal of staying out until 11:30.
Saturday morning was exciting and weird, because I got to hang out with Patrick a little bit. He was in town for his brother's graduation, and we had agreed to meet up for breakfast. I picked him up somewhere in St. Paul and we drove to this weird little coffee shop in Minneapolis, where we caught up about, well, the last nine months. I'm in pretty regular communication with Patrick, but it's funny the way things can change with people when you haven't seen them in person in a long time. Not that either of us is dramatically different or something, it's just... I don't know what I'm getting at so I'm not going to try to elaborate on that. Looking forward to seeing him again a bit when I'm in DC in a couple of weeks, and hoping for one more drunk heart to heart. The rest of the day was pretty great. Emily and I walked around Uptown, got some great sorbet and did a little window shopping. Later, Emily, Mollie, Mollie's boyfriend Noah, Noah's sister Rachel and I went to the Excelsior brewery for what we were hoping would be a tour, but ended up just being some beer drinking. Fine by me. We walked down to the lake there and got to see some pretty terrific prom dresses. After we'd all sobered up, Mollie took us back to Minneapolis, and Emily and I had a great dinner at French Meadow (I need more tempeh cutlets in my life). After dinner, I had a really terrific conversation with Julia and Dan about world affairs, basically. I was always disappointed that Dan and I weren't better friends in college (I'm bad at making friends with people, I'm sorry everyone who I should be better friends with), so it's great that I can get to know him better now. There are Fargo silver linings everywhere I look.
On Sunday, a bunch of people came over to Emily and Julia's apartment for brunch, and we ate some pretty great crepes and enormous berries. After everyone had left and things had gotten cleaned up, we walked over to the Walker and checked out the Edward Hopper exhibit they've got right now. I drove Emily to the bike shop to get her tire fixed, got totally lost, went back to the apartment to pick up the one thing I had reminded myself and everyone else I needed to remember to pack, and then drove down to Northfield to hang out with Teddy. We went to dinner at Hogan Brothers (of course), and then, because it was such a nice night, went for a longer than planned Arb walk. I didn't go for enough Arb walks in college, and Teddy showed me some parts I hadn't seen before. Our walk finished up in a residential corner of Northfield where there were a bunch of owls living in someone's tree. We got a pitcher of beer at the Contented Cow, planned a road trip, and then went back to his apartment to watch Die Another Day, which is a terrible, fantastic movie.
Teddy is a real person and had to work on Monday, so I spent most of the morning and afternoon driving from parking spot to parking spot to avoid getting a ticket, drinking coffee, and reading King Leopold's Ghost. Teddy got back around 5, and we agreed to make some vegan pizza for dinner. We picked up Kim, did a little grocery shopping, and had an argument about Kanye while we cooked (listen, you're allowed to think Jay-Z is a better musician than Kanye, but you're wrong). Kim, also a real person, had to do some work after dinner, so Teddy and I chatted for a while and then watched Thunderball, which is not a terrible movie, except for, you know, the sexual harassment, etc. This morning we got up early and had coffee before Teddy went to work and I headed back to Fargo. The whole trip was great, but being in Northfield with Teddy is always especially, I don't know, restorative, I guess. I felt pretty good about life when I left today.
I don't know if anyone is interested in my thoughts on these drives, but I have them, and I'm going to write them, if you don't want to read them you're welcome to stop now. I didn't want to take 35 because they're doing all kinds of crazy construction and there's constantly traffic, so I took MN-3 all the way up to 494, which is kind of a haul, but it's worth it. I will never get tired of driving through farmland, it's just bucolic and gorgeous. Plus this morning it was really foggy and especially dramatic-looking. I'm sure it's awful in the winter, but I'll probably take 3 anytime I go down to Northfield until it gets cold again. By the time I got onto 94 the sun had started breaking up the fog, and I was amazed by what the landscape I've driven through dozens of times looks like right now. Everything is green and so alive, I felt like I had never seen any of it before (I was also listening to a new CD, which helped). It was a great drive, and even though I was tired when I got home, I felt better. There's no question I'm going to be busy this summer, especially with the plans I started making with people this past weekend, but I just feel really good about things right now. I'm going to do what I have to do to make sure I'm ready for my next year in the program, mentally, emotionally, physically, and however else seems appropriate.
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