I finally made it to Enger Tower

My friends were in town for my wedding and in an attempt to take them sight seeing we went up to Enger Tower. I've lived here for over a year now and I hadn't made it up there. I can't believe it took me so long. It's practically a straight shot from my house, of course it's basically across town but it's not as hard to get there as I thought it was.

It's gorgeous up there this time of year. I definitely need to go back up. It was beautiful this past weekend and I'm glad I went. Also this picture turned out pretty amazing.

View of the Lift Bridge from Enger Tower

What is that?

"What is that?"

"It's a gate to cover their trashbins."

No. That's not what I was pointing to. Josh, Chris, and I have started taking long walks around downtown Duluth. We found this on our way back to our house. It appears to be a branch with a bunch of fake birds glued to it. I have no idea. 

Fitger's Daycare in Duluth, MN

Did you know the Fitger's complex has daycare? Me either until I was wandering through and found it. Are you kidding me. What?

Skyline Drive

Josh took me up to the skyline drive because he wasn't feeling very good and didn't want to go for a full walk. Turns out people really like to throw stuff off this hill.

From a distance it looked like a tv on top of a mini fridge. Turns out it was on top of an open safe. How about that. We also found the top of a parking meter and considered taking it home with us but it was heavy and I didn't know what we would do with it so Josh threw it down the hill.

California Vacation (Emily's Wedding)

Josh and I just got back from a week long vacation in California for his step-sister Emily's wedding. I got to spend some quality time with his family and really get to know everybody. They welcomed me with open arms and were super nice.

I helped them set up the morning before the wedding and did a lot of table settings and napkin folding and generally helping make everything look nice. I worked with some of Emily's friends and got to know her fiance Brady's family. I helped Brady's aunts with the table settings. It was very low stress and it was kind of awesome how everyone was working together to get everything done in a reasonable amount of time. There weren't a lot of decorations so that helped. It was really just setting up the tables and the chairs outside for the ceremony. Other than a couple painted wooden signs there weren't decorations.

Table settings in the barn. The chairs were outside for the ceremony and would be moved inside. 

Mason jar favors that also had the table assignments tagged on them for 200 or so people. 

Her favors were mason jar cups. They were super cute. They gave you your table assignment and they were easy to hold on to for the many trips to the bar in the back corner. There was a selection of beer and wine. The bartender wouldn't give you very much wine at a time. I was a little sad about that, but that just meant more trips up and down.

Turns out the wine glass was for the champagne toasts. 

I don't have any pictures of the ceremony because I just didn't feel like it. I was busy enjoying myself and since I don't really know Emily or Brady I figured I'd leave the picture taking to people who did know them. I was just there to have fun.

It was a really good wedding. The ceremony was really sweet, it was also only half an hour long which was perfect. Dinner was hamburgers, which was a little odd but they were good. Then dancing until 10:30 when they had to shut things down because the neighbors didn't want noise after 11:00. It turned out to be a good thing though because then all of the college friends were still tipsy and awake and took almost everything down before going home themselves. So when we got there in the morning there wasn't a whole lot we had to do.

A nice picture of Josh and I before going to the wedding.

10 Days Until We Move

Okay, 10 days left in Marshall. I only have 5 days left of work at the Marshall Walmart.

I got our chest freezer emptied out today. There's only a couple pizzas, some burritos, some frozen cheese, and some frozen vegetables left.

I plan to get our front closets cleaned out so we can stack some boxes in them and get everything a little bit more organized. I also need to figure out the best way to move like a million board games. Ugh, they're just so awkward. Maybe I'll just end up stacking them in the trunk of Josh's car.

Yesterday we filled out the stuff to get our mail forwarded to our new address. Fun fact: the change of address packet from the post office comes with fun coupons. The boys also got their licenses renewed because both of their birthdays are later this week. They're both turning 25. We're all getting so old.

What's Behind the Green Door? - Marshall, MN

What's Behind the Green Door?

"What's behind the green door?" This question has plagued me the entire time I've lived in Marshall, MN. I'm sure I drove my friends crazy because I would point it out every time we drove past but I really wanted to know.

I'd walk past it to get from the college to get downtown and I never had the courage to get up close to it. It's pretty freaky looking.

Since I'm moving at the end of the month I figured I better get some pictures of it or nobody will believe me when I tell them about it.

Also, this place is apparently for sale. I know I could call and ask about it but that seems weird.

Everything is completely boarded up with plywood. You couldn't get inside even if you want to. Mainly because that green door isn't even actually a door.

It's a piece of plywood with a doorknob on it.

P.S. I've tried searching for it online but all I get is a porn from the '70's.

So if you for some reason know something about this or find this post when you're trying to look it up yourself let me know. I'm partly posting this just so there is some record of it on the internet.

Lunch Date

I was bored after class and decide to take myself on a lunch date to Arbys. I'm not a huge Arbys fan but I like their curly fries and their chicken sandwiches aren't terrible. Also it's located between the school and my apartment.

I made some rules for myself. No cell phone, no iPod. Just me and my lunch. I decided to try different dipping sauces for my fries, because they had a lot of choices. There's normal ketchup. Some spicy sauce that reminds me of the hot sauce they have at Famous Daves (or at least I think that's where I remember it from), and some honey mustard. I'm not a huge fan of honey mustard even though Josh makes me keep trying it. This one wasn't too bad and I ended up eating more of that than ketchup. I'm proud of myself.

It was a fun date. I'll have to do it again sometime.

Day Trip to My Mom's House

I bought a bunch of books through Amazon then accidentally sent them to my Mom's house instead of to my apartment. I could have just had her ship them back to me but I decided it would be more fun if I took a trip home. Not to mention that Fergus Falls also has a Target and I received some Target gift cards for my birthday.

My roommates Chris and Jess decided it would be fun to accompany me and Chris graciously offered to drive (remember how Louis isn't planning on running anytime soon). We also invited Suzannah. Josh unfortunately had to work so he couldn't come with us.

We left around nine and it's about a three hour drive (if you speed) so it took just over three hours to get there. We hung out with my mom a little and I give everyone the official tour. (We have a pretty big place). We decided we would have to come back when it's warm and have a party. I made sure to grab my books and we picked up some other stuff before heading out.

Then we went to Fergus Falls to eat and go to Target. (I had realized about halfway to my Mom's house that I forgot my gift cards so that sucked.) We stopped at the Viking Cafe for lunch and it was super cheap and super delicious. I'll definitely be going back there. Then we went to Biffleys and Bookmark which is a board game store that also sells movies and used books. It's awesome. Then we ran across the street to Victor Lundeen's to have a look around there. We then went to The Market to check that out. There was so much stuff there that I wanted. Unfortunately it's all pretty spendy. We finally got to Target and wandered around there.

Then it was time to head home. We got back around eight and it was a very successful trip.

First Trip

Louis made his first successful trip to Walmart and back. I'm still getting the hang of shifting but it won't be long and I'll be a pro.

Minnesota Renaissance Faire

This last weekend I went to the Minnesota Renaissance Faire. I've been to the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha, WI so many times that I sort of had that ingrained in my mind. So walking up to the Minnesota one was weird because the front layout is very similar.

I normally go in the summer so it was weird not seeing so many costumes and seeing the workers wearing sweaters over their normal costumes. But then again it seemed that the Minnesota Faire doesn't have as high of standards as the Bristol one. That was kind of disappointing.

Since the Minnesota one is in the cities it seems to draw a lot more tourists than the Brisol one does because it is kind of in the middle of nowhere. There was about 1 costumed person for every 20 normal people. In Bristol it's closer to 1 to 5.

It was also dusty as hell and there were woodchips everywhere. So my thin flip flops were a very poor choice of footwear. I'll keep that one in mind for the future. So I could barely walk by the end of the day. Ouch.

There didn't seem to be as much booth diversity as the Bristol faire has. Everything seemed the same, but that might have been because there were a lot of things I was used to seeing at the Bristol faire so it wasn't interesting.

I did not see any fairy people. I saw a guy dressed as a tree and that was about it. :( I love my fairy people.

The joust to the death was also a huge disappointment. The field was awkward with limited seating. The acting was bad and it ended very quickly. It was more like watching the 3 stooges than a joust to the death.

But it was really fun to show Josh what a renaissance faire is and to get a feel for the place. It was also fun seeing my other friends there. A couple of them had gone before but some of them hadn't. It was a really good time.

Josh spent $5 to lose a game of chess.

Decided to take a group picture before we left for the night.
Josh, Chloe, Paul, Vogie, Sam S., Sam D.

Baby Bird

So I'm at work today and I walk outside the garden center and on the bench I see a plastic bin with a bird in it. I thought it was one of the baby birds from the nest above the door but it was an entirely different type of bird. No idea where it came from. It couldn't quite fly yet so it just kept jumping around, stuck in the bin. So we left it there for a little while but no one came to claim it so I took it out to a grassy ditch area beside the store where it would be unlikely to get run over.

Funny story though several hours later I'm helping some customers and I see something come hopping up to the door and then back out into the garden center. It's this same silly bird. So I chase it through the garden center as it hops and tries to fly. Then I chase it across the parking lot into the grass. It kept tripping through the tall weeds so I picked it up and it tried to bite my finger and I took it down to the very bottom of the ditch and left it there.

Bird in the bin.

Bird in the grass the first time.

Josh's Visit

Josh got here late Friday night and decided he never wants to make that drive in the dark again. So Saturday we decided to go hang out in Fergus Falls and see some movies. We walked around downtown looking at the bookstores and stuff. There's a new restaurant there called The Spot. They sell Paninis. Most of the food names were not in English but they had a list of what was in them so I picked one that sounded good. We got there right after they opened at 11 so we were the only ones there. It was pretty romantic because it was just this cute little place.

This is what I got. Isn't it fancy?

It was also neat because they had word magnets on all of the napkin dispensers. Brilliant idea. Josh and I played with that for most of the time we were waiting for our food.

After that we looked at a couple more stores then decided it was time to hit Walmart for snacks before the movie. We decided to see "The Dark Knight Rises" first and then "The Amazing Spiderman" We saw them back to back. We had just enough time between movies for Josh to get a pop and for me to buy the tickets. We also got to see Sammi and Erin (Sammi was my best friend in high school and Erin is her little sister) which was nice. The movies were really good. I liked them both.

After that we decided to head home but we stopped at Guzzlers first. The restaurant that replaced Prante's on the Lake, where I used to work. It was super busy and we had to wait a while to get a table. We ordered a plate of nachos as an appetizer to share and each got bacon cheeseburgers.Everything was delicious.

We went home and watched some more movies on my computer. The next day we ate at Zorbaz for lunch. One of my coworkers gave me a $20 gift card she wasn't planning on using. So we both decided to go big and get something we normally wouldn't get. I got $10 worth of tacos.

It was really good but we definitely needed to-go boxes, especially since both of our plates came with a huge amount of chips and salsa. We spent the rest of the day eating this. Then we drove around looking for a good swimming spot and finally had to opt for the beach on Ottertail even though I was hoping to find one of the more private spots was empty... they weren't.

Then back to my place for some movies, then grilling, a game of battleship that Josh won, and then the fireworks I'd been saving. Then more movies (there isn't much else to do at my place).

It was a really fun weekend and I was sad when he left Monday morning.

Make Peace not Horcruxes

Saw this at the library today. Wonderful.

Caterpillar

Found this cute little guy at work today hiding in the plants I was watering.

Pennies, Lasagna, Sherlock Holmes, and Christmas Lights...

The header pretty much sums up my birthday yesterday.

Marshall, MN still doesn't have any snow and it was really sunny and warm outside. Josh took me to the park and we threw pennies off the bridge onto the frozen pond. Then we spent a while throwing rocks out onto the ice. I've decided I am willing to spend $2 to dump 200 pennies onto the ice to make a really cool picture. Especially because the ice is neat because there hasn't been any snow layers.

Later that night we made lasagna, it was the first time for both of us and we were just hoping it would turn out right. We pieced together my mom's ingredients for the cheese mixture and Josh's knowledge of how to cook the meat for his side (I'm only in it for the ricotta cheese). Then we looked up oven temp and cooking time on the internet. It turned out amazing. I was so proud of us. We ate it off the new plates my mommy bought me and we drank a lot of sparkling grape juice (I wanted to drink something classy with my lasagna and I don't like wine) out of the glasses my sister bought me.

Then we went to watch the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was pretty fun. I was a  little unsure of why things were happening but the humor kept me into it. I am a little disappointed by the Sherlock Holmes movies because they make it look like he can predict the future instead of just being super observant. Ah well, that's hollywood for you.

After that Josh surprised me by taking me around town to look at Christmas lights. We stumbled upon the intersection of Indiana Jones and Travis and ended up on the other side of town. Luckily Josh knew where we were. I would have felt so silly if we had to use his GPS to find our way back to campus.

We went back to my apartment to eat some cake and invited my friend Suzannah over to finish off the night. Pink cake with blue swirls and dinosaur sprinkles in it and on top of it. It was delicious.

The Field Across the Street

I was trying to figure out what to use as a new background for my twitter account. So I was looking through my pictures to find something that would be suitable and couldn't find anything that really seemed to work. I wanted a picture that had a road in it but with pictures for twitter backgrounds the important stuff has to be to the far left or far right. Everything in the middle gets covered up. So I had to go out and get some new pictures. I was going to go take pictures of the road in front of my house but then discovered that there were tire tracks through the grass in the field across from my house. Thus began my adventure.

I've lived here 21 years and I've never actually gone over in that field. Sure most years there have been either cows or horses over there but I was a good girl and didn't like to go on the neighbor's property anyway.

But today I made an exception and so Puppy and I took an adventure.

Josh's Super Fun Birthday Weekend

Here's a collection of pictures from Josh's birthday, in case anybody cares. Some of them I took, some of them were taken when I left my camera on the counter.

Time to cut the vikings colored companion cube that I made.

Umm, Jim, I think you're doing it wrong.

Ok, now you're both just being silly on purpose.

 Awww cute, Chris is feeding Jim cake.

Nerf gun time. Lorien looks pretty awesome with that gun.

And another one with Jim being silly.

Josh slapping Jim with his guns.

Josh trying to look awesome.

I don't even know where he got a cupcake from... but now that I think about it I do remember there being muffins. Well that solves that confusion.

Silly boys.

Jim might be a little too excited about getting to cut Josh's hair.

I'm not really sure what's happening in this picture.

Josh looking into your soul. Also, he has short hair now.

A couple nights later it was haircut time again and they decided to use my vacuum to get rid of all the extra hair. They might have also been having too much fun at this point.

Spring Break (A Recap)

Ok, so I'm sure everyone has been patiently waiting for the details of my spring break trip, well I'm finally going to write about it... which is impressive because I'm lazy. (I even uploaded pictures to facebook yesterday 0.o)


Ok, so we started out Saturday afternoon. We grabbed snacks at wal-mart and I bought a small carrot cake to eat once we got to the ocean. (Something that happened last year. Paul bought a carrot cake while we were still in Minnesota and we didn't get a chance to eat it until we reached the ocean.) So yeah, celebratory carrot cake.

"It takes the same amount of effort to remember your birthday as it takes to eat in the morning." That was Vogie. He says he prefers to remember to eat.

We stopped in Pocohontas, Iowa and took pictures by a huge statue there. That was pretty fun.

"Oh my God I would chop my fingers up and snort them right now. They smell like gummy worms." Yeah, Vogie is a little bit crazy.

"Exit 0A because exit 1A just isn't first enough." Yet another witty Vogie quote. Mainly because I'm not very witty and I was also the one in charge of writing everything down which I then proceeded to slack on about halfway through the trip. It doesn't help that I also get motion sick if I try to write while we're moving.

We made it through Illinois in a few hours and hit Indiana at like 3 in the morning. We slept at a rest area that night. Sleeping in the car wasn't that bad.

Day 2 Made it through Indiana and into Kentucky. We rock climbed at the Natural Bridge State Park near Fort Dodge. The sign said that it was 0.75 miles, they didn't tell us that that was practically climbing straight up. I thought I was going to die. My legs hurt so bad. It was really, really pretty though and totally worth the climb. We got to the top and took a whole bunch of really cool pictures, and we even got to climb on top of the natural bridge. It was really amazing.

We cut through the corners of Virginia and Tennessee. We stopped just short of the North Carolina border to sleep for the night.

Day 3 We made it to North Carolina and stopped at Vogie's brother's house. You know the guy from "How to Train Your Dragon" Well his brother Erik looks just like the dad. He's basically a viking and he's super cool. We watched "Due Date" and got about halfway through "The Big Lebowski" but that's only because their internet got messed up and we were watching it on Netflix instant. We played Killer Bunnies and Vogie and I got to teach them how to play, that was interesting. We went out to lunch at a fast food place called "Cookout" which has amazing food that is amazingly cheap. I wish we could have stopped at another one but we were never hungry when we saw a sign for it.

We left Erik's house and started heading toward the coast. We were supposed to meet up with an air force buddy of his. We intended to stop at this state park that was right by where he was at, but then it was closed and instead of looking for someplace to sleep in the area we decided to just keep moving and we'd meet up with him on our way back.

Day 4 We spent all day trying to find somewhere we could shower at with no luck. We kept trying to find different campgrounds so we could steal a shower and that was hard too. So we figured we would just head back toward Erik's and take him up on the shower that he offered us before we left. We made it to the ocean today. So it turns out that that little peninsula sort of thing of North Carolina is surrounded by a tiny string of islands so you have to get out on the islands to actually see the ocean. Well we finally found a road that would take us out there after we dead ended at a sound (literally the road ended and we were in someone's yard with a view of the sound). So we went to a few different beaches and waded around in the water and collected shells. It was really fun and we found some really pretty ones. Vogie was very happy that he finally got to see the ocean.

Day 5 We went back to Erik's and took a shower, it was so nice to finally be clean. We were also quite happy because we decided we didn't like North Carolina at all and that it didn't like us either. So we were glad to be heading home. We googled the shortest route  home and it was pretty much the same as the route we took there, except it took us straight up through Kentucky instead of taking the path that took us through more states. So we wanted to take the scenic route through the smokey mountains but it was getting dark and we figured it wouldn't be any fun in the dark so we stopped real close to there and spent the night in the wal-mart parking lot (we spent a lot of nights at wal-mart parking lots). It was also raining pretty bad so we were also hoping the weather would improve.

Day 6 (This is the point where I stopped writing things down.) We woke up in the morning and the weather was still pretty bad. We just kind of hung out and it cleared up a little bit. We went to go take the scenic route only to find that it was closed and we had to take the normal interstate anyway. Ugh. We decided to see if there was anything worth seeing in Knoxville and Vogie found a small art gallery that we decided to go to. It was pretty cool. It was really small but it had some interesting things. It was a nice detour. I decided to take us through Cincinnati because it wouldn't really take us any longer. Vogie wanted to go to an art museum that was there so we decided to spend the night and see it in the morning. The wal-mart we choose happened to be right next to a discount movie theater. So we went and saw a movie called "The Eagle" We had no idea what it was about so it seemed a good choice for 3 bucks. So we get our tickets and we wait in the theater because we're early. It's the last show of the night and we're the only ones in that particular theater. It's like five minutes after it's supposed to start so we decide to go tell someone. We go out to the concession stand and tell the guy the movie hasn't started. Then another guy comes around the corner and says that the movie is playing. They both apologize to us and we go back to the theater. The movie isn't playing so we turn back around to go tell him again. We tell the concession stand guy that it's still not playing and he's all like "He is suck a liar" and apologizes to us again and it was pretty funny. We go back to the theater and the movie starts. I think the guy realized he had forgotten it and ran to go get it started.

Day 7 We drove around forever trying to find the Cincinnati art gallery and we finally found it. It was huge... So we went around the first floor and it's your typical huge art gallery, each room leading to more rooms until we had no idea where we were. We were getting bored of seeing the same thing over and over again and decided to go upstairs to see the contemporary art. It was pretty cool. They also had a huge section on circus posters and that type of art. It was really neat. After that we figured we should probably head out and try to get home. It's Friday by this point and we're tired of being on the road. So we drive all night until we got to Vogie's house at like 3 in the morning.

Day 8 We hung out at Vogie's house because his mom said she would make us pizza and it was delicious. We watched "Megamind" and "Fight Club" so now I've finally seen it and everyone can stop telling me I need to watch it. It was pretty good though, even though I knew what was going on because it had been spoiled for me. Still really good though. We had dinner and hung out and finally decided we should get back to campus. Because at this point I was starting to be really sick of Vogie and really missing Josh. We finally got back and it was all good. Yay roadtrip.

North Carolina

So I'm at a McDonalds in North Carolina right now. We're just hanging out because we want to go through the Smokey Mountains during the daytime. We've been having quite the adventure so far. We've slept in the car every night and that's been fun. We've been sleeping at rest areas and in Wal-mart parking lots.

We did some cliff climbing at Fort Dodge in Kentucky. There will be pictures of that when I get back. We made it out to see the ocean, that was fun and I got some really pretty shells. Vogie was glad that we got to see the ocean, even though we keep getting lost. We got to visit his brother Erik who is basically a modern day viking. He looks just like the dad in "How to Train Your Dragon" it's crazy. He's really awesome though.

We're really glad to be heading back though, we're both getting tired of North Carolina and sleeping in the car. So now we're just going to mosey back.

Sorry I haven't been posting as much as I intended to but that's because when we do check the internet it's to figure out where we are and Vogie checks facebook to let everyone know that we aren't dead. And the only places we can even get internet are McDonalds. So yeah, it's been really good and I'll put up a more detailed account and pictures when we get back.