My favorite Twin Cities ice cream shop is not an ice cream shop. It’s a drugstore. It’s called St. Paul Corner Drug, located on the corner of Snelling and St. Clair Avenues. I remember when their ice cream cones cost 35 cents, but it’s been awhile since the price was that low. A single scoop cone is now an exorbitant $1.75. A cup of coffee, however, is still a nickel.
The store has a traditional soda fountain counter that dates to the 1920’s. There are always four flavors of ice cream. Traditional vanilla, chocolate or some variation on chocolate, and a fruit flavor of some kind. The fourth is anybody’s guess. Might be butter pecan or salted caramel, peppermint bon-bon, or some novelty flavor like bubblegum.
The counter sports several racks of magnets with humorous sayings, which you can peruse while enjoying your ice cream.
On the outside of the building, there is a water faucet. Beneath it you’ll find two stainless steel bowls filled with water for the neighborhood dogs, in the warm weather months. There’s also a table if you feel inclined to bring your ice cream outside so you can hang out with your pooch.
There is, of course, a pharmacy counter, but IMHO, the ice cream is the best medicine.
I had a long day yesterday. No fault of mine – just an enormous number of little fires to put out besides the one that needed attending. A hard deadline this morning meant I just had to push through and accept that I would be working quite late. As a confirmed morning person, I reacted to the impending late night by abandoning the healthy lunch I brought for pizza, downing one can of caffeinated pop and then one bottle of caffeinated pop. Then I had a bag of chips and a bag of trail mix for dinner. Dreadful behavior and of course, I eventually ended up at home late with a headache and a queasy stomach.
How do YOU get a second (or third) wind when you need it?
It made big news yesterday that Elon Musk has chosen tech billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, as the first moon tourist for his company, SpaceX. Maezawa is 42 and made his fortune in e-commerce, music and online fashion. He will be taking 10 other artists with him on the journey that should take 4-5 days. The SpaceX rocket won’t actually land on the moon, it’s called a slingshot trip around the Moon and is currently on track for 2023.
Maezawa seems very excited about his adventure but I say “to each his own”. Letting tons of rocket fuel go up in flame under my keester just doesn’t seem like a good idea. And, of course, I couldn’t go that far from my library!
Shot up into space
In a really small tin can?
Leave it to others.
Would you like to visit another planet (or moon)? Extra points for haiku or rhyming!
On the way home from work I spied a card table on the boulevard with a little girl sitting behind it. I pulled over quickly; a card table on the boulevard with a child means just one thing – a lemonade stand.
When I was a kid, money was tight. My mother’s go to response when my sister or I asked for something was “there’s no money for that this month”. We were not poor by any means but there weren’t a lot of frills. So I was always trying to figure out ways to make a little bit of money, for candy or ice cream and the occasional Scholastic book.
One of those ways was a Kool-Aid stand. I could almost always convince my mother to part with one or two of the little Kool-Aid packets that we had in the pantry as well as the sugar. Construction paper and crayons were essential as well as paper cups. I sold the Kool-Aid for five cents and we lived on a fairly busy street so I could usually rake in a buck if I stayed at it long enough. I’m sure my folks spent more to fund my financial forays than I actually made. I never asked my dad about this but I’m sure he thought I was learning a good life lesson. My mother was probably just happy to have me occupied for a few hours.
I’m not sure if I learned any life lessons but I did become a lemonade stand aficionado. I always pull over for a lemonade stand; I’ve even been known to go around a block if I don’t see the stand soon enough to pull right over. These days juice, Kool-Aid or lemonade goes for a lot more than five cents but I’m always glad to pay it.
In July I posted on facebook something similar to this simple little vignette.
Went into Culvers today. One of the under 16-year-old employees, a polite boy, took my order. He made full eye contact and spoke clearly.
I said, “I will have the fish sandwich.”
He replied, “I did not know we had a fish sandwich.”
I answered, reading from the board, “The Atlantic Cod Sandwich Meal.”
“Oh,” he answered. “Is that what cod is?”
Then he took my order.
Now, first ask yourself what conclusions or interpretations of that little vignette you want to make. Don’t make them, but think of what you might say. Silly me. I thought I was describing a fun little moment.
I have only 48 friends on facebook, about a third of whom do not ever communicate with me. Another third made a comment, which fell into four groups.
Most common was to say how impolite teenagers are today. Did you notice I said he was polite, made eye contact, and spoke clearly?
Another set of comments was about how stupid teenagers are today.
A third group commented on how teenagers are bad at learning. It seems to me his comment “Is that what cod is?” makes it clear he was willing to learn. But I could be wrong.
The third group lectured me on unhealthful eating habits, although they said unhealthy and not unhealthful.
The last group said that schools and teachers today are terrible.
So because one 14- or 15-year-old boy does not know what cod is forms grounds for attacking teenagers, teachers, and schools. Everything about the boy suggested an intelligent and inquisitive person, a subject on which I feel I can make a swift judgment. But I could be wrong. Two of the commenters were favorite students of mine in the early 1970s. I wondered to them that with the loss of the cod fisheries how common the word cod is in teenagers private lives, or how often teenagers in Mankato eat fish. They thought about that and agreed that perhaps the word cod has fallen from the daily or school lexicon. I have often wondered how people decide schools are a place to fill kids heads with tidbits of information.
I suppose I should have stated that I was noticing cultural change, enjoying the moment.
I am tempted to draw a few sweeping generalities about their responses. I leave that to you.
I’m not sure how long ago Park `n Ride was instituted by the State Fair, but YA and I have been utilizing it for years. No driving around trying to find a close spot, attempting to parallel park on a busy residential street, having to remember where you parked and best of all, no trekking for what always seems like an interminable amount of time back to the car after all day at the fair. Our favorite Park `n Ride lot is the Wilder Foundation at Lexington; we’ve parked there for years. Everything always runs smoothly.
On Wednesday (my 3rd trip to the fair this year), imagine our surprise when things didn’t run smoothly. First, even though the lot was almost completely empty when we arrived at 7:30 a.m., there was a line up and the staff were flagging some folks away. Turns out that they were making everyone back into the parking spots, so it was taking three to four times longer to park. A few of us balked at this requirement and we were allowed to just pull into a parking spot.
Then they tried to manage the line of folks waiting for the bus. Normally we just line up along the west fence, the bus pulls up and we get on. Instead of this, they split the line in two and made the back half come up and stand parallel to the folks in the front half of the line. Then they tried to get the line to go along the north side of the fence. This was accompanied by a lot of “make a single file straight line” exhortations. This all went nowhere fast and was accompanied by a lot of “what are they thinking” comments from the crowd.
The initial consensus of those of us waiting was that they were thinking it would be easier/faster for people to pull straight out of the parking spaces when they got back to the lot. No one really thought this was needed but we couldn’t think of any other reason for being told to back in. As for the line management, we thought maybe they wanted to park cars along the west end, since a couple of spots on the lot were really muddy. But they never did park anybody there while we waited and nobody was parked there when we came back at the end of the day.
The cynical among us figured that one of the staff had probably been to “parking lot management” training the day before and was showing off their new knowledge. I’m going back tomorrow and am curious to see how it goes.
Have you ever tried to fix something that ain’t broke? Or been subjected to someone trying to fix something that ain’t broke?
I’m all set for my birthday week. As an adult, I don’t expect everybody to get all worked up about my birthday. In fact, when I came home from China with Baby, my mother said to me “You know, it’s not about you anymore.”
Several years ago I started cultivating companies that will help me celebrate. If you sign up online, they’ll send you a coupon on your birthday. This year I have coupons from Panera, Jamba Juice, Ben & Jerry’s, Brueggers, Nothing Bundt Cake, Noodles, Caribou and Dairy Queen. Except for Caribou which needs to be used on my actual birthday, I have planned to spread the others out over the upcoming few days.
I don’t give myself a card; it seems a little overkill to make a card and then give it to myself. However some years I do bake myself a birthday cake or a birthday pie; some years I even throw myself a party. No party this year and the jury is still out about the cake/pie. I gave my BFF theatre tickets for her birthday and turns out that the date that was good for her was my actual birthday, so I guess technically I gifted myself with theatre tickets this year!
It’s always fun to go into a new restaurant and see what the bathrooms are like. Some are very nice, some are small and rather “quaint” and some barely qualify as up to code.
I was in a hotel that had black mold on the shower tile and that one still qualifies as the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at.
There’s a business I get to a few times per year and the mens bathroom there has had a broken fluorescent light fixture leaning in the corner for several years and one urinal has had a bag over it just as long. And I have no idea what the womens bathroom is like. Not even sure where it is to be honest; it’s not right next to the mens anyway. I keep thinking there must be a nicer bathroom for employees someplace. Or maybe that’s just a ploy by the owner to be sure no one spends too much time in there.
I had to take pictures. Here are the signs on the four stalls:
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And the fun didn’t stop there:
Oh my….
Our townhall still has an outhouse. It’s insured for $500.00. Mens and womens side. Two hole-er on each! But no lights… plan accordingly.
First day back at work after a week and a half of stay-cation. By 3 p.m. I felt like I needed a nap. In my pajamas by 5:30 p.m. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little less consuming.
When have you needed a vacation after your vacation?
With humble gratitude for Meredith Wilson’s en-chant-ing opening to The Music Man.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Plastic for the orders.
Plastic for the downloads.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Visa for online.
Visa on the phone.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Credit for the software.
Credit for the hardware.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Credit for the needs, and the wants, and the bibelots.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Amazon for the hogs feet, cakes and longjohns.
Amazon for the crackers, and the pickles, and the computer paper.
PROGRAMMER 4:
Look, what do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 5:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 2:
You can script, you can program, you can script,
You can chat. You can twitter, twitter, twitter, you can chat.
You can chat. You can chat, chat, chat, chat, twitter, twitter, twitter.
You can twitter all you wanna, but it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No it ain’t, no it ain’t, but you gotta know the database!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Well, it’s Jeff Bezos made the trouble,
Made the people wanna buy, wanna get, wanna get, wanna get it in a box.
7,8,9,10,12,14, 22, 23 orders to the front porch.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Yes, sir, yes, sir!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Who’s gonna patronize a big box store anymore?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
NEWSPAPER READER 1:
Where do you get it?
ANALYST:
It’s not Amazon alone.
Take a gander at big box stores,
At the postmodern store,
At the out-of-date store
At the passe, postmodern,
Departmentalized big box store.
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 1:
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can twitter, twitter, twitter
You can chat, chat, chat.
You can twitter all you wanna,
But it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No, it ain’t, but you gotta know the database.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Why, it’s I-need-it-easy thinking
Made the trouble
Need it easy, need it easy.
Put the order in a box, in a box,
What I-need-easy
In a box with a smile
Made the big box store obsolete.
ANALYST:
Obsolete, obsolete, obsolete
SALESMAN 4:
Malls out the window.
The smiling box
Takes the job of the sales clerk.
Closing all the stores.
ANALYST:
Who’s gonna patronize the big box store any more?
PROGRAMMER 3:
Gone, Gone
PROGRAMMER 1:
Gone with the mall and the outlet and the discount store.
Gone with the chain and the retail store with clothes on a rack.
ALL
Who’s gonna patronize a bog box store any more.
Big box store.
What are the long-term implications for America and the world, assuming I dare worry about the world?
Trail Baboon 