Les Crepes

A video some of my French friends made while making crepes ... It's long, but it makes me hungry!

Get video codes at Bolt.

My experiment

I had my first ever employee review on Wednesday. It was very, very good, except a comment about my writing.

I've always prided myself on being a good writer, but apparently I'm much better at getting people to blab to me, my editor said. So I've undertaken a new project that will (hopefully) help me improve the quality of my writing.

It's a new blog. I'm going to try to write 800 words a day about my life. The inspiration comes from a book by William Zinsser, fittingly called "Writing About Your Life."

It's not going to be in chronological order. It'll be a lot of short stories about growing up and becoming who I am. It may be good, it may be crap. But I'm hoping that over the long run, I will become a better writer.

Whether that transfers well into stories about school budgets and spelling bees ... well ... we'll see.

http://landerneau.blogspot.com/


I am still going to keep writing in this blog, with rants and observations that have little to do with my life story. At least, not yet.

4th St. S and Portland Ave.

So Margo and I ran into each other in downtown Minneapolis today.

This is sweet for several reasons:

1 – Margo and I haven’t run into each other anywhere for more than six years because we’ve lived in different states and, at times, different countries. Now she lives in Minneapolis and that’s awesome ‘cause I like her.

2 – She didn’t notice (or didn’t say anything) that I was wearing her mittens. She stayed at my house the other night and forgot her mittens there. I couldn’t find any this morning, so I borrowed hers.

Margo and I were BFFs in high school. Attached at the hip. We hold each other singularly responsible for the fact that neither of us ever had a serious boyfriend in high school.

We have described our relationship over the years as “binge and purge.” We either don’t see or speak to each other, or we see each other all the time. Most of college, we were purging. Except for when I lived in Washington, DC and she was a student at American. That was a binge period.

Margo’s moved to Minneapolis until August, when she’s going to study illegal immigration in Turkey. So we hung out the other night and she’s staying with me this weekend while looking for an apartment.
I’m really happy she’s here. ‘Cause then I can borrow her mittens and we can run into each other randomly.

They better not screw it up

Top five moments from Election Day

1) Democrats win everything except the World Cup (and the Governorship)
2) First Muslim congressman in U.S. History
3) First female speaker of the house in U.S. History
4) First female U.S. senator in Minnesota history
5) First black U.S. representative in Minnesota history

Last night I stopped at the liquor store before the election night fiesta. I bought two bottles of champagne (one for spraying in the yard, which never happened). I didn’t dare to be optimistic before then – it was once I’d already heard about half the races called that I even spent the money on the champagne.

I’ve spent the last six years of my life – ever since I could vote, really — living under this repressed feeling that our government really doesn’t represent me. All the conservatives are totally crazy – i.e. Michelle Bachman – and the Democrats have been powerless to do anything.

The conservatives advocated for the gay marriage amendment. Or the flag burning amendment. Or the giant fence on the border. Or kicking out all the immigrants. Or making a mess out of Medicare and Social Security.

I didn’t realize how truly sad I was about all of this until I was reading the newspaper this morning and started to think about all the cool things could happen now that the Democrats have a say. Already, Bush had lunch with Nancy Pelosi today and Donald Rumsfeld quit.

I’m an optimist about politics and I tend to believe (perhaps naively) that our government will work, and eventually life in this country will change for the better.

Ever since I’ve been able to vote, I’ve put all my faith in the Democrats. I would guess that 85 percent of the votes I have cast in the last six years have been for Democrats. In retrospect, they have done very little to earn these votes on my part. The votes have been cast with the sheer faith that whatever Democrats do would be better than the status quo. They would protect millions of Americans from racism and sexism and bigotry and hatred.

Now that they’re in power, if they screw it up, it will break my heart.

And they're off!

I love Election Day. I think it’s my second favorite holiday, after Halloween. And they’re so close together!

I jumped out of bed at 6:45 this morning in order to get to my local precinct by 7 a.m. I had to stand in line for 20 minutes. I cast my votes for mostly Democrats, not all, then went home and got ready for work.

I’m even wearing my favorite Election Day T-shirt. It’s got a picture of a donkey, and an elephant, and it says, “Let’s Get This Party Started.”

I remember being similarly excited on Election Day 2004. I also jumped out of bed that day in order to vote before my day really began. At the time, I was managing editor at the Daily and I knew I’d have a super stressful, action packed day. There’s no better place to be on Election Day than in a newsroom. Now, though, since I’m just a peon who covers education, I don’t have to work tonight.

Last time around, the results were not exactly what I had been hoping for. After the paper had been put to bed, I got drunk in the photo department with Tom. There’s the benefit of working at a college newspaper.

Tonight? I’ve got my fingers crossed. But I know how things work in this country. Whenever I get my hopes up, they get crushed like little pieces of glass from a broken beer bottle on the street.