Another reason to be mad at my Minneapolis friends

First, they live in a city with both IKEA and Williams-Sonoma. Then they were sitting on Trader Joe's. The latest thing I've discovered that they have access to and I don't: Red Robin

For those of you who don't know, Red Robin is a glorified burger joint. What I would call a 'gourmet burger' place. The first Red Robin is still in business across the Montlake Bridge from the University of Washington campus, overlooking the Cut. But the chain is (according to the website) 350 locations strong.

Sometimes a boy just needs a Banzai Burger, which is a seriously thick juicy yummy burger with teriyaki sauce, a grilled pineapple ring, shredded lettuce, tomato, and enough mayo to bring down a weather satellite. With big huge wunnerful steak fries and/or the biggest thickest onion rings you've ever had in your life. Or a Bleu Ribbon Burger. It's always one of the two. Unless it's the Whisky River Burger or ....

Mmm. I <heart> Red Robin.

In the old days, they had a circus/carousel theme and servers in cheerleader sweaters, girls in pleated skirts, boys in trousers. Now all the servers wear more sober red polo shirts and black slacks, but the decor is still shiny kitchy wall stuff and wood and brass.

And just for the halibut I'm poking around on their website, and I find not one, but three in the Twin Cities area, one in Plymouth, just off the 494. Rats. I gotta go back to the Twin Cities again this summer.

Il pleut. Llueve. It's raining.

Fitting end to my pilgrimmage to the old country.

I seem only to have had fast food Mexican on this trip (if I can delay my drive back enough I'll stop in at a real restaurant for a late lunch/early supper later). But Taco John's is still a big step up above Taco Bell, at least in Canada. Chicken taco salad, and then later a steak burrito. Mmm.

Okay, shopping report. Albertville yielded a decent pair of shoes, four pairs of pants, shorts, and at least one shirt that I can recall. IKEA yielded toffee candy (for the office--I try not to indulge unless I'm hypo), a middle-sized saucepan to go in between the little one and the big one and the bigger one that I got as a set last year), a couple of small 'soda' 'pitchers' that I'm going to use as tumblers, and a pair of narrow-ended tongs. I like tongs in my kitchen. Trader Joe's yielded sundry jarred goods for me and gifties, and some cookies. Okay, those I'll indulge in, but in small quantities over long periods of time.

I'm now listening to Car Talk on the radio, having listened to about an hour of Weekend Edition this morning. I miss NPR.

I was too late for fresh biscuits this morning, so I'm having my Hampton Inn sausage patties on a bagel. Raisin, but it was the only one that looked like it had a useful grain. And some yogurt. And coffee. Ahh. I'm going to have to remember this kind of breakfast when I get home.

Note to Hampton Inn, Fargo: Hampton Inn, Maple Grove, has cute little round eggy things to go with their sausage and biscuits. Mmm.

Okay, must finish my yogurt (which thank &deity; isn't spelled 'yogourt' down here. It's the little things that make you miss your home country).

Should've posted this last night, but I was sleepy

Qdoba's chicken queso burrito. Mmm.

Adventures in health care

Turns out, I'm anemic.

Well, that's not what the doctor said. The doctor said my 'hemoglobin was down', and that I seemed to be 'holding on tight' to iron. I have no idea what that means. My Hb is at 131 (I take it that that's grams per liter), where 'normal' for men is 140-180. So a) I'm now on an iron supplement, b) I have to go off the iron supplement and follow a special diet for several days to do the Occult Blood test, and c) after that, it's off to the GI specialist.

Could be a diet thing. I did check through all my meds and none of them specifically mention iron absorbtion problems. Assuming I'm not bleeding internally or have any of the more dire possibilities, which are really very remote in the circumstances, the obvious solution is to eat more red meat. Yay. I love red meat. I always assumed too much.

I assume that has consequences for the cholesterol and the B12 (or one of those Bs, I forget which, which is only available through red meat or supplements). But whatever. I'm not worried. Except for the forthcoming adventures in medical testing, which I don't expect to be a problem, but won't be any fun.

Yay!

Things may be turning in my direction. In the last four hours, I've found my iPod and the remote for my DVD/VCR. I have reset the clock on the VCR, and I have cooked a majorly delicious flank steak. Okay, I found the frozen marinated steak in the bottom of the freezer the other day while I was looking for something else, but the point is I cooked and it turned out wunnerful. And so far I haven't done anything to bring the wrath of my endocrinologist down upon me.

Now I just need to finish marking some papers, get a couple of things read, and decide whether or not I'm going to church in the morning.

Woo effing hoo!

Did I mention my vacuum cleaner is still in the trunk of the car?

It's Tuesday. I woke up sort of late, meaning on time, but late in the sense that I had meant to get an early start.

I started my day at StB hospital, to have some blood drawn for some tests. I'm supposed to do it a week ahead of an appointment, but the appointment is on Thursday and I forgot about it until Saturday and didn't have a chance to go in yesterday.

I then had a 'baby' apple pancake at the Original Pancake House. Yum. And sat and had a coffee at the coffee place at the Forks, working on some notes regarding my latest Acting-Head crisis. Which we're going to have to suck up and pay for, and in the scheme of things it's not that much, but really, I'd rather not go begging for money from the Dean considering I've already done stuff to to make his life miserable. So I noodled out some questions for some others that might lead to some solutions I didn't/couldn't/wouldn't think of on my own.

Then I went to Diamond Sports & Medical supply, where I hoped to find a thick yoga mat, and better blocks. And maybe a knee pad for those lunge positions. Didn't find squat. Spent a long time playing with the stretchy bands and tubes and things they use in Pilates and stuff, and considered the purchase of a distance-gripper thingy and a bedpan as a gift for a friend of mine (long story, to be shared some other time).

Then I went to the mystery bookstore and bought some books, now that I'm back to reading at night.

Which was originally going to be the topic of this post. I've just discovered Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series, featuring one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the only openly practicing Wizard known, who works as a sorcery consultant, sort of a PI of the supernatural, out of an office in Chicago. Good voice, well drawn characters. Lead with a shady past. Funny and atmospheric, lots of great supporting characters (my favo(u)rite being Bob, the lascivious air spirit who lives in a skull in Harry's basement). Good supporting characters with inner and outer conflicts. Not 100% sure about the world, the way magic works in this universe. But lots of hints of more to explore (The White Council, a Vampiress owner of a pricey escort agency, the mysterious Nevernever, a Warden with a sword and an axe to grind. And a mortal crime boss to get in the way--I particularly loved the line "I've never had a Godfather, but I do have a godmother, and she is, as it happens, a faery." Or something like that.) So I went looking for book #2 at the mystery place, which of course they didn't have. The did have #9, the new one, which apparently just came in, but I have to read things in order or it just doesn't work for me. Ended up buying some other stuff, but I'll have to go elsewhere to hunt up the rest of the Butcher novels.

So after all that, I did some shopping, bought groceries, and now I'm contemplating doing a whole lot of cooking so I can save some time as I go on this week. Really need to do laundry at some point. And get my new vacuum cleaner out of the trunk of the car.

How I spent my first MHGS Tuesday

Not how I wanted.

Had a decent breakfast. Made some killer chicken salad and a sandwich on chiabatta for lunch. Packed it carefully and then left it in the refrigerator when I came in to work. Spent most of the afternoon trying to move stuff from one office to another, wondering why, oh, why do we keep all this stuff, but not quite willing to take time to work out what's worth keeping or not. I guess that's why. Came up with a plan to get rid of stuff really nobody wants, which was roundly rejected by the person who I charged with doing it, but then somebody else came up with a better plan, so fine. Main thing, it's not my problem any more.

Then, towards the bottom of a pile of boxes to be moved, I hit a bankers box, you know the kind, with a stickie on it that says, get this, "SHRED". At the bottom of a pile of boxes in an office being used partly as an office and partly as a storage room. "SHRED".

So I spent about half an hour of my life shredding papers going back to *1993*. Honestly. a) what were these things doing in storage in the first place, and b) why was it my job to shred them? But I realized if I didn't, no one would, so I did. At least my colleagues, once they realized I was missing, took it upon themselves to move the rest of the stuff off the bookcases. But sheeshwhiz.

So I was working on my goals, while I was standing at the shredder which for some reason always makes my back hurt after a while, but what I came up with was the themes for my administration as acting head:

1. get rid of stuff no one in range has an earthly use for
   
2. get rid of stuff that someone in range *might* have an earthly use for, but is easily and inexpensively replaced when and if such a use is discovered
   
3. of the remainder, find a way to arrange for individuals to
   
   
   
   1. liberate things to their own private collections
      
   2. nominate stuff for public use, like intro textbooks, workbooks, stuff like that
      
   3. nominate stuff that could usefully have a home elsewhere, like the language departments, anthropology, etc.
      
   4. for anything that remains, arrange for them to go to the library, where they can decide whether they're worth keeping or not
      
   and finally
   
4. get rid of stuff no one in range has an earthly use for
   

Part of me really wants to find a way to apply this to my personal life. For instance the elliptical trainer I have which is still too hard on my knees, and basically just sits collecting dust and getting in the way; the gazelle trainer which I like but basically just sits holding laundry until I come up with something else to do with, and anyway could be moved out and give me space to do yoga at home; the dead TV and ancient computer sitting in storage waiting for me to take them to the e-dump. That sort of thing.

I haven't been keeping up with my 10 minutes of stuff, although I have been better about throwing stuff out and getting or keeping stuff in useful piles, but I really have to get off the stick, 10 minute-wise. So here's my goals.

15! minutes of domestic activity a day;
30 minutes of domestic activity at least once in the next week;
and getting the tray of my humidifier into the dishwasher sometime this week, and clearing the tabletop of my bistro table to the point where I could actually wipe it off and serve a meal on it. Haven't see the whole surface of that table in years. Oh, and get my new vacuum cleaner out of the trunk of my car and into the apartment. Not that I have enough floor to vacuum yet, but maybe having it staring at me will be incentive. Certainly can't be less incentive than sitting in the trunk of the car.