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April 2010
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Dennis Jansen

April 19th, 2010

Forest trails in the city

I skated around a lakes Cedar, Harriet, and Calhoun after class today. It was my first time around Cedar lake, which is north west of the other lakes.

Cedar lake is only partially surrounded by bike trails, and I found myself in a large park which made me feel like I was in the middle of a forest, despite being only a mile or two away from downtown:
Cedar Lake

There is also a portion of the trail along an old railroad right-of-way which has view of the city:
Cedar Lake
After my faux-forest-adventure, I returned to my apartment and ran into the cleaning ladies for the building who were, well, pissed off. Their note explains why:
Continue reading “Forest trails in the city” »

April 19th, 2010

BWE 12 & 13: Sweat and Irritation

Note: the “Best Week Ever” (BWE) posts are summaries of the prior week.

The past two weeks whizzed by. I don’t know what to say.
blur
And yes, I was determined to use that blurry picture. The picture is of Porky’s in St. Paul. Porky’s is like a ghetto Sonic restaurant: grease and onions. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for days and I wanted to bleach my mouth. It was worse than Culver’s and I am never going back. Oh, the horror…

I didn’t write a post last week because I had nothing charitable to say about school.

I knew there was a problem when I walked out of school so irritated that my jaw was clenched. Family law had just sucked 3 hours of my day and I was disgusted by some of my classmates.

Family law has 100 students. A handful of these students monopolize class time with inappropriate comments and not-so-relevant personal anecdotes. Walking around offended by the social ineptness of others is stupid and counter-productive, and I am no longer doing it. If I could deal with the freshmen of the University of Miami for three years as a resident assistant, then the douchebaggery of a few law students should not bother me.

Besides school, everything else was constant during the past two weeks: I am still bumbling around campus, roaming about Minneapolis, studying at coffee shops, cubicle-dwelling with my hilarious coworkers, and doing a lot of freelance graphic design work. Tis the season for design jobs apparently…

And then there’s Juddson, the boyfriend who is somehow not sick of me yet. He humors me even when I feel cranky and ridiculous, and he doesn’t even charge extra! This is Judd and Jabroni (his roommates’s dog):
Judd and the pitbull

Jabroni was over for a day while Judd dog-sat for his roommate. Gertrude felt threatened and refused to let me pet Jabroni. I feel loved, I think?

When she’s not blocking guest dogs, Gertrude spends her time begging for attention, finding drunk neighbors, and scaring puppies at softball practice:
Gertrude and puppy
I’m fine with Gertrude terrorizing puppies as long as it doesn’t involve another vet bill.

I also managed to revive my exercise schedule during the past two weeks. I bought K2 inline skates and started zipping around the lakes. The new exercise schedule culminated on Saturday with a 32-mile round-trip skate to work. The epic skate took close to 4-hours and my hindquarter felt kicked. This should become a weekly event.

This week I will increase the workouts and switch back to my hippie-diet (organic, non-processed foods, no gluten, soy, or lactose.) A full Operation Shrink a Gut update is coming soon. Where’s Brandon?

April 19th, 2010

St. Mary’s Dome

This is St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church. It is on a hill that overlooks Lake Calhoun, so the gold dome is rather dramatic: St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church I finally made my way up the hill and to the building, and was so underwhelmed by how bland the rest of the building is.
Continue reading “St. Mary’s Dome” »