I tagged along with Ry and Paula last night to A Beautiful Mind. After leaving the theater, I felt as if I truly understood schizophrenia. Really, I know that I will never understand it without having it (if? when? onset can happen, I learned, at any age and is likely in your 20s), but the film did an excellent job of teaching me what it’s like to be living with the disease and what it’s like for loved ones. (I felt the same way after reading Drinking: A Love Story, a memoir written by an alcoholic.) Anyway, a few links P and I gathered this morning that I’ll park here … hoping I’ll get back to read them soon:

My “to blog” list has grown increasinlgy longer over the past few weeks … so, in no particular order:

Wildfire. A few weeks back, Ryan and Paula invited us to the newest Twin Cities restaurant, Wildfire, of the “Lettuce Entertain You” crowd. After waiting two and half hours for a table, we were finally greeted with menus, which looked a lot like its sister restaurant, only with higher prices. Despite our grousing over the menus, the manager did come over and apologized for the wait, giving us a free appetizer. And, we were all so soused on cocktails, by the time our food came, no one cared that is was already 10:45 p.m. Overall: good food, high priced, average to good service. Will I return? Maybe.

Prayer Shawls. My co-worker tells me that knitting is “in.” This past weekend she chaperoned a group of junior high kids on a choir retreat and found them all gathered in one cabin … knitting (yeah, I thought she was going to say they were smoking or naked or something crazy like that). Apparently, some were knitting “prayer shawls.” The concept is that while you’re knitting, you pray. Then, these shawls are given to people in hospices or nursing homes, and when they wrap the shawls around them, they feel wrapped in prayer. Apparently, the concept’s been around forever, but since I don’t knit (or perform any other handicraft), I have never heard of them. A quick search on Google.

Snow Fences. If you’re not from around here (where it snows), you probably have no idea what a snow fence is. I was thinking about this on Monday when I drove onto campus … we got dumped by a whole lot of snow over the weekend and I was wondering how snow fences actually worked. I thought this would be a great article for the How Stuff Works web site (but it’s not there). The answer is here.

Portraits of Grief in the New York Times.

Blogging cliques. When I first started blogging a few years ago, a little page of jealousy always went through me when I read about a group of bloggers getting together for hiking, drinks, movies, conferences, etc. Now I, too, can say that “I and a couple of other bloggers got together for dinner last week.” (Eric, where’s that picture?)

Moving update. Our new address and phone number will be official next week! If you want it, send me an e-mail. Speaking of moving, all of utilities have nearly been established as well. All that’s left to do is find a garbarge collector. The city of Bloomington licenses three garbage collectors/recyclers. I need to call all three to get quotes. Weird. Calling around to get a quote on trash removal. The things you learn when you buy a house.

I’m blogged out. I’ve been reading Lileks a bit lately and he’s motivating me to write more frequently. Thus, my attempt. So, we’ll see if this trend continues.

Rog and I have been addicted to Sex and the City lately (the HBO show, silly) after he got me the second season boxed set on VHS. But wait! You can get sexy in the Twin Cities, too!

1. We bought a house. We’ll be moving out the end of January, which we’re quite thrilled about — the sooner the better, we say. We’re convinced that one of our neighbors is a drug dealer (Paula has suggested that our newspaper has gone missing since the drug dealers had to wrap their crack in something!) and even more recently, we’re convinced that the other other neighbor is running a brothel.

2. I went to Chicago for five days. I bought only one thing on Michigan Ave — the $10 bag of truffles from Harry and David was about all I could afford! The CASE Five conference went incredibly smoothly. This year I was in charge of food and beverage — next year, I think they’re putting me in charge of the web site, which is more up my alley. But we’ll see. The best part of the conference was hanging out wih all the conference committee (hi Tricia! hi Sarah!).

3. Roger and I finished all our Christmas shopping at the last minute and headed out to Belgrade for a few days. There was no “Good Will” Christmas this year — I mean, who has room for all that stuff? We came back to Burnsville on Christmas night, enjoyed a nice dinner and a bottle of wine, and exchanged our gifts. Once again, I’m overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity. (Good thing I got that wish list online!) Thanks to all.

I’m back at work today … it’s so quiet around the office, which makes it a good few days for organizing files and deep thinking, but at the same time, I wonder if my time would be better spent at home baking cookies and watching Maury Povich. Oh yeah. That was yesterday.

Our New Year’s plans include hosting an “intimate” party (we call it intimate since not a whole lot of people are showing up) on the 31st, then welcoming in 2002!

“You are Edgar Degas’ Dance Class. You appear soft and gentle, but hide a core of rigid structure and discipline. You work hard and follow orders, because you are determined to succeed, but remain attached to displays of frivolity and maintaining your appearance.”

What kind of art are you?

So, if you can’t get updated content …. well, at least you can get an updated look.

Fresh! is now lynsey.org, mostly because …. uh …. my content was no longer fresh. I knew that Fresh! had seen its demise when …. well, over on the left hand side there — see where it says Archives? Click on Nomember. And. Nothing. Is. There. Yes, I didn’t blog a damn thing during the eleventh month, so Blogger won’t even generate an empty page for me. Just a nasty “page not found” message.

So, I decided to give the site a new look, a new name, and perhaps that’ll spur me back into writing a bit more often. Maybe. As my dad would say, “Don’t hold your hand on your ass. It might just grow there.”

Things that have happened since October 26 (the last time I actually made an entry here):

• I got married.
• I went to Hawaii.
• The McDonalds in Northfield burned down.

That’s about all the excitement going on around here. Stay tuned.

If you’re a frequent reader of Fresh!, you know that I’ve always had problems getting my newspaper delivered. Either it comes, it doesn’t come, or it’s ripped off by some jackass in the apartment building who’s too cheap and lazy to go out to the office and buy a daily paper for fifty cents.

Anyway, about four weeks ago Roger and I thought about lacing our paper with flour, so that when the robber attempted to steal our paper, a “white powdery substance” would get all over him.

(Really. It was funny four weeks ago.)

Thank goodness we got a new delivery person or nicer neighbors, because we haven’t missed a single paper this week. If it happens again we’ll go the web cam route.

Paula sent a great link today on how anthrax and how cipro actually work. (Go to the How Stuff Works site and find out how Halloween works, too. Odd.)

This is our new toy:

I’ve heard the rumor every year: Playboy’s got their list out again — the sexiest college campuses and St. Olaf is on it. Hey, why shouldn’t we be, with our blonde-haired blue-eyed Scandinavians running all over the place? Sounded legit to me!

However, I’ve never actually seen the list. So, my brother decided to check things out. Typing “St. Olaf” and “Playboy” into his Lexis-Nexis search, he comes up with an article called “Life on the Internet” from the archives of the Bismarck Tribune (we grew up in Bismarck). Featured in the very article is my brother himself! Turns out he participated in a roundtable discussion about the “new Internet” back in 1995 …. someone in the roundtable discussion mentioned Playboy in one sentence, Ryan mentioned St. Olaf a few sentences later. Thus, “St. Olaf and Playboy.” Pretty freaky when the results of your search are actually …. you.

Turns out the list is actually an urban legend that’s traveled around college campuses for years (hey, your college was probably on the list, too!). Until Playboy decided to turn the legend into truth.

St. Olaf isn’t on it. Are you?

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling

away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one … It’s in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

trans. by Robert Bly