heartbroken

As the credits rolled, I was heartbroken -- it was not 1920, this was not rural Minnesota, I was not a pioneer with a thick accent, and there was no wheat to harvest. And the story was over.

Whoever wrote to go see "Sweet Land" -- you were right. It was gorgeous. I loved it as a Minnesotan, as the descendant of German and Norwegian immigrants, as a novice genealogist, as an admirer of the prairie and fields, as a lover of fiddle music.

It's probably not for everyone, though. It is not as Janette Oke as it sounds like it could be.

God only knows

Lately, I'm not sure quite what to think about God.

Well, there are many thoughts. They are not, however, communally coherent.

• God is not a feeling. God is a fact. My attitude toward him does not alter his existence.
• I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe the statements of the Apostles' Creed, etc. But do I love God? This sounds incredibly sacreligious, but, do I love Abraham Lincoln for doing what he did about slavery? Do I love George Washington and miscellaneous veterans for fighting for my freedom? I am thankful for them and grateful to them, would be in awe of them if I ever met them, respect them. Yes, what God has done for me is on a whole other playing field. But I categorize the crucifixion with that kind of fact -- in 1861, the Civil War started. In the early decades of A.D., Jesus died on the cross. Does this make any sense? I know I should love God.
• I do not love church as, again, I know I should. I do not love people, the human race, as a whole, as I should.
• The contemporary Christian church culture disturbs others, as well -- I was talking with a good friend this weekend and was surprised to learn she dislikes her megachurch, but it's the only one with a twenty-somethings group.
• I do not suffer. I avoid suffering. Suffering breaks me down. I do not suffer well.

the surprise party

My grandma has a birthday every St. Patrick's Day. This year, her kids decided to throw her a surprise party. This was the picture on the cake -- Grandma as a baby with her mom and brother. This is known as the picture -- as in the one everyone wants.

As Grandma lives in Madison, the party and the travels thereto ate up the vast majority of the weekend. I rode in the minivan with my parents and sibs five hours each way -- sadly, the van ride probably being the most pleasant part. It's very stressful to be cheerful in festive in a roomful of people you've never seen before.

Riding in the car on the trip through Wisconsin really was enjoyable -- I don't get to ride in a car all that much. If you've got to travel on I-90, Western Wisconsin is the stretch to see, what with the hills and bluffs and wooded areas. I wanted to take pictures all the time. I was, in fact, inspired to start a photo project this spring. Two, actually -- one is area cemeteries, and one is just plain the area.

And on the ride, I listened to the new Norah Jones CD. She has such a pretty voice.

'Twas the night before St. Patrick's Day

...when all through the house, not a dish or sock was clean, not even a blouse.

'Blouse' is on the do-not-use word list.

Tonight we shall eat our corned beef and cabbage. It is an organized effort whereby each member of the family must be consulted about a time they can come to partake. My mother, who assembles the meal each year, is not even remotely Irish. The rest of us probably are a smidgen. We were more Irish before I found my genealogical blunder in January.

I like corned beef. I also like the Reubens that result from its leftovers. My brother was so excited he volunteered to purchase the sauerkraut. (Now, is a Reuben German or Irish? Sauerkraut certainly does not seem to be Irish.)

Yesterday we were going so stir-crazy at work that we -- the editorial assistant and I -- decided to give the 'new' (two months) lady a tour of downtown. This consisted of making a bee-line for the assistant's favorite coffeeshop and quickly marching past everything else with a half-baked explanation. Tomorrow, one of them later said, we will need to make three coffee runs (asst. usually does one, yesterday two). It seems unusually dead with the reporter gone -- there are six cubicles, and she was in the middle row, and the other person in the middle is the sports guy who's never in 'til mid afternoon. So we're always standing up now, hollering over the walls to each other, bored and unmotivated. This will come up to bite us quite soon as we start trying to cover the extra beats.

Clouds again today.

brr!

It had gotten so warm that I turned my heat off. Now it is not so warm anymore. I had to turn the heat back on this morning for the one hour I'll be here.

I'm reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Only a few pages in, but she writes beautifully -- offhand, I remember her in passing referring to people with "sad hips" at a funeral.

Brrrr.

The office is now one person emptier. It will be an adjustment. Hiring a new person is a big job, almost like interviewing for what child you are going to adopt to keep the other kids company. And if the kids don't like your choice ... well, things will be a little more difficult.

The Pontiac is still cursed.

oh, DST

This whole spring-forward thing isn't working out for me. Some days I wake up at what was 6:30, now 7:30, meaning that night I fall asleep at what was 9:30, now 10:30. Then the next morning I'll sleep 'til what was 8:30, now 9:30, and 9:30 kind of throws the day off. And I don't appreciate eating supper in daylight.

Spring is generally a stressful time for me. I'm not so much a fan until the end of it.

My sister got her hair cut because this weekend we're going to visit relatives. Now I don't want my hair to look silly and unstylish like it does... hmm.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy a couch this morning.

The Curse of the Pontiac

If you know me very well, you have heard a vehicular saga or two spawn from my life story. And if you doubted whether I was truly vehicularly cursed, well...

Here's one for the books.

Saturday morning was a time I've been looking forward to for a few weeks now -- I had signed up to take a class at the state historical society, one of my favorite places on God's green earth. At 7:30, a time I don't see most days due to my cushy reporter's hours, I'm springing out of bed and gathering my library ID and my copying card and my census binders into my backpack. I tossed the haphazard nonperishable food items left in the apartment into a plastic grocery sack for lunch and headed for the gas station to fill up.

It was a pleasant morning, with the thick blanket of snow rapidly melting and the sun up shining cheerfully in the sky. I was thinking about how much I loved Saturday mornings as I switched interstates.

A few miles down the road from there I found myself behind someone who clearly was not in a hurry. I went to signal left.

I pushed down to turn left.

Then I pulled up a little to turn the signal off. But as I pulled up, I noticed I could pull the turn signal rod in absolutely any direction I chose -- up, down, left, right, in circles -- but none of them were going to cause the turn signal to cease blinking on the left side. It instead now hung rather limply, almost dangling from the steering wheel column.

25 miles from home. 25 miles from the library. I had left early enough to leave plenty of time for library research before the class, so I turned around and drove the half hour back to my parents' to borrow another car -- with the left turn signal going that whole time, mind you.

When I returned back to my parents' that evening, my dad showed me the steel-cast part from inside the steering column that had simply decided to crack into several pieces. Though he can weld most of it back together, whether he can reassemble it properly with the connected mechanisms and fit it all back inside the steering column is still a matter of question.

Meanwhile, this tiny cracked piece -- since when does steel crack? -- has nearly caused my dad to take a sick-day from work and has created tumult in the family driving arrangements.

(Tumult's a great word. We're constantly making good and bad word lists at work lately...)

For three days now I have been trying to log in to my blogger account...

Not that there's anything really to be said!

Today we are having a snowstorm. Legally it's not a blizzard and I can't say what it's like, conditionwise. In the city it's hard to gauge. It did snow in a respectable heaviness for part of the afternoon. From the newsroom, we were privy to all the rumors going around -- that "they" were going to close the interstate, that they already had from Owatonna to Albert Lea (which they had not), that the county had pulled its plows off the road because it couldn't keep up, that MnDOT was about to follow suit, that you couldn't find the road in outlying areas... I managed to get some snow in my clogs and get extremely bored at work (as 1/3 of the newsroom could not make it in and no one was at their places of employment to be interviewed anyhow), but that was about the extent of the inconvenience to my life to date. I went home early and had a pleasant chat with my mailman whilst he made his distributions at the apartment complex's mail center.

Though it is not generally accepted, I do believe that conversation about the weather has some merit. (Have I said as much before?) It is something we have in common; it is something true; it is something that does have significant effect on our lives. For instance, my conversation with the mailman began with, "Nice day for you to be out, eh?" and he made a comment to the effect that he had started early but would likely not be done even by normal finishing time. And he continued that he lives about 35 miles away, and, though they may be the more shallow details, we now know each other a little better.

What else is new? Hmm. A reporter quit. My grandmother's surprise party is in two weeks. There is an newsroom disturbance regarding the aesthetics of the word "armada." (I say that it is nearly bastardized because it sounds part like "arm" -- armpit, army, German harshness -- and part like a passing Spanish breeze. It needs to commit to one or the other. The school board reporter disagrees and intends to someday name an all-salad restaurant after the term.) Next week I am looking forward to another genealogy class. I might be training to be a local museum tour guide in April. I gave up chocolate for lent, but not very devotedly, and so so far I think I've had some about every day, so I may just quit. My intentions were not altogether holy anyhow.

I've found yet another Brit com to my liking -- "A Fine Romance" with Judi Dench and her real-life husband; there aren't any more "Foyle's War"s at the library that I haven't seen, much to my disappointment; my sister and I resolved to go see "Sweet Land" at the theater, only to find we had waited too long and now it's gone; and I've killed a few trees printing out my favorite front page design ideas.

Does anyone still read this crap? Don't leave your name, but just leave a 'yes' comment. (Since you are, clearly, reading this.)

March is coming in like a lion, but with the color of the the lamb. ;)