Microblog

Towards the end of our Sunday walk, stopped to take in the hodgepodge of structures of Mill City Museum. A modern museum rises out of the carefully stabilized ruins of what was once the world’s largest flour mill.

When we leave our home we tell Google to turn off all the lights. In recent times, Google has decided to play cool jazz once the lights are out. This morning I reviewed the settings and concluded this is a bug. We’ll now avoid Google’s attempts at romance by using a different voice command.

This is an unusual viewpoint for me: drove our car for the first time this winter. I always walk to my Friday gig, but today was frostbite weather. The car was a comfortable 64°F when I started out.

Dwight showed a friend and me around the University of Minnesota teaching and research greenhouse where he volunteers. This gorgeous space has four rooms, each with a different climate, including this desert room. The rainforest room smelled and felt wonderful on this frigid day.

Walked with friends towards donuts.

On this chilly day, steam from a district heating plant periodically obscures the 1929 Foshay Tower. A crane lifts materials for a new apartment tower that will permanently block our view of the Foshay. I’ll miss the company of the old-fashioned Foshay name signs when I wake in the night.

After three days sheltering from the Arctic blast, screwed up the will to walk one block to our local bar for Reubens and beer.

Followed building instructions while marveling how Hokusai created Great Wave off Kanagawa in 1831 before the Impressionism movement had started in Europe and while Japan was still closed off from the world. The quasi-pixelated style of the over-loved print lends itself to a LEGO interpretation. Note Mount Fuji and the three boats.

On a bone-chilling day, planned for warm weather in places I love. Made hotel reservations for a three-week trip to Japan with Dwight, our nephew, and his dad. We’ll fly to Kagoshima, then slowly make our way to Tokyo by train. The pandemic put the kibosh on previous attempts at this trip.

Stocked up at Seward Co-op for our weekly Sausage Saturday. “A little of what you fancy does you good.” (From a 1915 English music hall song.)

On my Skyway walk, I imagined I was in an airport heading for a warm-weather destination. Here, in Hennepin County Government Center, monitors direct individuals to court-related rooms. Security screening is just around the corner.

Walked the Mall of America with friends. Made an impulse purchase at the LEGO store: a reward for riding a medical rollercoaster in the past 24 hours. (It ended well, reward enough.) There’s a tradition here: whenever I visited “the doctor’s big house” (hospital) as a kid, my dad would give me a toy car.

Got injected with a radioactive tracer that sticks to prostate cancer cells, prior to being slid through a hybrid PET/CT scanner. This will help determine if I qualify for a clinical trial. The tracer and the high sensitivity of the scanner are recent innovations.

We were a little deficient in the cruciferous department while traveling this past week. Today we started to redress the balance with roasted broccoli.

Between 10 lanes of traffic at the intersection of the Metro A and C lines, Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station, on our way to LAX.

Unintended triptych, left to right: Dwight at the Getty Center today (pack in front as required by museum guards); sculpture depicting 17th century femininity; “Joey at the Love Ball,” drag, 1991. A few provocative juxtapositions of contemporary and pre-1900 European art are scattered throughout the galleries.