Thus Far, Mission Mostly Accomplished

A kind suburbanite in florescent orange Gators and matching 600 fill down jacket offered to take this picture of us after I offered to take one of her and her family. As you can tell by the expression on my face, I had no idea what I was in for once the "musical" started.



Seconds after, and actually as I was taking this picture I was informed by three ushers and a security guard that there is no flash photography of the show. To which I responded: "I know that, thank you. I wasn't aware that having your ticket scanned was part of the performance. Sorry."



Optimus gives the play a thumbs up. He really liked it. Personally, there are a lot of other things I would have rather been doing for that hour and a half. For instance, I could have gotten a lobotomy, so it wouldn't have been such a painful experience.



It was a musical about a magical tree house, with adults pretending to be children and more adults pretending that poorly made puppets (that reminded me a lot of Zaphod Bebelbrox in the BBC rendering of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, except not as nicely done see picture to the right if you've never seen the miniseries) were real people and that they were living in the magical land of Camelot. The trash talking uncultured mother of six behind me that spent the play texting, put it best when she said to her three year old daughter in what I'm sure she thought was a whisper, "This shit just ain't right, I mean who the fuck cares if thems people's sad, baby." Followed up with a commentary to her friend during intermission about how all these fucking crazy suburbanites and their cookie cutter kids were freaking her out with how enthralled they were with this stupid story.

She got me wondering, what is it exactly that appeals to a suburban minded parent about the magic tree house? The premise is that this brother and sister duo find a magic tree house that lets them visit different times in history, and made up worlds featured in books. Which sort of reminds me of the ideas behind Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart, except that the brothers have to die to go to this magical world, and the brother and sister in this story don't.

I wonder if it's a safe sort of imagining for them? No threatening ideas? Maybe. Non threatening ideas are popular in the non urban community. Whatever, on to Freewheel!



I know! What a terrible parent I am! Why on earth would I be letting him ride his bike without a helmet!?! Well, we needed to test out the trip computer after the nice sales people took a few minutes to sort out why it wasn't working for us. Apparently, you have to put the wheel parts on the front wheel and not the back one as we had done. Little guy is good to go now!

Some Info on the Species Populating the Rookery

Here's the Wikipedia page for Great Blue Herons. Lucky for me, our community newspaper also put together a piece on the birds returning to their nesting grounds on the island in the Mississippi river that you saw in my previous blog post. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have it on their website, so I'm posting a photo of the physical paper below.



Wondering what else is going on on the Northside? Ck out the North News!

Obligation

Nora's funeral was today. I feel obligated to go out and admire the city in her memory this weekend. Optimus and I will start with a play at the State Theatre--The Magic Tree House-- then venture South to Freewheel to see if our favorite bike shop can figure out how to get his trip computer he purchased with his saved up allowance last weekend to function. I'm baffled, but the directions were obviously written by a complete douche so I'm not letting my inability to decipher them to phase me.

After that, you ask, well I think we'll head on over to Bead Monkey's Minneapolis shop for some beading supplies, to make some cool Jewelry when the sadness of a snowstorm in April overcomes us a bit later in the afternoon. And since no Saturday is complete without a visit to the Minneapolis International Airport (not!) we'll go there next to collect my mother from a week of gallivanting in SC.

When I laid this Saturday plan out for my friend Cheryl that carpools with me, she looked at me for a second, then blurted out, "My god, you do more in one day than I do in a month!" Which I took to be a complement.

Here's to hoping that next weekend allows for a ride on my swanky new bike. . .

Which is really a story unto itself. That I'll save for another time so as to not jinx myself.