The Week Without God

I saw this quote from a friend on Facebook, and thought it was neat...

Without God, our week would be: sinday, mournday, tearday, wasteday, thirstday, fightday, shatterday; seven days without God makes one weak!

4th of July Weekend Was Too Expensive!

I got off a bit early on Friday, July 1, and went home to vegetate for a bit before leaving for an errand and then Craft Night. I ended up leaving early in hopes of missing a huge storm headed for St. Cloud and, instead, ended up driving through torrential downpours! I ended up sitting in the parking lot of ShopKo for about 15 minutes waiting for the rain to let up a bit, and when it did, I ran inside. I picked up a few things I needed, and went to the cash registers to pay…the cashiers turned off their lights, locked us all inside, and all the customers were herded to the back room. We were in a tornado warning! I hung out in the stock room with about 50 other people for about a half hour, and then we were released! I went back to the checkout lines to purchase my items, and headed outside. The parking lot was flooded! The front half near the store was okay, but the back half toward Park Avenue (Cash Wise) was filled with water, and I couldn’t get onto the street. I drove around onto Second Street, and turned onto Park Avenue…that street was flooded too, and I had to turn back around! I ended up going all the way to 10th Avenue in Waite Park because all the other streets heading to Division Street were flooded. There went Taco John’s for dinner!

I decided since I was all the way down in Waite Park, I’d just go to Culvers for dinner instead. I pulled into the drive-thru and stopped at the order menu. The attendant asked what I wanted, and I pushed down on my breaks to turn in my seat…and my foot went to the floor! I said “My breaks just went out, I’ll be back” and then I coasted around Culvers (to a very strange look from the drive-through girl) and into Gateway Tire and Auto’s parking area. With a little jump of the curb, I stopped using the parking brake. It was open!!! Mom came and got me and we hauled my crafting stuff into her van, and left my car at Gateway.

The huge storm had flooded a lot of streets, as well as downed tons of trees, all over St. Cloud. My mom dropped me off from Craft Night somewhere after midnight. The next day, I got a call from Gateway, and my brake cables were rusted through…some $400 later, I picked up my car on Saturday, and headed over to my friend’s for a BBQ and movie, and had a great time as we were re-watching the Harry Potter movies to get ready for Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Well, I woke up at 7:40 a.m. on Sunday morning to a series of beeping alarms…the power was out! I had known that several areas in St. Cloud were without power due to the storm on Friday (and were still out on Sunday), but we hadn’t gone out until Sunday. All I could think is what did the cut while trying to fix everyone else??? 24-hours later, and my power was STILL out…happy 4th of July? I was lucky I hadn’t already picked up my ingredients to make my pretzel dessert for the BBQ I was going to that night, because everything in my fridge was SPOILED! The power finally came back on at 10:20 a.m. on Monday, July 4. Some $70 later, I restocked my fridge with the essentials (eggs, butter, cheese, milk, and condiments).

The fun part of the weekend? BBQs galore (three) and fireworks (two sets)! Happy, fun pics below!

Arsenic and Old Lace at the Guthrie Theatre

For Mom’s Mother’s Day gift, I had purchased tickets to the final performance of Arsenic and Old Lace playing on the Wurtle Thrust stage at the Guthrie (the “round” stage). I hadn’t been to the new theatre; and I had only been to the old theatre once in high school when I saw As You Like It, also on the round stage. The building is extremely blue, so it isn’t hard to find! It was also cool, because you can see people in the blue walls on the outside (and on the walls and ceilings inside as well). We parked in the structure directly across from the Guthrie, which, crazily enough, only took cash and check, and walked across the street to go into the building. On the way, we noticed that runners were coming in from finishing Minneapolis’s Marathon! Kinda cool!

We were about 45 minutes early, so had time to wander around. Our first stop was the bathrooms, which were up the escalator. This was NOT your ordinary escalator, but one that was a single long escalator that rose four stories! (You can see mom’s and my reflection in the picture of us going up the escalator.) We got to the top, and went to the restrooms, and then wandered around. I took a few pictures from inside the building looking out at the river when we noticed an outside area that people were standing on that was facing the Mississippi River, so we headed over to go outside and get a better view of the river area.

It was beautiful outside, and the various bridges over the river were pretty cool to look at. The Guthrie is right at the St. Anthony Falls. One thing that I never knew is that Pillsbury and Gold Medal Flour were directly across the river from each other! Very cool old buildings are in that area, and many of them are being revitalized. It was beautiful outside, and we hung out for about 15 minutes, and then headed back inside to enter the theatre.

The set for the play was absolutely awesome! It was a two-story interior of an old Victorian house, with the audience viewing the entry/sitting/dining room, with views of a door to the kitchen and a door to the basement, and then stairs up to a balcony with a bedroom door and hallway to another bedroom. On either side of the “house” were views of the cemetery outside. The picture is very dark (no flash), so you can’t see it very well, but it was the best set I’ve ever seen!

The play itself was so well done! The actors were fabulous, and the Brewster sisters were absolutely awesome! I know I laughed more at this play than I ever did at the Cary Grant movie! It was totally worth the money!

“The play is a farcical black comedy [written by Joseph Kesselring], revolving
around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal
family and local police in Brooklyn, NY, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch" of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts' victims); and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein (a character based on real-life gangland surgeon Joseph Moran) to conceal his identity and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff (a self-referential joke, as the part was originally played by Karloff). The film adaptation follows the same basic plot, with a few minor changes.”

After the play, mom and I took some outside pictures of the building, and walked around back, and what did we find? The outside seating area where we had taken our pictures upstairs was a giant “arm” off of the building! Way crazy! We both said that we were glad we didn’t know while we were standing out there!

After we walked around outside for a little while, we headed back towards St. Cloud. We ended up deciding not to eat in the Cities as it was only about 4pm, and neither of us were too terribly hungry. We stopped in Maple Grove, and ate at California Pizza Kitchen…yummy Portobello Mushroom Ravioli in a garlic cream sauce!