Yes you do care what I had for lunch.

I want to give some love to Solomon Snacks and Bakery, even though they don't have a website, even though I haven't been to their storefront, because their whole wheat bread is OFF THE HEEZIE. I've been sitting here eating it lightly toasted with one of my all time favorite things, mashed avocado with salt and pepper. When you have a good avocado (check) and good bread (check check) this is one of the world's great snacks.

I am also jazzed about this salad I just made up, a carrot-apple-beet slaw with chickpeas, which recipe I will blog about later. It is delicious and it looks even better than it tastes, I think, thanks to the gorgeous beets.

And and and, I'm about to make a shake to take with me for this afternoon/evening's teaching stint, and that shake has me jumping too: soymilk, frozen bananas, cocoa powder, peanut butter. PLACATAN!

Best of all: the weather is perfect and I'm riding to my teaching locale along one of the best bike trails in the cities. Sweaty ass be damned!

There's one thing I'm not psyched about, though, and that's my first experiment with turmeric dye. I was trying to dye this dress and it turned out to have invisible pit stains that SUCKED UP all the orangey color, far more than the rest of the dress. I still want to salvage it, but I'm not sure how. It looks like crap. And it also turned out kind of sports-team gold. Alas. Not everything can be rosy.

Foody and other.

There's been sort of a dearth of posting over here, hasn't there? I blame it on February, and having too much to do, and feeling enough eyestrain that I need to curtail my computer action a bit. Nonetheless, I am so enjoying this flickr set by memepunk. If you like ogling other people's breakfasts, you will enjoy it too.

I need to offer up my personal thanks to the genius who spray-painted "You look nice today" on a sheet and pinned it up on a pedestrian overpass over 35W for all the commuters to see. Whoever you are, you made my day, and I am 100% behind your project.

Got a devil's haircut in my mind.

Dear Twin Cities (and the rest of you), I have had another haircut:

This hairdo, like all of my hairdos for the last few years, is the work of magician Kathy, who is now at Salon George in St Paul. Have I ever told you the story of how I found my hair lady? Back in my secret shopping days, I used to snag awesome assignments at Aveda concept salons and get free massages and haircuts. I ended up evaluating Kathy twice, accidentally, and then decided I was probably busted and came clean at my next appointment. Since then, she has outfitted me with several rock and roll mullets and other hairdos that regularly get attention from strangers and friends alike. Seriously, before 2005 my hair had never gotten such love.

Anyway, there are lots of things to appreciate about Kathy. She is friendly and interested in her clients, but there is no vapid chatter. She is an actual trained and educated artist, too--hair just happens to be her main medium. I can come in with a half-formed idea or a picture, and she gets excited and figures out how to execute it. Possibly best of all--and I don't think I'm alone in thinking this--her haircuts grow out awesomely well, which I appreciate more and more now that I am rocking short hair. There's nothing worse than feeling like you need a haircut every two or three weeks.

Needless to say, I have been recommending her left and right for the past few years, and now, guess what? You, yes YOU, gentle reader, have a big incentive to take my recommendation to heart, for if you make an appointment at Salon George with Kathy before April 1, and you tell her I sent you from my blog, you will get a half price haircut. Not only that: you will be entered into a drawing to win free haircuts for a year.

I mean, come on. You ARE looking kind of shaggy.

A case of the Mondays.

I finally got my hands on a Print Gocco which, if you didn't know, is a little tabletop screenprinting machine from Japan. I have been coveting one ever since I found out about them a few years ago. Trouble was, you couldn't get them anywhere except ebay for awhile--the parent company had decided to stop making them and no one was importing them. However! Things turned around for Gocco and now one of the only North American distributors is my favorite little art supply store, Wet Paint, a place right across the street from my junior high school.

So I went there on Friday and used my Christmas gift certificate to get my very own Gocco. And the guy who rang me up, after congratulating me on my purchase, offered to do a demo for me right then and there. He gave me at least 20 minutes of his time, plus a full-bore, multi-part demonstration of how to use the critter, and it was awesome. Truly I say to you all: patronize this fine establishment. You will not be disappointed. (My mom's reaction to going in to Wet Paint: "What a great store! You go in and think 'I could do something! I could be more than I am!'" This is how art supplies are supposed to make you feel.)

Anyway, I don't have plans for printing world domination or even for my first project, but I am very excited about the whole thing. I could just learn from my nephew and write and illustrate a book every day with recycled office paper and a ballpoint pen, but it seems that I have become too complicated in the 28 years since I was five. Here is a page from Henry's recent effort, which he wrote while I was over on Saturday:

His book, very much indebted to Dr Seuss and his Grinch, is written under the nom de plume "Dr. Fead." It is "daducatid" (dedicated) to his father. It tells the story of a Monon who hates Valentine's Day and packs up his Shomr (the vehicle pictured above) with some sacks and goes on a journey to steal all the cards and sweets and dump them off the big hill of Turtle Tear. It's a pretty gripping tale. He writes these books without help, just spelling everything out phonetically. This means that words like "journey" are spelled "jrne," while "remind" is spelled perfectly.

I just stumbled across this Photoshop Phriday about History's Unsent Telegrams again today. It is old but damn, it's funny. Especially the very first one. It will give me something to laugh about if I have insomnia again tonight. Blech, insomnia, so tedious.

Money for nothin.

Dear Minnesotans, did you know that you can donate $50 ($100 for marrieds) to the DFL and get it refunded right back to you through the state's Political Contribution Refund program? Here's a link to a secure site where you can donate. Full disclosure: this refund is actually available if you donate to any Minnesota political party, candidate for state office, or candidates for the Minnesota Legislature (as long as they've signed an agreement with the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board to observe state campaign spending limits). Here's some more information on how it works.

Traditionally, Republicans have been better at both donating and claiming the refund. If you're a Dem who's been on the fence about donating or who doesn't have the scratch, this is a really easy way to support the party or candidate of your choice. The only catch: you have to donate by December 31, 2007.

Back on the bus.

Dear Twin Cities, did you know that the MTC is unveiling some hybrid buses on Monday? And that rides on the green buses will be free until the end of the year? Quick, plan your trips on routes 17 and 18. Or just get on and ride back and forth. Good green fun!

Local flava.

Dear Minneapolis, did you know that the New French Bakery at 26th and 26th has a sale every day starting at 4? Rolls and sandwich bread are two-for-one and artisan breads are half price. You never know what's going to be available, but today I walked out with a sourdough boule and a heavenly good baguette for a grand total of $2. I cannot recommend this sale enough, if you're available to get your ass over to Seward between 4 and 6 Monday through Friday. (I don't know about the weekends.)

In the back-to-the-future department, the magic of websurfing landed me on a MN-centric blog written by a dude with whom I went to school between 6th and 12th grade. In fact, I believe we "went together" for about two days. Anyhoo, in scanning his front page I found this thing about praise and its paradoxically negative impact on kids. I have not bothered to investigate the source further because I have other things to read, but there's an observation here about so-called gifted and talented kids turning into quitters that kind of struck a chord with me. I wouldn't say I'm a quitter, but I do think I wasn't pushed enough as a kid because I was smart in a very school-friendly way. In fact, I just commented on Madness's blog today about how I could have used more sports-related life lessons while I was growing up. I have always gotten a lot of rewards for achievement, but have not been encouraged to persist with difficult things. Something to think about.

Even THAT niblet is not the point of having stumbled across this dude's blog, however: I clicked over to his flickr and learned, finally, that all those people I saw tooling around Nicollet Island on Segways while I was teaching at opera camp this summer were not actually in a gang. I am kind of disappointed about this. It was actually a tour of the riverfront area, which is sort of cool and made obscurely hilarious by the whole Segway thing. I cannot dissociate Segways from GOB on Arrested Development.

Now I must go quietly freak out about all my high school classmates who are in this guy's photostream. In case you check your stats and trackbacks, Ed: what up.