All posts by verily sherrilee

Directionally challenged, crafty, reading mother of young adult
2026, Art, Gatherings, Mysteries, State Fair, Uncategorized

Eye Catching

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For years I wore my State Fair t-shirts to work in August – a different one each day up until opening day.  But then, for some reason, I never wore any of them TO the Fair.  I’m not sure why and I’ll admit I never really thought it was weird.  I have a nice number of flowy, tunic-like tops (you Blevins folks have probably seen all of them) and I usually wore those during fair days.

Then this year, I had several dirty projects the first week of August and didn’t wear any of my fair shirts.  This made me think about my pattern and I decided to wear fair shirt to the fair.  Radical I know.

On Saturday, I wore my newest fair shirt (above) in addition to a pair of earrings I found last year at a little shop in the Grandstand:

I don’t think I’ve ever unintentionally drawn so much attention to myself.  From the time we got in line for the Park `n Ride bus until we got back to the parking lot (about 8 hours), 13 people commented on my shirt, 2 on the earrings.  All positive comments.  And after a few of the remarks, I started to realize that a lot of folks were noticing the shirt, even if they didn’t say anything.  It was weird and surprising since only two people had said anything about the shirt I wore on Thursday.  And one of them was at the Star Tribune booth; the shirt was a Steve Sachs design…

I met a gal later in the afternoon wearing the same shirt and we had a quick conversation about the shirt and she said she had experienced the same thing I had.  I suppose the colorful corn dogs on the black background make it stand out more than most fair t-shirt designs.  The great irony is that I don’t even eat corn dogs!  Haven’t even tried the vegan one at the fair yet!

Wonder if I’ll get a lot of comments when I wear the corn design shirt with the dangly ear of corn earrings?

Do you have any items of clothing that have gotten remarks?

2026, Food, Seasons, State Fair, Travel

It’s That Time Again!!!

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You all know where I am, right?  That’s right – the VS State Fair Fest has begun!

Tickets purchased (actually bought them in November for last year’s price).

Blue Ribbon Coupon Book purchased.  Both YA and I have added our post-it notes.

Food list assembled and printed off.  This includes traditional items that we like every year (corn, cookies, crepe, Hawaiian shave ice, etc.) as well as new foods. 

Trial drive to parking lot done.  I do this every year to make sure there isn’t any surprise road construction.

Turtle bag “packing list” updated… actually just printed out this year – we didn’t make any changes from last year.

Turtle bag packed (bandaids, Tylenol, pad/paper, address labels, collapsible container for cookies, coupon book, cash…).

Depending on what time you’re up and reading this, I’m either feeding the dog/cat before I leave, driving to St. Paul, waiting in line, on the Park & Ride bus.  Once the bus gets to the transit hub and I get through the entrance, who knows what the day will bring for me!

You’ll have to talk among yourselves today.  Anything planned for YOUR day?

2026, animals, Art, books, Kids, Uncategorized

Reading Rules

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Finishing a book that I started was a “rule” of mine for more than half my life.  If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said it was a rule, but that must have been what it looked like from the outside.  My three copies of Ulysses are a case in point.  Ever since my college years, I have thought I should read it but could never make it more than a couple of pages.  Then I would forget I ever had a copy and eventually buy a new one. 

At some point I read some place that so many books are published each year that even if you read a book a day, you would never get to all of them.  That’s when I did make a rule for myself – if I’m not enjoying the reading, I quit and move onto the next book.  I can be ruthless about this; more than once I have dumped a book after just a few pages. 

Today I am returning a book to the library that I have not finished.  It’s a Maggie O’Farrell, an author who I normally adore.  Every one of her books that I’ve read has earned 5 stars.  But yesterday, while listening to it on CD in the car, she broke one of my rules… the dog died.  When it happened I turned off the CD immediately to think about it.  That’s when I realized that even though I was about 1/3 of the way through the book, I hadn’t really connected to any of the characters and wasn’t enjoying it.  When I got home I looked up the summary online and found that continuing was probably not going to be enjoyable to me.  That made me ponder my reading rules.  I’ve never written these down before, in fact have never really thought of them as a list before, but here things that can put me off:

The dog dying (specially if the dog is killed)

Children dying (same caveat as the dog…)

Torture/rape (I quit Rob Roy because of this)

Graphic violence (Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy went back to the library quickly)

Child abuse (a fairly long string of abandoned books for this rule – Demon Copperfield, Swamplandia, Where the Crawdads Sing….)

Vapidness.  This probably seems a silly rule, but if the main characters are all shallow and full of themselves, I don’t see a finished book in my future.  (These tend to get rejected very quickly so I can’t even think of a title!)

I realize that these are all negative rules.  I’ve been pondering if I have any positive reading rules; the only thing I can come up with is things that draw me to books and that list is way too long to put here.  Suffice it say that the list would start with dragons and fairies!

Do you have any reading rules?  What draws you to a book?

2026, Games, Gatherings, Mysteries, sports

Fan-Girl

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Who would have thought that at I, who has eschewed all sports for 70 years would become a fan girl?

Banana Ball caught my eye on Facebook last year.  They are similar to baseball although they have a different rule structure (games only 2 hours long, no bunting, scoring is different, trick plays are encouraged, tickets cannot be resold for a profit, if a fan catches a foul ball – that’s an out, etc) and they have lots of entertainment and silliness.  This is what I like best.

They sell out everywhere they play and you have to enter a lottery to even get tickets.  The lottery for 2026 was in October last year and by the time I entered, there was no hope.  I joined a fan group in the spring and it paid off.. I got a notice that a bunch of single tickets were going on sale.  You can’t believe how fast I got online and scooped up a ticket for this past Sunday.  You may remember that YA doesn’t care for Banana Ball so I didn’t have to feel guilty that I picked Sunday afternoon when I knew she would be out of town.

Driving downtown and paying exorbitant parking doesn’t do anything for me so I took the bus (love the $1 fee for us oldies but goodies).  Just a couple of blocks from the bus stop to Target Field.  It was a sell-out, 39,000 folks.  I was in the “nose-bleed” section – five more seats higher and I would have been in the stratosphere.  But I was right behind home plate, so a fabulous view.  And of course, these days, everything is filmed within an inch of its life so you can see all the action on the big screens as well.

From the Stratosphere

Some of the fun was the baby race.  Unfortunately most of the babies were more interested in crowd-watching than racing.  Just one baby thought heading toward mom was a good idea but still a very slow good idea.  Hilarious

Baby Race – Kinda

It was a close game and everyone was on their feet for the last two batters.  The Coconuts took the game—WOOT.  They are my favorite team although I will admit it’s only because I like their team colors the best (and their catcher)!  I had to buy a t-shirt.

The Shirt

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see another live game, but I did just discover yesterday that all their games play on Disney+.  Watched one in the afternoon – they cut out a lot of the entertainment but it was fun anyway.  I definitely won’t stop watching the FB clips!

Have you ever been a fan-girl or fan-boy?  Any fan merchandise you’ll admit to?

2026, crops, Food, Uncategorized

Birthday Sauce

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One my birthday Tuesday, more than one of my peeps said that they hoped I was able to not cook and just take it easy for the day.

My perfect day absolutely had cooking in it!   The weather was perfect for it, lovely and cool, but I would have cooked anyway.  Cooking is a gift I give myself.  Being overrun with tomatoes just cemented my desire.  There was a Sheet Pan Roasted Tomato Sauce recipe that I found in my Simply Tomato cookbook that I was looking forward to.  Here’s that recipe:

1 ½ lbs of tomatoes (all different varieties is fine), cut into chunks
1 large red bell pepper, cut into chunks
1 small onion, thinly slices
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon chili flakes
Salt & pepper
½ teaspoon dried oregano, parsley, basil
Vegetable broth (if needed)
Lemon juice (if desired)
Pinch of sugar (if desired)

  1. Mix the tomato chunks, bell pepper, onion and thyme in olive oil
  2. Spread the veggies on a large rimmed baking sheet
  3. Sprinkle dried spices over the veggies
  4. Roast for 35-40 minutes (stirring a couple of times) until everything looks nicely roasted
  5. When cool, pick out as many tomato skins as your patience will allow.
  6. Scoop everything into a blender and blend on medium until you get the consistency you like. This is where you can add some veggie broth if the sauce is too thick.

When I weighed the tomatoes out, it seemed like such a small amount that I doubled the recipe.  You’d think that after cooking 3 pounds of tomatoes, that my tomato stash would have at least a dent in it…..There are already three tomato dishes in the fridge so I froze the whole batch.   I’m guessing that within a couple more days, I can probably do another batch of this sauce (it’s really good) unless I find another recipe that looks good.

Any new recipes you’re tried out recently?  Any over-abundance of produce in your world right now?

2026, Food, Seasons, State Fair, Uncategorized

That Time Again….

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Yesterday I got an email from MPR inviting me to download an e-book titled 2026 Minnesota State Fair New Foods e-book.  I signed up and they sent me the e-book within a few minutes.  Gotta love computers.  The email also said starting Saturday I’ll be getting the Minnesota Today Weekend Edition newsletter.  If there’s any State Fair news, that will be fine, otherwise it will get discontinued.

I don’t really need to have three weeks to get prepared for State Fair.  We have all our tickets already.  I have a little checklist for things to take.  But after getting the e-book, I couldn’t help but do a little more.  So I printed out the actual tickets (back-up in case the whole cell-phone-wallet thing doesn’t work) and downloaded the two fair apps.  One is the official Great Get Together app and the other is called Minnesota on a Stick.  We don’t use these heavily but every now and then they come in handy with show times and locations of various food stuffs that we’re looking for. 

My state fair t-shirts are all folded nicely in one section of my t-shirt drawer.  Back before I was retired, I would wear one every work day in August.   Guess I can still do that, just at home.  I have 11 shirts at this point – short sleeve.  I also have one long-sleeve with a loon on it, but I’m not wearing that in August, so I don’t count it. (It doesn’t even live with the other fair shirts; it lives with my long sleeves.)

I probably won’t be able to keep myself from going to Cub in the next day or so to get our Blue Ribbon Discount Coupon books.  And I might have to print out my checklist!    Good grief.

Any big events coming up for you?  How long do you need to get ready to hear VS drone on and on about state fair this year?

2026, books, Mysteries, pets, Technology

Rookie Mistake

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I made a completely rookie mistake this week.

As you know, I have a highly curated library account.   My Holds list includes books that are on order still, that I am on the waitlist for and quite a few books that I have “paused”.  Every couple of weeks I go through all the paused holds, resume a few of them and then reset the pause date to some time in the future – usually three to four weeks out.  This has been my pattern for a couple of decades.

The past month my attention span has been fairly limited to the new dog.  Paperwork, initial vet intake, spay, the cone of shame, then the sleeve of shame (she got razor burn from where they inserted her IV and she just could not leave it alone).  Now we’re through all that and have started working on preliminary training and walkies every day.  Add the early morning potty breaks and the last in the evening journey outside as well and I feel consumed.  In a good way.

So it was shocking when I opened up my library account Monday night and saw that I have THIRTY books in transit.  THIRTY!  I completely forgot to check my Holds, so everything that had been set to July 27 is now on its way to me.  How could I do something this dumb?

I called my buddy who’s the manager of my library and he said there is really no way to circumvent this process short of calling the origin library for each book and asking if they can catch it.  I’m not doing that.  In addition to being a serious pain in the patoot for me, it would be an even bigger pain for the libraries and as my buddy said, probably wouldn’t work anyway.  Sigh.

So I guess I’ll have to seriously step up my reading for August.  For fun, here are some of the titles that are on the way to me right now!

  • And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game (one of the long-titled books I found earlier in the month)
  • The Chinese Parrot (a Charlie Chan novel)
  • The Concord Quartet (Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne & Thoreau)
  • Crock of Gold (people, gods, Irish fairies…)
  • Cursed Cocktails (blood mage tries to retire)
  • Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (“biography”)
  • Elizabeth I, CEO (what you think)
  • Ex-Wife (1925 woman finds herself after divorce)
  • Illuminations in the Flatwoods (wild turkeys?)
  • In Seven Stages (Elizabeth Bisland side of the Around the World story)
  • Kipling Sahib (Rudyard Kipling bio)
  • The Last Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes knock-off)
  • Lost Believers (novel inspired by true story… we’ll see….)
  • Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013 Pulitzer Prize)
  • Marie of Romania (queen consort of Ferdinand, King of Romania)
  • Murder and the First Lady (Eleanor Roosevelt solves the murder)
  • No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again (another long and intriguing title)
  • A Short Bright Flash (lighthouses!)
  • Enuf is Enough (a book about English spelling – yeah, I know I lead an exciting life!)

What’s a rookie mistake you’ve made?  Any good books on your nightstand?

2026, Art, Science, space, Uncategorized

Nerdy Merch

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Me being a bit of nerd is nothing new here.  At Blevins on Sunday we talked about Neil deGrasse Tyson and his book The Pluto Files.  I’ve always thought that he was one of the smartest folks out there but he’s funny about it, which makes him almost a hero in my eyes.

So I suppose it won’t surprise you that I have NdGT merch.  Of course not!   My first purchase was a t-shirt with a funny physics phrase (well, I think it’s funny anyway):

About a year after I got the t-shirt, I saw a solar system bracelet on an NdGT site and I really liked it a lot.  I don’t do a ton of jewelry but I do like to wear bracelets when I get “dressed up”.  But the bracelet had a $35 price tag on it and it didn’t have Pluto – two strikes are enough for an out in my world. 

So I did the next best thing – I made my own.  I started with a very cheap ($4) solar system bracelet that I found on line.  This had beads that I liked for most of the planets.

Then I supplemented it at my local Bead Hive and also used a coil bracelet wire (another $6).  I like the coil style because it’s comfortable, easy to put on and let’s you use way more beads!  It’s really hard to tell in the photo but I put all the planets in order after the sun and even put a star between Mars and Jupiter to represent the asteroid belt.  And, of course, I added Pluto.  Sorry to all the other dwarf planets for leaving them out.  I filled in the spaces between the planets with little black beads and more stars – not to scale obviously.

This is probably my favorite bracelet – I can wear it with just about everything except maybe an outfit all of pale pink and it only cost me $10 to make to my exact specifications.   Luckily I don’t have any all pale pink outfits, so I’m good on all fronts?

Do you wear t-shirts?  Any good slogans?  Ever made jewelry for yourself?

2026, Food, History, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Let’s Cook?

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I blame Survivor.

It came out in 2000 on CBS and for reasons that I don’t understand, although it’s been 26 years, there have been 51 seasons.  I never watched it; it just didn’t pique my interest.  There was some reality tv prior to that, but I think of Survivor as the true onset of what is still just a bleak landscape to me. 

Technically I had watched reality tv for years – all in the form of cooking shows.  After Survivor, slowly competitive cooking shows began to make an appearance. Not like any competition of the past in which a few folks cooked and there was one winner.  That was it.  No throwing someone off, week after week until just one is left standing.  I hate this.  Truly hate this.  If I see any of the following words in a cooking show title, I’m not watching – bake-off, cook-off, battle, class, contender, wars.  There are probably others but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.  I did make an exception awhile back; so many folks assured me that The Great British Bake Off was “different” that I watched a couple of episodes (the season with Nadiya Hussain).  It wasn’t different enough for me.  The whole “throwing one person off” is just too brutal for me. 

What this means is that I don’t watch much Food Network or Cooking Channel these days – almost everything seems to be some sort of competition.  Throwing someone off still seems to be all the rage.  What’s left?  Shows like Carnival Eats, Pioneer Woman, Girl Meets Farm and a small handful of “how is it made” types of shows like Food Factory and “where should I eat” shows like Cheap Eats. 

I was kind of hoping that there would be a swing away from these competitive shows after two+ decades, but it doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.  I’d even watch Julia Child’s French Chef if I could find it!

Do you watch any cooking shows?  (It’s ok if you like The Great British Bake-Off – I know I’m in the minority).  Do you ever try out anything you see?

2026, books, Food, Gatherings, Travel

Lazy Daze

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Every summer I spend a long weekend with one of my besties, who lives in Madison.  We always have a great time but I’m always amazed at how different these trips are from other trips, especially the ones I take with YA.

On Friday night we went to Susan’s favorite Mexican restaurant.  I’ve been there before with her and it’s nice.  On Saturday we went up to the capital building early for the Dane County Farmers Market.  I got my five loaves of Chili Cheese bread, a bunch of corn, a slice of purple yam pie, squeaky cheese curds, a massive cinnamon roll and a dozen peanut coconut donut holes.  Sunday night we went to her favorite pizza place – I got a tomato pie (similar to a margarita) – yummy.

That’s the most active we were.  The entire remainder of weekend was reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, yakking and then more reading and yakking.  I probably spent 10 hours sitting in a big comfy chair with my books.  I finished two books, well actually three if you count the CD that I listened to in the car on the way there and back.

Compared to my usual travels, it was a lazy lazy trip.  And I loved it.  No to-do list, no normal daily stuff.  Just relaxing.  As I was doing some errands Tuesday morning, I was already missing that comfy chair!

Where do you like to read?