My harvest

I miss paper

I miss getting bills in the mail rather than having to remember another username and password to find out what you owe.

I miss reading poems and stories out of a book. I like holding it in my hand, putting it down for a second so I can grasp the meaning and then bringing it back up to read again. I miss the feel of the paper and the weight of the book. I miss the smell. You don’t get that from a computer screen.

I miss getting information in a handout. Now, when you start at a new college you’re expected to find what you need to know online in a see of virtual pages. You need a user name and password for your email, and another for your account. You don’t get a syllabus anymore. You have to find it in this sea of online pages. There’s a page titled Portal. Another for email. One called Murphy. And one more titled Blackboard. How do I keep everything straight? I miss getting every thing I needed to know in a convenient folder. Here’s how to access your mailbox. Here’s a map of our buildings and a list of accronyms. Your class meets in this room at this time and your instructor is Leslie Miller. Here’s an invoice; send your check to this address.

Yesterday I got a postcard in the mail telling me St. Thomas doesn’t send out bills anymore. It’s all electronic.

Yeah, I really miss paper.

Beware of Snow Leopard

Yay! There’s a new operating system for Macs. I was ecstatic — until I installed it and couldn’t open either Word or Excel 2004. Seriously?!

So I had to do some digging to discover the problem. Now that I know it, I’m sharing it so that hopefully others don’t spend an afternoon as frustrated as I was.

I got great information at this blog:
http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2009/09/hot_topics_using_office_for_mac_with_snow_leopard.html

My problem was all font-related.

I had to go to the application Font Book and manually delete all the duplicates. Just turning them off didn’t work.

Then I went to my Microsoft Word font folder and deleted a few specific fonts. Apparently, they are older and mess things up. Delete:
• Andale Mono
• Arial
• Arial Black
• Arial Narrow
• Arial Rounded Bold
• Brush Script.ttf
• Comic Sans MS
• Georgia
• Impact
• Tahoma
• Trebuchet MS
• Verdana
• Wingdings 2
• Wingdings 3

In a perfect world, everything would just work. Bummer we don’t live in a perfect world.

Something good from something bad

I still remember one of the worst mistakes I ever made as a journalist for the STAR newspaper in Cambridge. It happened in the winter of 2001. A home outside Cambridge caught fire because a methamphetamine lab burst in the garage. The homeowner, a J. Siems, faced several meth charges. At the time, meth busts were happening every week and this was a big deal.

Now, I knew a J. Siems. Jason Siems had been my sister’s neighbor a few years earlier.

When I typed the story, instead of writing about James Siems, the homeowner where the meth lab was found, I substituted the name I knew: Jason.

When the story printed it was not a good day in our newspaper office. Jason’s wife called, she yelled, and threatened to sue. I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible. I knew Jason, and he was a nice guy. I didn’t need a potential lawsuit hanging over my head to feel guilty. We printed a correction, of course, in our next edition, but I never shook feeling terrible about what happened.

Fast forward to 2009. Jason Siems has accepted a job working at the main desk at the college where I’m now teaching. I’ve gone through the summer without running into him, but as soon as school starts I need his help. He says, “I know you, don’t I?”

“Yeah, you used to live in the same duplex as my sister,” I reply, hoping he doesn’t remember how else he knows me. He remembers.

“And you used to write for the STAR newspaper, too, right?” He asks. “You wrote that story about my brother and the fire at his place.”

“Yeah, I did,” I say, ducking my head in shame. “How is your brother doing?” I didn’t expect to hear anything good; meth is a hard habit to break and has destroyed many lives.

“He’s fantastic,” Jason replied. “He’s doing great. He’s off the drug. We laugh about what happened now.”

“I still feel terrible about what happened,” I interject.

He continued, “In fact, we speak together to groups about his addiction and how it affects the entire family. You know, if you hadn’t written that story and accidentally used my name, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Amazing. Something good, you could even call it wonderful, happened because of a mistake I made. A weight I hadn’t even realized I had been carrying for years fell off my back. I felt a hundred pounds lighter. My mistake enabled two brothers to reconnect and to share their story. Perhaps they had saved another from making the mistakes James had made.

It is true. Something good can come of a mistake.

Peace at Glendalough State Park

Find peace without driving to the Minnesota-Canada border.

I’ve always gone up to Voyageur National Park to center myself. I’ve found that a dose of wilderness brings calm back to my soul.

But with a five-month-old baby, I wasn’t up to boating into a remote campsite. I discovered that at some state parks, you can “cart in.” These campsites are slightly off the beaten track. I was a bit hesitant knowing how much stuff I bring camping now because of the baby. I wasn’t sure we wouldn’t be trekking back and forth between the truck and campsite. But it worked great and we’d do it again. I loved not hearing the constant hum of vehicles circling round us like we had at Forestville State Park earlier this summer. Glendalough was tranquil. Relaxing.

Minnesota’s newest state park, Glendalough, was a two and-one-half hour drive. It’s between Alexandria and Fergus Falls. The drive wasn’t bad, although we couldn’t have made it much farther with our active babe. The park is a few miles outside Battle Lake, a little town with a Civil War museum, postage-stamp mini-golf course, and a giant indian in the Wayside Park. It qualifies as a Minnesota town by the DQ sitting in the middle of it. Yes, we did leave our campsight on Saturday for an ice cream blizzard. Summer’s almost over; make the most of it!

I’m used to miles of miles of road stretching between state park attractions. This park is compact in comparison. The way it is set up now, you pass the campground to head to the office. It was slightly confusing and took us a bit to figure out what to do. (My suggestion box tip was to add an office sign and arrow at the campsite sign to help out newcomers.)

This is how you do it. At the carts, pick one without a reservation sign on it. The numbers on the cart correspond to campsites. Unload your vehicle, load up the cart and head to your site. Once unpacked you’ve in essence reserved the site. Then head to the office to pay. It’s $18 a night, plus a state park sticker fee.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to pull the cart. It had large bicycle wheels on it and was well balanced. I held the baby and hauled a cartful of stuff.

My recommendation if you go: pick site 22 or 24. Both are close to the parking lot (and toilets/showers). They’re on the lake site. No. 22 is almost full sun, which would be great if the weather was a little on the cool side (ie. under 70º). Both those sites were already reserved (via the DNR reservation web site), so we opted for 23. It was a great site, though a little too shady for me (cold mornings). An advantage was that we could take the shortcut to the bathrooms through another site. That turned into a disadvantage Saturday when it filled up. Not only was the shortcut then barred, but the campers left their propane lantern on; it shone directly into our site and was oh, so annoying. I wanted to enjoy a dark evening with campfire light and stars.

ABOUT GLENDALOUGH
For every two acres of land in Glendalough, there is one acre of water. In fact, there are five lakes inside the park. Lake Emma is closed to boats entirely. Annie Battle Lake is off limits to motors. Annie Battle Lake is provides a “heritage fishing” experience. My husband loved it because it put us non-boat owners on par with those with fishing boats. Special regulations on Annie Battle Lake sustain a steady supply of large sunfish, crappie, the occasional walleye, and large bass. My husband had never seen such large sunfish. He was impressed.

The park was managed as a private game farm and corporate retreat for over 85 years. It was first developed as by Ezra G. Valentine in 1903. Later, it passed through two owners of the Minneapolis Tribune. Over the years, many famous people visited, including Presidents Nixon and Eisenhauer. Nixon went for a dip in Annie Battle Lake in October one year. Brrr!

There are 26 cart-in campsites and two large group sites. Feeling more adventureous? Canoe into a site. Feeling lazy? Opt for one of the two camper cabins that are available year-round. They’d be perfect for motorcyclists.

Boats, kayaks and canoes are available to rent if you don’t feel like hauling yours. The cost is just $20 a day, or $10 for four hours — pretty affordable, we thought. They provide the life jackets too, although we brought our own for the baby.

If you’re a birder, you’ll love the park. I picked it in part because of the fishing pier and swimming beach/picnic grounds on Molly Stark Lake. There was a dog cemetery that piqued my interest.

DIRECTIONS: From the town of Battle Lake, go 1.5 miles north on State Hwy. #78 and 1.8 miles east on Ottertail Co. Hwy #16 to the park entrance.

GEOCACHING
One of the hottest new hobbies is available at Glendalough: geocaching. I’d been dying to try it out, so on Saturday we did. Using a handheld GPS unit, we found the first two clues. While the first was on a bulletin board, the second was buried deep in a fallen tree. So cool! That one had a small treasure chest full of flsh flashcards. We had to ID the fish, put them in the order stated on another card and use that to discover the coordinates to the next location. Although we thought we had it right, we never found the next cache. Bummer!

On our walk though, we ran into three deer grazing about 100 yards away. Amazing. It was breathtaking.

IF YOU GO TO BATTLE LAKE
• Check out the Civil War Museum. It’s right off the main street. Watch for the open signs. I’m guessing it’s only open on the weekends. I didn’t see it advertised in any of the tourist guides so I can’t give you any details other than location.
• Take a photo with the giant indian. The statue is located in the wayside park on the north end of town.
• Play mini-golf. Turn at the liquor store and go one block.
• Enjoy a glass of wine at the bistro on the main street. The outside dining area was a perfect place to while away a few hours.
• Stop by Inspiration Point on your way there. Watch for signs to turn right off Highway 78. This is the second highest point in Minnesota.

SEE FULL POST WITH ALL PHOTOS AT
http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Minnesota/Alexandria/blog-435368.html

Hair Dye Debacle

I have some hard-earned advice to share. Don’t use Loreal’s highlighting kit on your hair if you’ve recently had a baby. No, I have to confess I’m not sure if it was the kit, the hormones or something else. What I do know is what happened scared me enough that I may never highlight my hair again.

I was good during my pregnancy. No hair dye. No chemicals (except for that weed kill incident). No vanity. But once that baby was out, I was more than ready to bring blond highlights back. I waited nearly five months though, not wanting to subject the baby to the odor of a home kit. Finally, I could wait no longer. I hatched a plan. Bring the baby to grandma’s where she would highlight my hair grandpa would watch baby. Foolproof, right?

Well, baby had other plans.

She ate before we left home, but mostly nibbles. Once at grandma’s she went down for a nap — that lasted just long enough for us to pull my hair through the cap. Once we were ready to bring on the chemicals (outside of course), she was ready to be held. And not just by anybody. Only mom would do. Grandpa tried his hardest. Grandma rushed through the process of spreading the chemical mix across my hair and covering it with plastic in order to take over with the baby. Five or so minutes longer none of us could take her cries — which had escalated to the loudest screams I’d yet heard my sweet baby make. Forget it. My baby needed milk. Oh, why had I decided I needed to highlight my hair?

As I sat down to give the baby some milk to quiet the screams, I realized that my scalp was starting to burn. Ouch. Five minutes later it really hurt. Baby was sated and quieted -- although she was still hiccuping – so we rushed to the sink. As soon as grandma and I left the room, the screams returned. Grandma left me to rinse alone, and headed back to calm the baby. I rubbed and the burning stopped,but as I continued rinsing I realized way too much hair was coming out. Had I actually melted some strands? The answered appeared to be yes. I washed it a few more times to get rid of the strong chemical odor, and then tried to comb it out. More hair. Was I going to have any left when this was over?

I decided to leave it alone, and focus instead on the baby, who still wasn’t too thrilled. She wanted mom.

We headed home. Once we stepped in the doors, she was calm and happy. Mom, however, was a mess.

And that’s how I learned my lesson. Stay away from home highlighting kits and women who have never done it before. And plans that involve babies never turn out how you thought they would.

A Girls' Outing

I made a delightful discovery with a bunch of friends a few weeks ago. We stopped by Serendipity in Anoka for Sunday brunch. Not only was the food delicious, but the atmosphere was perfect for a girls gathering.

Serendipity sits off Bunker Lake Boulevard just east of its intersection with Round Lake Boulevard. But you forget the traffic while sitting on the flower-covered patio.

We opted for the all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch. There were multiple cold salads and hot breakfast foods. We topped off the meal with Italian gelatto. Seriously good.

After dining, we headed upstairs to check out the gift shop. It was the perfect way to while away an afternoon with the girls.

www.serendipitystoreandcafe.com
3450 Bunker Lake Blvd Anoka
763-427-0699