Entries from March 2007 ↓

Hi there. Not much going on. It’s been a pretty quiet week for me.

Last Friday (post-happy hour), I had Kristi and Rebecca over to my apartment for a “girls’ night.” When I was younger I used to have slumber parties all of the time. I felt that I was the queen of slumber parties. The best one ever was the night we watched all of the Children of the Corn movies (I definitely stayed awake [whether my brain was on or off is a different story] and others claim to have stayed awake, but there is no proof). Anyway, Rebecca brought over Indiscreet, I whipped up a few cosmopolitans, and threw some Totinos Pizza Rolls in the oven. Everything was going well, we were talking and gossiping and gabbing and giggling. Then Rebecca sat on the couch between Kristi and me. We all had our own blanket and our feet were up on the coffee table. And we all fell asleep. Slumber parties really are just slumber parties now.

Last night Kristi and I went to Grumpy’s for karaoke (Kristi’s idea!) and it was a smashing success. It was a pretty quiet evening there, compared to the crowds I’ve had to deal with in the past. We each got three good songs in before 1am, and had a good time with the other singers.

I miss karaoke. I think when I acquire a car this summer, I shall have to seek out employment as a karaoke DJ. I think that would be the most fun thing I could be doing with my life right now. Plus I’d be guaranteed drinking and singing on a weekly basis.

Jen will be visiting the Twin Cities next week and there will be more karaoke! Hooray!

But otherwise I’ve just been learning and studying about Minnesota’s forests and succession and using Flash to make an educational game for my class. It’s been challenging, but I think I’ve finally climbed the hill of weakness and I am looking over my kingdom of knowledge and creativity, and I am confident.

Also I am kinda sleepy today. I don’t really know what I’m typing.

The latest most awesome thing that my coworkers have produced:

“Hen Cold Blood”

This little beauty was made possible by Nina Shepherd and Mary Nelson. Good luck, gals! (This is the second year that the St. Paul Pioneer Press is hosting a Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest, and entries will be displayed at the Bell Museum.)

With the exception of Sunday, it was a weekend for photos. I’ll summarize as I give you the tour! (Please note that I will be ending this post with information not at all related to my weekend. I have very many things to write about today. This will get pretty lengthy.)

On Friday, the University of MN was closed for Spring Break, so I decided to relive my youth. I took the light rail (for the first time) to the Mall of America. Only a 30 minute trip from downtown Minneapolis!

First on my agenda was “Animal Botanical” — an exhibit from the Mall’s recent campaign, “The Park in Bloom.” Pretty flowers and shrubs shaped into cute little bunnies and ducks? I’ll take it!

It was also the day the Easter Bunny arrived at the Mall, so I got sneaky with my camera. I had hoped there would be frightened, crying children, but it was pretty early in the Bunny’s shift when I arrived.

After that, I took a spin on three rides that I thought I could get away with sneaking photos on while I rode: the Skyscraper Ferris Wheel, the Treetop Tumbler, and the Screaming Yellow Eagle. I did not get any photos on the Eagle since I was only one of about six riders. Not hidden enough. Oh, well.

I rode the Ferris Wheel with a young high school girl who was visiting with friends for her Spring Break. She came from Cedar Rapids, IA. She thought I was a weirdo with my camera, I’m sure, but did extend a pity invite to ride on some other rides with her and her friends. (I politely turned her down.)

And a brief stroll through Midway (where I saw some young men performing impressive moves on DDR)…

Then I was off for my first trek into Underwater Adventures! Very expensive, but I justified the price by remembering that my rides were free (a coworker gave me some vouchers). Turtles, and sharks, and barracuda: Oh, my!

(If only I had snapped this photo five seconds quicker – the turtle and the girl were nose-to-glass-to-nose!)

(All of those little specks are recently born babies! Definitely the most heart-warming part of the whole Adventure.)

There was a temporary exhibit about glass replicas of specimens: “Glass Sea Treasures of Harvard”

To be quite honest, I took over 300 photos on Friday alone. What can I say? I’m really quite a fan of fish, turtles, and other creepy/slimy aquatic creatures. (I touched a mantis and a horseshoe crab, too.) I was pretty much in love with the whole place. I wish it didn’t cost so much. I could hang out and watch the creatures all day long.

On to Saturday! St. Patrick’s Day! Early on in the day I discovered the “color accent” setting on my camera, so a lot of my photos are black, white and green. I set out with a few others for the parade in St. Paul, the post-parade pub crawl, and a post-pub crawl evening at Minneapolis bars. It was a long day, but it was a lot of fun. Next St. Patrick’s Day, though? I think I’d be up for the parade, but then I’m gonna go home. Those pubs were a bit too crowded for my taste.

(Sven Sundgaard is seriously oompa-loompa orange. I did get closer to him than this, but he was mobbed by girls.)

(This is an authentic Irish piper—he played a version of “Amazing Grace” for us then got really cheesy. But he was nice, and funny, and we were all drunk and impressed.)

(Do I look like I’ve been celebrating for 15 hours?)

Sunday consisted of not wanting to move from the couch. After a quick, greasy brunch, I watched movies on TBS all day. If I could re-do the holiday, I would drink more water and be productive on Sunday.

Some other notes of interest:

Note 1: I finally also uploaded my photos from the Plastic Chord show at the Hexagon. Most of them are blurry and that’s fine, because that is how I felt all night anyway.

(I’ll be taking some wedding photos for this lovely couple in the summer! Joy!)

Note 2: Once I muster the motivation, I will most likely be paring down these albums to essential/awesome photos. I have a summer project in mind for adding URLs to the descriptions for each photo that I reference in these sort of posts so I don’t ever delete those and the entry that they’re summarized in is easier to find. Also I’d like to go through most of posts and add labels for each one. I am really a fan of tagging things.

Note 3: My Flash lessons are going well. Tomorrow I also start a three-day (9 hour) tutorial to learn Adobe Illustrator. I am going to be master of my digital domains (and I am constantly thinking about a new design for amy-berg.com, among other sites that I’m supposed to be working on). I can tell you right now, though, that summer won’t be long enough for all of the projects I want to get done.

Note 4: I’m already trying to decide which classes to take next semester. It’s just all so awesome and I don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done ever!

Okay, for real, y’all. I’m done now.

Today I had a very good day.

I am mentally and physically exhausted, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I took too many photos of fish, the Easter Bunny, and flowers. I will be taking many, many more tomorrow.

I am working on resizing and uploading the photos, but I think I have to give up for the evening.

Let me be the first to wish you a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I was just reading the list of top ten question that the Bell Museum’s Wildlife Information Services receives because I am thinking of topics I could use for my new game. Some of the questions remind me of weird things.

Now that’s a gray squirrel of a different color?
This one actually doesn’t remind me of anything, but rather I have a follow up question: why doesn’t Minnesota seem to have red squirrels (like South Dakota)?

What’s tunneling under my lawn?
I was in high school (the later years). My parents have an egress window in their basement (so the outside ground covers about two-thirds of the window), where I have found many critters, mostly snakes, trapped on top of the layer of rocks there. I’ve always assumed they fell down, but maybe they just burrowed up. I don’t know. Anyway, once I found a baby mole. There didn’t seem to be a parent around, so I decided to adopt the baby—because Karyn was coming home in a day or two so I wanted to show her. I had never seen a mole before, and I don’t know if she had either, but this baby mole? It was really pretty darn cute with its over-sized hands and long, pointy nose. I found an old aquarium and filled it with dirt from somewhere (possibly my dad’s garden, possibly from under their deck). Then I put the mole in and he burrowed around for a while. I did research to figure out what to feed him, and found that moles like worms. So for the next few hours/days I would go into my dad’s stash of worms (for fishing!) and steal one or two to feed my new pet. Everything was going just splendidly and I enjoyed watching the mole. (I guess I should also mention it was spring or summer and the weather was being fantastic.) Unfortunately, tragedy struck when one evening there was a very heavy rain. I don’t want to finish this story, because now I’m depressed and I feel guilty all over again.

Why are there garter snakes in my yard?
I used to think they were called garden snakes because there were so damn many of them in my parents’ garden.

Eek! What should I do about bats in my house?
The only bat I remember seeing indoors was when I was very young. Karyn and I shared a bedroom and, in fact, had bunk beds. She slept on the top bunk. For this memory, the bed was situated against the north wall, just next to our bathroom. Which is fortunate, I guess, in a way. Karyn had gone to bed, and I think she was still sleeping, but a bat was flying in circles over her. Which was sort of eerie. Dad got a broom and shooed the bat into the bathroom. I’m sure a vicious struggle ensued (he closed the door) and Dad came out, holding the garbage can and looking victorious. Or exhausted, whichever. Note: Nowadays I am very much a fan of bats and I would never, ever approve of this sort of behavior. And you shouldn’t either. </public service announcement>

How do I help an orphaned animal?
This is what I should have looked for information about when I found my mole. One of my coworkers told me that moles have very, very short lifespans anyway, but that doesn’t decrease the guilt I feel.