We will leave our house in St. Louis Park on July 31.  The moving truck will be picked up on July 30, so we will have two days to pack it.  Early in the morning on August 1st, Bill and I will leave for Bowling Green, OH.  We will arrive almost 12 hours after we left.  August 2nd, Bill’s 28th Birthday, will be spent unpacking the truck and returning it to Uhaul.  The rest of the week will require us to unpack the life we will start in Ohio.  I will start the GradStep (My training program) on August 17th.

We have two free weekends between now and July 31, (June 26-28 and July 24-26).  Along with that I am on my summer break starting June 30-July 6.  Bill and I have a few sparse commitments during the weeks ahead.  In short there is no time for a Farwell Celebration, but I can’t drink all of this alcohol alone¹.  If you want to say good bye to the two of us, you need to come over.  We will not make you pack anything, at least not until the end of the month.  But come over for a few hours and have some drinks, I will feed you with whatever I can find in our pantry.  You may end up eating Snobby Joes², but they are amazingly delicious.

<sup>1. Note from Bill:  She is making a valiant attempt.
2. Note from Bill:  These are vegetarian Sloppy Joes made with lentils.</sup>

Galaxy Drive-In, at least what is left of it.

This is the hot dog stand down the street.  The one I have never visited.  The website says it will be ready late spring 2009.  It is now mid-June 2009, and I am not eating a Chicago dog.  The Veggie Philly looks good too.

The park just down the bike path from us, in the other direction, is also under construction.

The Beehive fireplace, looking over Highway 100

The fireplace, with the Nordicware plant behind it.

The City of St. Louis Park is trying to make the park more user friendly, especially from the bike path. Bill and I found it last year on accident, and we had to tread through undergrowth and bramble to get there. The have several stone picnic tables.

My handsome fellas

They just added a fire pit.  Cody is not a fan of the fire pit.

Cody, looking for an exit

Success!

I did make plans last weekend to complete list things.  It takes several weeks to find a date which the Bergs can meet with the Santjers.  Last weekend the three of them, (Katie, Joe, and baby Charlotte, though I don’t think she had much of an opinion) agreed to make the trek south to see us.

Charlotte Mae

I thought it would be fun to go to the Sculpture Garden and take pictures of adorable Charlotte on the Spoon.  Sadly, it rained for four days straight.  So we stayed home, made salmon, and watched a Riff Trax.

Bill is also a stick in the mud.  The Uptown was showing a good movie this week, Pulp Fiction, which I have never seen.  Bill is not interested in seeing that film, so we now have two more weeks to wait and see what they play then.  I have my summer break starting in two weeks, so we can cross more things off the list then.

July is coming fast.

Bill outside Adam Truman

I came across Adam Truman’s artwork at my first Craftstravagana.  Mr. Truman is an artist who uses screenprinting as his medium.  His style is distinctive and after you recognize it once, you will see his art all over Minneapolis.  I divide his style into three genres: Local landscapes, gig posters, and “Boob, Skulls, and Flames.” I am a bigger fan of the local landscapes over the other topics, but the Boobs, Skulls, and Flames have their appeal.

Over the past three years I have given his art as gifts several times.  I gave my parents this print as an anniversary present, because it looks like St. Patrick’s Church in Cavour, SD.  I gave Erica this print because it reminded me of her new relationship with some lame guy.  I swear this is Izzy on our way to into First Ave, so I gave it to her for Christmas last year.  I know how much Anne and Josh miss Minnesota so I purchased his calendar of landscapes as a Christmas gift.

One of my favorite bits of his art is the coloring.  When I was young and I would draw pictures, everything had to be real.  The grass was always green and the sky was always blue.  It never occurred to me that I had the power to make the grass blue and the sky green.  That is why I am a Communication Scholar and not an artist.    I love it most when he plays with shading of a given color.

My greatest criticism is his objectification of women, which is Bill’s favorite part of his art work.  I like his work where women are the protagonist, but there is a clear difference between the gaze of this verses this.  However, my issues with his work are marginal.  This is not art criticism because I know little about art, but I know what I like and don’t like.  Simply I find his landscapes moving and I need something of his to frame and take with us to Ohio.

I am Facebook friends with Adam Truman and he advertised the Art-A-Whirl as a status update, an announcement which included a statement about a discount on prints.  As a Midwesterner I cannot resist a discount.  So I convinced Bill that we needed to head up to Northeast Minneapolis to hit this gallery.

I had some ideas about what I wanted to buy, but I wanted something for us both.  I had decided that I could not pick one of his landscapes, because none of them spoke true to our Twin Cities experience.  I don’t like Grainbelt Beer, I don’t know the Fosay Tower that well, and I am not intimately connected with the mills on the river.  This painting reflected some of our experiences, but it is was out of our price range.  And for my Mankato friends, here is this work of awesome.  I decided I to purchase the postcard versions of several of these prints.  For the print I wanted a picture, something artful and moving.  After flipping through things I found something Bill and I could agree upon.

This print is called “Red Fence,” a pretty girl walking next to a fence.  Like most local artists my actual purchase was made by Adam Truman, who was also bantering with friends and other people who were buying art.  Mr. Truman told me that this print was of an actual person.  He saw her picture, I am unsure if it was in a magazine or a modeling website, he asked if he could borrow her likeness and she agreed.  He paid her in some free artwork.

We left the gallery, but we were both hungry.  I convinced Bill that we should head down the street to Psycho Suzi’s.  Where we came upon this table…

A Pinic Table

We order a pizza and some salads, with one damn strong drink.  We kept ourselves entertained by this guy’s shirt and Bill trying to look pretty.

Bill is pretty

Guy in a clever shirt

Bill, walking into the Mankato Olive Garden

Our first stop on the Goodbye tour is in no way prestigious or even interesting. We ate at an Olive Garden. We were heading to South Dakota to see my Grandfather and other family members on a busy May weekend. I had to stop in Mankato to pick up my bridesmaid’s dress for Nicole and Dave’s wedding. We also needed lunch.

Mankato possesses a romance that is out of place for a city of its stature. Bill likes to deny the locational significance of where we met, but I celebrate it. Mankato is the staging of our love story. I know I am not alone in this affection and sentimentality for the hilly river valley. Some people have Paris or New York, we have Mankato.

I must discuss is the significance of the Olive Garden. Mankato is a city with an absence of culture; at least it was from 1999-2005.*  One of Bill’s Mass Communication Professors said you had to go to the Twin Cities for a night on the town because Mankato doesn’t have any restaurants or movies. To some degree that elitism is honest. There are smatterings of local (non-bar) establishments. For a night out you were relegated to either an Applebee’s or Friday’s. If you wanted a fancy night out your choices were Red Lobster or Timberlodge. All anybody wanted in a nice dinner with family or friends was Italian food, but we had to settle for Super Fries.**

Long before I moved to Mankato the rumors of the coming of an Olive Garden were constant. These rumors persisted for the six years I lived in Mankato. The rumors hit fever pitch at the abrupt closing of the Ground Round.***  I was in my second year of Graduate Teaching and I had a student who was convinced she was quitting her waitress job at the Timberlodge in a few days to perform the same job at the Olive Garden.

When Bill and I left Mankato for the Twin Cities in July of 2005, the Ground Round building remained empty and the rumors persisted. In the winter of 2006, the status quo was violated, when the Olive Garden opened in a renovated location of the Ground Round. By this time we didn’t care, we lived in a city with several hundred interesting restaurants that we never went too.

I have eaten at the Mankato Olive Garden twice. We had a Bridal Party lunch there on Emily’s Wedding day. But Bill, who rarely returns to Mankato, had never been there. I tried to talk him out of it, but soon I had no choice.

Trip Highlights
• Taking pictures of Bill, because he hates it.

Bill, drinking iced tea at the Olive Garden

• Not letting Bill order an appetizer knowing we did not need one because of salad and bread sticks.
• The waitress who was way too interested in our cell phones.
• I do not remember what I ordered, but I do remember spilling it on my shirt.
• The hostess was possibly the student I mentioned above, but pregnant. [

*Some argue Mankato has always lacked culture and continues to lack culture. Others may say culture began exist when Starbucks arrived. Even more will proclaim that a new bar which features women in ass-less chaps is the down fall of all civilization. I want you to make up your own mind.

**I am not besmirching Super Fries, they are awesome. One might say they are super.

***According to myth, rumor, and fact, the management of the Mankato Ground Round was ordered by the corporate folks to close the restaurant in the middle of lunch service.

Rules of the Goodbye Tour
-Bill and I, to the best of our ability, do these together.  But there are things on the list he will not do, like drink with me or reenact scenes from bad 80’s movies.  He says he has standards, I say he is a stick in the mud.
-We will perform most of these actions with family and friends.  Or who ever is there at the time.
-If you want to participate in an activity let me know.
-There must be pictorial documentation.  If we are not mediated, we do not exist.
-Either Bill or I will write a bloggish missive about our outing.

The Loen Berg Goodbye Tour of Minneapolis/St. Paul and parts of the Upper Midwest

1.    Cleanse myself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka
If we don’t, the doves will cry.

2.    A trip to the Sculpture Garden
The Spoon is a Twin Cities landmark.  Simply, I need to go and pose inappropriately with statues.  It is what I do.

3.    Picnic at the Highway 100 Roadside park
This is a tiny park with stone benches and picnic tables.  It is less than a half mile from where I currently live and it is cool

4.    See a Movie at the Cottage Grove Drive-in
As of right now this is the only thing Bill wants to do.

5.    Ride the Light Rail
I have lived here for almost four years and I have never had the opportunity to ride this train.  I plan to ride the whole way down and the whole way back.

6.    Buy an Adam Truman print of MSP
I love his artwork and I want his visions of this city when I leave.  He also has a deal that if I buy $50 of his stuff that I can get a discount for this guy’s bitching coasters.

7.    Eat at hot dog place in SLP
Once again, I live less than a mile away and I have never eaten here.  Bill says it is off limits because of our vegetarianism.  I say he is a communist.

8.    See Lake Superior
Bill was shocked to hear that I had never seen Lake Superior.  I have seen it from the air, but I have never been in its presence.  It is his fault.  I have never been to Duluth.

9.    See the Duluth Harbor
The above answer is the same.

10.    See a midnight movie at the Uptown
This will be hard since I now go to bed at 9:30.  It is also hard because the list of midnight showings is impossible to find.  So if anyone who reads this drives by the Uptown Theater, let me know what is playing.

11.    Eat at Zanz
This is a Mankato institution, which I have avoided out fear of a contact high.

12.    Go to the Walker
I like art, I like avant garde art, I don’t know always what this art means, but I enjoy it none the less.  They also have free Thursday nights.

13.    Last concert with Izzy
My sister is my concert buddy.  I am moving too far for her to run up to the Cities to see a concert.  So we need one last hurrah, hopefully at First Ave.  But we haven’t found anything which fits in our schedules yet.

14.    Go to Zesto
Zesto is an ice cream place with three locations: Pierre, Huron, and Brookings, SD.  I love Zesto and we used to go the one in Pierre and Huron all the time.  No one ever goes to Brookings, so we never bothered with that location.  When I head to Huron, I need to take Bill to this childhood staple.  I hope they will be serving strawberry-banana frozen yogurt for Bill and cherry sherbet for me.

15.    Mill Tour
Along the Mississippi River on the Minneapolis side are several rundown flour mills.  It is because of these mills Minneapolis prospered and I would like to take sometime to see them.  Okay, I was working on this list while sitting next to John Kohagen.  Apparently his trip to the Mill City Museum has scared him for life.  He told me there was a shifting demonstration.  How cool is that?

16.    Mississippi River Walk
There are bike trails next to the river bank and you can walk along that great river.  I also want to walk underneath the 35W Bridge.

17.    Experience Twin Cities theater
I don’t know if I will get to do this, simply because of time.  But I know Minneapolis is a unique town for theater.  I hope to hit something at the Brave New Workshop or something similar.

18.    See Allison and Tom perform
There are two types of forensics people.  The first type, like me, go quietly into retirement and never perform publicly again.  The second type rock stages all over the place to create brilliant performances.  Two former competitors from Concordia have done just that.  Allison is the Slam Master of the Minnesota Slam Poetry team, a member of Rock Star Storytellers, and writes amazing one woman shows.  Tom Reed creates characters like Loungeasaurs Rex and other improv theater.  Because it often takes a crowbar to remove me from my house at night I have missed their work.  Now I have put it on a list.  I have to do it if it is on a list.

19.    Walk/Bike the Chain of Lakes
I will not do this all in one day, but we will walk or bike each of the big lakes in Minneapolis.

20.    Canoeing with Erica
My best friend is an outdoors person.  Why she is friends with me I will never know.  We were driving by Lake Calhoun and she admired the canoes.  I confessed I had never been in a canoe.  I want to canoe in Lake Calhoun or one of the other lakes, but Erica’s schedule before the wedding is tight.  Maybe we can make time to canoe in the Big Sioux River.

21.    Eat at La Belle Vie
As an Instructor at a culinary school, La Belle Vie comes up in conversation a lot.  Many students stage there and some receive an exclusive (unpaid) externship.  La Belle Vie is the best restaurant in Minnesota; it is rated in Zagat and Chef Tim McKee is a James Beard Nominee.  I didn’t think I could put this on my list because of the cost.  Until Laura pointed out at Book Club that they have a lounge menu and served some more affordable treats there.

22.    Drink at Zatar
I like to drink, it is fun and tasty.  Zatar is crazy about drinking, to prove my point: they have eight different types of ice.  Each one melts differently and has a separate effect on the drink.  I will drink there and it will be glorious.

23.    Eat at Mexican Village
I hated Mexican food for years.  Mexican Village changed all that.

24.    Eat at the Mankato Olive Garden
I lived in Mankato for six years.  For six years we were promised the Olive Garden was coming.  It was built three months after we moved.  We know the Olive Garden is not good, but it is the principle of the thing.

The list is incomplete, so please holler out something we should add if we are missing something from any of those locations

I have recently announced I am going to spend the next three-four years in a Ph.D program at Bowling Green State University. Here is the list of common questions people keep asking me, I hope to answer these questions less.

When did you make this decision?

I started the work for the applications in August of last year. This includes narrowing the program list, budgeting for application fees, studying for the GRE, and spending a lot of time in the fetal position.

Why Bowling Green?

The same reason you are wearing that shirt, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I like their combination of media studies and the fact they have several faculty members who work in new media. Also the proximity to multiple baseball stadiums has its advantages. Also they accepted me and offered me money.

Where is Bowling Green?

I am moving to the one in Ohio, the one with Bowling Green State University in it.

What are you going to study?

I am considering doing qualitative analysis of interpersonal relationships, specifically exploring why men watch multiple SportsCenters when they are identical. I love SportsCenter, but I can’t watch more than one back to back. Bill can watch seven. Or I will continue to study protest rhetoric, but broaden my analysis into studying new media.

For those of you who do not know my research areas (Read: Everyone), the qualitative stuff was a joke. Simply, math is boring. Critical media analysis is interesting.

Are you moving?

At this moment no, but Bill, Cody, and I will be moving to the metropolis of Bowling Green. I know there are a budding number of online college programs. However very few are in Communication Studies, even fewer are Ph.D granting, and even fewer than that are credible. Besides I have never lived in the Eastern Time Zone, I hear it is an hour later.

Why aren’t you staying closer to home?

Clearly because I hate you. Or because the Ph.D programs outside of Minnesota are better fit for me academically. I researched every Ph.D program available and narrowed it to a few which interested me. The only place I eliminated from this list was Florida. I hate Florida.

When are you moving?

We will move sometime at the end of July or the beginning of August. Seriously that is the most accurate I can be at this time. We do not know where we will because I have not made that decision yet.

When will you be leaving LCB?

Ironically, I will be leaving my job sometime at the end of July or the beginning of August. It is hard for me to teach when I am not in the time zone.

What will Bill do?

He will continue to work for ACS and continue to work from home. Now instead of working from home one to two days a week, he will do it all the time. Why? Because he is awesome. You should be jealous of how awesome he is.

How does Cody feel about this?

Well it was his idea. We all know that nine pound dogs make the big decisions.

If you have other questions I will amend the list, but seriously why are you that interested?

I’m no fan of some of the politicians that got harassed that is fucked up.  You don’t start going to people’s houses and messing with their families.

What crazy people write on houses...

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,

3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

I grew up in Antigo, WI, but I can’t find any reason why Charlie would be wearing an “Antigo Wrestling Club” t-shirt.  Google and various TV sites and forums have failed me.  Somebody, find out why Charlie was wearing that shirt!

Charlie, sporting an Antigo Wrestling Club t-shirt.

The fact that their “fans” are booing them when they’ve clearly run into a truck is obscene.  There are times when it is perfectly acceptable to boo your favorite team, but not when they’ve delivered two championships in 4 seasons, and a bunch of them are playing hurt to get another one.

The Patriots fans have been booing the Pats this season too, now that Tom Brady is hurt.  New England, the sports gods can see you, and they are not smiling.

Carlos Pena smacking a 2-run homer.

* If this jinxes the Rays, I’m going to be pissed.

I debated with my coworkers if that was supposed to say ‘calm’ or ‘overcome.’ I was on the side of calm.  Turns out that I was wrong.  Pictures are below.

Bush Pledges Sex

CNN is a bunch of idiots.