Summer in Minnesota is great
Jun. 6th, 2011 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
figmentAll of the sudden, it's summer here. I feel like we skipped spring, which has led to me (and a lot of other people) being rather shocked by the onset of June, and all of the things I thought I had so much time for... I suddenly don't.
On Saturday I did some creative things, had a lazy morning, and got to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather at an indoor-outdoor game party a friend threw in the afternoon. Then I took a tiny little nap, because I knew I was in for a long night at the
Wow - I had a great time at Northern Spark! I could not believe that I ended up staying up all night - I started at 9 PM, and finally gave in and went home at 5 AM.
My favorites were actually things we saw and heard in St. Paul on the late end of the night - Scattered Light was beautiful and fascinating and surprisingly organic... Right near it was the Sewer Pipe Organ, which was only sort of cool until someone realized it was in stereo, and you needed to stand in one particular spot to hear the complete music.
I also had fun at the art shanties, which were a whole block away from my home. I made tiny spin art and rode a tiny bicycle. No doubt it looked as ridiculous as it felt!
Other things I enjoyed:
spacebug's headphone concert set at the Walker. I liked her music, and I enjoyed the weirdness of listening to the set through headphones with a bunch of other people. I wish I'd brought a headphone extender; I would have gotten up and danced.
The random find of the night was Synthetic Unity, which we found in the MIA, completely unexpectedly.
The most hilarious (sorta) was the Hot Air/Red Light installation that looks nothing like the mockup - it was accurately described as "a monument to unrealistic sexual ambition...accompanied by Barry White." (The Barry White did have his voice, though, unlike the description on the web site.) It was very odd.
I also kinda liked what we found at the Science Museum, the Twin Cities Re-Imagined, and the Security Gate.
There were varying levels of fun and interesting, of course. The bus system seemed great but turned out to be terribly frustrating, especially if you wanted to get anywhere specific any time soon. (I imagine if you were content to just ride to the next stop and see what happened to be there, it would have been good.) The brochure and website were only sporadically helpful in finding things, and the descriptions were often pretentious without being helpful (or interesting)! Some of the things we checked out were crowded, like the Walker, or disappointing, like the glow games in Loring Park. The mobile playground was better in concept than reality, at least for me.
In many ways, the coolest part was how alive the cities were, how it made me look at it differently, and how many people were out enjoying the awesomeness going on.
I hope they do it again.
Sunday was recovery and ConCom meeting. I slept in (not as much as I wanted to), went to the ConCom meeting (OMG CONvergence is really soon! And I'm not ready!), and then went to the Apple store where they helped me (for a small fee) fix my destroyed phone. Did I mention that my phone died on Saturday during the day? It did, and I am so conscious of how weird it feels to not have one! It was sort of okay while I was with Azure, but when I was headed off to pick up Fayde on Sunday morning I felt naked without it. Humph.
Now it's hot and sunny, and will be tomorrow too. Perhaps we should at least put the AC in the window today. Oh heavens, and I think I will be doing some early cooking for a Saturday baby shower, too. Nothing like turning on the oven when it's 90+ degrees!
On Saturday I did some creative things, had a lazy morning, and got to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather at an indoor-outdoor game party a friend threw in the afternoon. Then I took a tiny little nap, because I knew I was in for a long night at the
Wow - I had a great time at Northern Spark! I could not believe that I ended up staying up all night - I started at 9 PM, and finally gave in and went home at 5 AM.
My favorites were actually things we saw and heard in St. Paul on the late end of the night - Scattered Light was beautiful and fascinating and surprisingly organic... Right near it was the Sewer Pipe Organ, which was only sort of cool until someone realized it was in stereo, and you needed to stand in one particular spot to hear the complete music.
I also had fun at the art shanties, which were a whole block away from my home. I made tiny spin art and rode a tiny bicycle. No doubt it looked as ridiculous as it felt!
Other things I enjoyed:
spacebug's headphone concert set at the Walker. I liked her music, and I enjoyed the weirdness of listening to the set through headphones with a bunch of other people. I wish I'd brought a headphone extender; I would have gotten up and danced.The random find of the night was Synthetic Unity, which we found in the MIA, completely unexpectedly.
The most hilarious (sorta) was the Hot Air/Red Light installation that looks nothing like the mockup - it was accurately described as "a monument to unrealistic sexual ambition...accompanied by Barry White." (The Barry White did have his voice, though, unlike the description on the web site.) It was very odd.
I also kinda liked what we found at the Science Museum, the Twin Cities Re-Imagined, and the Security Gate.
There were varying levels of fun and interesting, of course. The bus system seemed great but turned out to be terribly frustrating, especially if you wanted to get anywhere specific any time soon. (I imagine if you were content to just ride to the next stop and see what happened to be there, it would have been good.) The brochure and website were only sporadically helpful in finding things, and the descriptions were often pretentious without being helpful (or interesting)! Some of the things we checked out were crowded, like the Walker, or disappointing, like the glow games in Loring Park. The mobile playground was better in concept than reality, at least for me.
In many ways, the coolest part was how alive the cities were, how it made me look at it differently, and how many people were out enjoying the awesomeness going on.
I hope they do it again.
Sunday was recovery and ConCom meeting. I slept in (not as much as I wanted to), went to the ConCom meeting (OMG CONvergence is really soon! And I'm not ready!), and then went to the Apple store where they helped me (for a small fee) fix my destroyed phone. Did I mention that my phone died on Saturday during the day? It did, and I am so conscious of how weird it feels to not have one! It was sort of okay while I was with Azure, but when I was headed off to pick up Fayde on Sunday morning I felt naked without it. Humph.
Now it's hot and sunny, and will be tomorrow too. Perhaps we should at least put the AC in the window today. Oh heavens, and I think I will be doing some early cooking for a Saturday baby shower, too. Nothing like turning on the oven when it's 90+ degrees!