Ah Minneapolis.
Fucking cold Minneapolis.
Our drive across the great state of Wisconsin was wrought with peril and also a prodigious amount of blowing snow over the prairies and farmland. At one point, it was a complete and total white-out in which we couldn’t even see the taillights of the car twenty feet in front of us. But it was fairly entertaining. We listened to an Eddie Izzard CD and then spent several hours speaking only in Eddie’s particular English accent, mostly consisting of ‘ooh’ well, now’ well, yes!’ and ‘Bloody hell!’ and ‘bunch of flowers!’ Also, there is a truck stop/grocery store/restaurant in Curtiss (location: middle of fucking nowhere) which I highly recommend. You can’t miss it because it is across the road from very possibly the largest and most inexplicable Mexican restaurant in the entire state. It was a most delightful potty break, although by that time, I was road delirious and stood in front of the Ty bean bag animal display and seriously contemplated buying a stuffed something or other, for the sole reason that I wanted to proudly walk (or cold weather scurry, as it was negative 17, with a wind chill that meteorologists were referring to as ‘purgatory’) back to the car and have Esteban take one look at my purchase and protest my frivolity in a bad cockney accent. Had they had a stuffed Pug dog, it would have been so, but they did not, so Esteban was spared the torment that I gleefully inflict upon him.
The drive across the state (which normally takes about three and a half to four hours) took six hours. SIX hours. And that was straight through, with two potty breaks. That’s insane. I have flown across the country in less time. Six hours. Really, it was seven by the time we got to our hotel, because Mapquest told us to take exit 7b but when we got there, 7b? Oh, you mean the exit that is inexplicably CLOSED. You’re on your own to figure it out from exit 6. Good luck and Godspeed. Which is, by my estimation, about 40 miles per hour.
We were trying a new hotel this time. The hotel situation with Esteban is usually a problem. When I travel alone, I find myself in hotels with concierges, room service, and nice linens. I prefer Aveda toiletries, even though I mostly end up bringing my own. I want the doormen to say ‘Hello Ms. Bix’ when I sashay in carrying many little shopping bags with fancy perfumed tissue paper in them. Mints on the pillow? De rigueur, baby.
However, Esteban is a simple creature. He is happy with a good desk, a good chair, and high speed wireless internet access. He is loath to spend more than $100 a night. Thus, when I travel, I stay in hotels with four or more stars, but when we travel together, we end up in a safe respectable albeit tourist-class hotel, where the front desk staff wear polo shirts with the hotel chain emblem silk-screened on the left breast. Thus, I scouted around and decided upon a hotel near the Mall of America and the location of Esteban’s conference which was reasonably priced and still had ‘European sheets’ and down bedding on a king sized bed (Esteban demands quite a bit of real estate between the sheets’it’s for my own well-being as well as his). Thus, when we did check in, we were happy to see that the room was a decent size, the bed was filled with feathers from top to bottom (feather bed, down blanket, down comforter, down pillows), and the heater worked. Very well. So well in fact that we ended up leaving the window open 6 inches overnight to bring the temperature down from ‘Lizard’ to ‘Human’. Which was a good thing because our eyeballs would have dried open and I would think that sleeping would be very difficult that way.
All in all, the hotel was nice, I suppose. A bit like camping, my inner-diva sniffs. No MTV, thus I was denied my very favorite morning hotel activity of playing videos while I get dressed, but there was the Family Channel, Discovery, and the Cartoon Network.
This, by the way, is foreshadowing.
Around 11 pm, Esteban and I put on our swimsuits and our fluffy white spa robes (courtesy of June, who thinks of everything for Poolapalooza) and wandered down to the pool, which was empty and all of 43 degrees. However, the hot tub was a nice toasty roasty temperature and soon simmered away as a pot of Weetabix and Esteban stew. Which is like stone soup, only not a Saturday afternoon story in every children’s library everywhere. And also a little porny. It didn’t matter, though, because there was no one to be seen on the lovely Wednesday evening at 11 pm. It was our pool room and our hot tub and I declared that we would have hot tub time every single night.
The next morning, we woke early and went down to the comp breakfast to determine whether it was edible. It most certainly was, containing make-your-own Belgian waffles and all the ice-cold orange juice you cared to eat. And also some vaguely edible fake eggs and frightening sausagelettes. But who cares? Waffles! Delicious hot lovely waffles with real butter and not horrible syrup. And I declared that I would eat waffles every single morning.
I drove Esteban, who looked very grrrrr in his black pressed flat-front trousers, stiff white oxford shirt and natty Jerry Garcia tie, to his conference and then went to the Mall, which you can read about here. I ended up with three pairs of black shoes at Nordstrom or Nordstrom Rack, a delightful shopping experience at Torrid (hi Torrid Girls!) which scored me a fourth Tinkerbell t-shirt, a bunch of Godiva chocolates, a pair of 9West sunglasses, and some other things I’ve probably forgotten. Oh and I dropped another $50 at the Sanrio store. Next time, I’m just not going in there. Obviously I have a problem.
Then Esteban and I grabbed lunch and I brought him back to the hotel so that he could continue to work on his oppressive articles. I took a light nap, watched the televised crack that is Starting Over (Hi, I’m completely addicted’ and also, when I was 19 years old, I WAS PJ. Seriously, she reminds me so much of me that it’s just not funny. Someone needs to give that girl a hug and tell her that she’s beautiful. Not just her face. Her. That’s all she needs. You’d be amazed.) Then, I decided to try for the second run at the Mall, since I had only covered the south half of the mall in the morning. On the second run, I hit Victoria’s Secret (for a ridiculous amount of smelly stuff), Lane Bryant (where I scored a sweater that was on uber-sale, a pair of yoga pants because I wanted to check out the fitness room at the hotel, a pink and black pinstriped button-down shirt, a pair of pajamas because I forgot mine, and a pair of socks. You can see the sweater on K.Lo’s entry.) and probably some other things, again, which I’ve probably forgotten. So, long story short, for those of you who trade the stock symbols LTD, CHRS, and JWN… you’re welcome.
Oh, and the best part of the shopping? The lady at Godiva carded me when I tried to buy a truffle with champagne in it.
We braved the frigid temperatures and went out to dinner at a local steak place, where I had some marginal ahi tuna and Esteban had a tasty slab of spongiform brain virus. He also encouraged me to get a drink and thus when I ordered some ridiculously named Malibu concoction (the lazy cow? The drunken sow? Something that offended the hell out of me so that I had to only point at the picture on the menu), the waitress carded me. I laughed, but she just sat there and waited for it. Then I told her that I loved her as I handed her my id. And she did the eyebrow raise thing and couldn’t believe it. I suspect they only do things like that to get a good tip, because I looked more or less like ass and in desperate need of a haircut. Maybe that’s the secret. Also, wearing a black hoodie with a Louis’ Auto Body t-shirt. After dinner, we suited up and went down to the hottub but after about ten minutes, were joined by a guy with a newspaper. The nerve! Didn’t he know that was our private hot tub?
On Friday morning, we had a morning of uninterrupted sleep until 9 and rushed down to eat waffles before the breakfast lady put all of the waffle goodness away. Then Esteban went back up to the room to work and I worked out in the fitness room (I know! I’m shocked and surprised as well! Perhaps it was trepidation knowing that I’d be spending the evening with two hotties like Akkelly and Ms. Hardbody Logic Be sure to mark this aberrant behavior on your Weetacharts!), doing free weights and then walking a half a mile on the treadmill until housekeeping came in and started vacuuming, which annoyed the hell out of me. Then I showered, got dressed in warm clothes and trekked off to find the local Sephora, which was somewhere in Minnetonka (I had the insane urge to find Lake Minnetonka and purify myself in it). After I bought another Urban Decay compact and a few more beauty tzchotskes. Then I trekked downtown, located the Walker art museum and spent the afternoon gazing at Warhols (fabulous) and Jasper Johns (not so much) and Lichtensteins (wow). Then I wandered across the street to the sculpture garden and green house.
One of the things that I love very much is to visit the little green house there when it is beyond belief cold outside. The last time I was there, Fern and I wandered around at 9 pm in the cold on a Friday night and it was like we had somehow left the cold of November and wandered into a patch of August that forgot to turn cold. I remember pilfering a tiny blood orange and then wandered around for the rest of the weekend, my cold hand feeling the little round ball of summer in the pocket of my black wool trench coat, until I haphazardly stuffed my car keys in my pocket, piercing the dwarf fruit and leaving red juice seeping into a wadded up Kleenex, so that it looked as though I had a phantom nosebleed. And this time was no different. Everything was beautiful. I had been taking pictures with my Canon in the arctic blast of the sculpture garden, loving the way that the snow rested on statues, expecting old men and naked torsos to shake it off, the stone to turn gooseflesh. But the minute I walked into the glass house, my big Canon lens had a terminal case of condensation, leaving me with only my little POS digital. I didn’t really care, instead happily tromping through ivy arbors and staring up at the big Plexiglas carp jumping up from a relative puddle of water. And it was as though I’d had a reprieve from winter, a glimmer of hope that this winter was only temporary. That green and pink still exist in this frozen landscape of white and grey and black and the nothing that is slush.
A day filled with art and rock and plants’ very very nice. I highly recommend it.
Then it was time for me to trek back to the suburbs and begin my preparations for dindin with K.Lo and Akkelly, but what I did not realize is that rush hour in Minneapolis apparently begins around 2 pm. It had taken maybe twenty minutes to get from Minnetonka to the Walker (which included vague, lost meandering downtown), but it took me ninety minutes to get back to the hotel! Ninety minutes! It was almost 5:00 when I returned, which made me panic, since Ak was picking me up in the 5:30 vicinity. I had been planning to wear some hotness, including the Rockin’ Boots, but since I had zero makeup on, I could either change clothes or do my hair and makeup. And the hair needed help, no doubt about it. Thus, I proved that I was flexible and decided to ditch the plans for Hotness. Ah well. Something for them to look forward to on the next visit.
Ms. AK picked me up in her cutsey imported auto and Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline was playing on her stereo. It was, of course, a harbinger of an excellent evening to come. And Neil was not wrong (well, of course he wasn’t. Neil is always right. Always. Well, maybe not in wardrobe selections’ those pointy-collared rhinestone numbers leave much to be desired.) as the minute we arrived at Casa De Logic, we were treated to a lovely evening. Ms. Logic’s cosmopolitans are PERFECTION. Seriously. And I’m excruciatingly picky when it comes to my cosmos! But total perfection. And also, they indulged me in my matching sickness (y’all, seriously, I am broken in the head. You have no idea) by using the plates which matched our clothing (squee!) for our delicious dinner (Peking chicken, beef lo mein, egg rolls, steamed dumplings, something something else, all yum yum), followed by Scotcheroos. And I got to meet the completely adorable Thing #1 and Thing #2. And Thor, who wandered through while I was looking at our self-portrait, in which I seem to have grown three double chins. ‘I have a goiter in this shot.’ ‘Well,’ Thor said dryly, ‘pictures don’t lie.’ How can you not love a guy like that! Hilarious!
Then we sat in K.Lo’s unbelievably comfortable living area (aka ‘the gossip room’ tm Akkelly) and proceeded to have wonderful conversations punctuated by cosmo refills, more Scotcheroos (ooh, so very good!) and a wrong number on my cell phone at 11 pm (yep, it wasn’t a bootie call, ladies! I’m so disappointed.). Finally, somewhere around the time when coaches turn into pumpkins and horses back into field mice, we bid adieu and made plans to attempt boating during the short window of opportunity when water is in its liquid state. Truly the best evening of the trip. If not the month. Or very possibly all winter. I absolutely adore them and am so happy that they keep inviting me to hang out with them when I’m in their town.
I crawled into bed sometime around 1 and then slept for what might have been twenty minutes before I was awakened by a strange sound.
‘AAAAAIIEIEEEIEIEIEIEEEEEEE!!! Yay yay yay yay!’ * thump * thump* *thump*
Then talking. Adults talking. I opened one eye at the clock. It was 7:01 am. Did Esteban set our alarm to the Screeching Child mode?
‘AAAAIEIEEIEEE!!!! DAD! DAD! DAD! DaddaddaddaddaddadMOM!’
Apparently, there were people in the room next to us. Apparently, they felt they were the only people in the hotel. I sighed. Esteban, who usually sleeps through the cacophony of our own alarm, said ‘Little fucker.’ I remarked that I really didn’t have a problem with the kid, because the parents were also talking rather loudly and even without the war cries, they would have still woken me up.
Then we listened to conversations with his parents. We learned that the child’s name was Alex and that his father loves him (awww’ that was sweet) and was sorry that they quarreled (seriously, he used the word ‘quarreled’. Who are these people?). But nothing about how Alex should use his inside voice because they were in a hotel and it was some ungodly hour of a Saturday morning. Nothing. Seriously, it was worse than the car alarm, because it was just plain rude. Esteban suggested that we have some mad passionate sex, including safe words and the phrase ‘Ride it, Bitch!’, and as fun as that sounded, it also seemed like a lot of work, so we both got up and proceeded to get ready while griping about how some people just weren’t raised correctly and the next time we were staying at the Ritz, where the beautiful vases in the reception prevent all but the truly clueless.
Then, after Alex let loose with one rather obnoxious scream, Esteban replicated it back at the wall, mimicking with scary precision the tone and timbre. Suddenly, the room next door was completely silent and then we laughed and laughed and laughed.
We are very evil. I hope we embarrassed the hell out of them.
We got dressed in peaceful silence, packed up all of our stuff, and then headed downstairs to let the car warm up. We wandered into the breakfast room and found that it was transformed. Where once there had been quiet businessmen and middle-aged couples, there were now families. Kids with bare feet blissfully ignoring the sign indicating that shoes must be worn in the room at all time. Women who looked incredibly tired, and fathers who were desperately trying to corral their offspring. We ate our waffles quickly. A ten-year-old girl in Tinkerbell pajamas (pajamas!) and bare feet eyed the Tinkerbell on my baseball t-shirt warily, not knowing how to deal with the details overloading her brain. I got irritated when the Belgian waffle iron thing was beeping without stopping, the owner of the waffle obviously distracted and someplace else. I flipped it open so that it wouldn’t start a fire and would stop beeping, but then the breakfast lady took over, uncertain who owned the waffle. For some reason, I am certain that the guilty party was the Father Of Alex, simply because at that point, I had already invented a whole irritating personality for him. We then loaded up the car and fled, glad that the majority of our stay had been on school nights. Note to self: next time the hotel doesn’t offer MTV, this is a sign of things to come.
Esteban wanted to hit the road immediately, but I demanded that we find the Whole Foods. Because I’ve found that when the Burgermeister peeks his unruly head into our relationship, the only way to combat that is to be demanding and adamant that he is being unreasonable. Thus, we wandered around Whole Foods and Esteban delighted in trying all of the gourmet cheeses and I bought some handmade marshmallows (which are, by the way, delicious and make me want to try my hand at making my own. In some other life when I have figured out a way to stop living like a pack of wild dogs and have unlimited free time.) and a bunch of foofoo whole earth delicacies that allow me to commune with my inner hippy child. And then I had some Jamba Juice, which I haven’t had since San Francisco. It’s a good thing we waited to visit Whole Foods until we were about to leave, otherwise I would have declared that I wanted to have Jamba Juice every single afternoon.
Then we trekked homeward. We stopped at the Best. Restaurant. EVER. Which is, for those of you playing along at home, the Norske Nook in Osseo. Which is a town but not quite a palindrome. There, I had the delightful hot turkey sandwich, which seemingly was crafted by the ghost of my great grandmother. Esteban, on the other hand, had an smothered omelet, which was eggs and cheese and sausage wrapped in a big pillowy lefse, and then smothered beyond recognition in hollandaise sauce. I swan, my heart seized just looking at his plate. It was a Cholesterol Pride breakfast, shouting ‘We’re Fat, That’s That, now pass the damn defibrillator.’ After which, we both had pie. Because damn’ pie. Seriously. Norske Nook Pie. Man. You have no idea.
Also, I bought a Dutch apple pie to take home. It was the most expensive pie I have ever purchased in my life (so much for little towns being quaint and inexpensive!), but it was really a bargain, because I have eaten little else since Saturday. Seriously. The pie. Damn. Just’ damn. I may cry when it is gone. Or be dead of malnutrition. No, wait, it’s fruit. Ok, then, we’re all good.
In a feat of uber-geekdom, Esteban suggested that we listen to the new Eddie Izzard routine that he had downloaded in Minneapolis. I just happened to have some blank CDs in the trunk of the car, so while we stopped at a gas station to wash our windshield (the car was almost unrecognizable under the road schmeng’ and still is, because if we take it through the car wash, it will freeze shut or open), I sat there with Esteban’s mammoth laptop on my lap, burning the CD, which we then listened to for the majority of the ride home.
We finally stumbled into our house at 6:30 pm. Tilly decided that we didn’t suck after all and was clingy and grateful for our company. Esteban continued to try to gain ground on his workload and I retired to watch Tivo. And eat more pie.
It’s all about the pie.
Lovely weekend. Pictures to come.
