It's Leap Day.

Internet,

It's Leap Day. So kick up your heels or eat some frog legs. Enjoy it!

xoxo,

L

I'm-a gonna get me some culture.

Internet,

You're very useful. Through you, I bought opera tix today. For a SCHOOL NIGHT! Now, let's hope and pray like mad that I will be able to use my ticket: I would prefer not to end up sitting at work on the floor or in committee when the opera is going on a few short blocks away. In the words of a co-worker today (Hi, Ed K!), "Man plans. God laughs." But I hope that God is laughing with me in this case - all the way to the Ordway.

And apparently I've completely forgotten my own advice from the last couple of weeks (see more uplifting, funny, comedic things, and less dramatic, stab-out-your-own-eyeballs-depressing things): Lucia di Lammermoor. But it has music! So that makes all the difference in the world. People can say the saddest things ever, as long as it has beautiful music to accompany it. Right? (Says the girl who loves melancholy throughout her music and believes 90% of the best music comes in minor keys.)

Anyway, as long as we're on the subject of the theatrical performances, I'll mention that Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last weekend (or was it the weekend before? I can't remember...all of my days blur into one big work-fest) was good. It was a little difficult to watch in some ways - I'm already stressed out, and watching other people (fictitious though they may be) stress out isn't exactly relaxing. But it wasn't as bad as End of the Rainbow, either, in that I didn't wish for death by a thousand paper cuts, using the playbill as the weapon with which to find solace. So. In short, I really don't think any production can ever really overcome Liz Taylor and Paul Newman, but it was good. I think the best actor in the entire production (and made me forget the movie the most) is David Anthony Brinkley, playing the role of Big Daddy.

And as long as we're talking culture, we might as well throw in Masterpiece Theater. Last year, Internet, I got totally hooked on Downton Abbey. So you can imagine that it was with great anticipation that I watched the second season, finally finishing the last episodes over the weekend (pretty sure it was just this weekend). It's all over the top and completely British and a guilty-soap opera type-pleasure. And I love it, along with pretty much everyone else in America.

And now that I've moved onto stuff people watch on TV, well, the high brow has left the building, and if I keep going down the cultural rabbit trail, I'm going to be discussing live active yoghurt cultures soon. Let's not, shall we?

xoxo,

Minny LinnEy

p.s. Lest you think I am too uppity for words with all of my opera, theater and other snobbish, dry television performances, does it make you feel better to know that I renewed my Reader's Digest subscription today, too? And that it's the only magazine to which I subscribe? Hmmm? Well, it should make you feel better about things. But I'll be perfectly honest: it's not like I'm going to sit at the opera and read RD whilst I await the performance to begin. Just sayin'.

Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

Dear Internet,

Last weekend I went out to dinner at Masa. I rate it quite highly, to the point where it's now #2 on my list of favorites in Minneapolis. Why, you ask?

Well, first, because I ate beef tenderloin so addictively delicious that I'm positive the good people there feed some baby cows crack.* And then they take that beef and cook it to perfection and serve it smothered in deliciously melted chihuahua cheese. (And if that cheese was actually made from chihuahuas or chihuahua milk, I'm pretty sure they fed the chihuahuas crack, too. It's just that good.)

Second, because the meal was amazing from start to finish. I don't know about you, Internet, but I hate going to a restaurant and dining on a perfectly delightful first course or three, and then the dessert course bombs (and not like an actual bombe or bomb pop - a total dud is what I mean, and not like the milk dud kind, either). No, indeed. Masa does it right from the tortilla chips and guac to the pastel de tres leches.

_____

Hey, Internet! Wanna go to a play that rips away all the nice notions you had about Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz? Then go see End of the Rainbow at the Guthrie like I did on Saturday! (And saw it right before I found out Whitney Houston had died...kinda weird...lotsa similarities...anyhoo.) Judy Garland: child star, adult addict. Brilliantly acted, horribly sad. (But at least it wasn't like Burial at Thebes earlier this season, which made me want to slit my own wrists - or someone else's wrists, like the playwright's, the director's and half of the actors'). Next up: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.** In future, Guthrie people, you may possibly want to sprinkle in more Charley's Aunt-type plays between the ones that make people feel stabby. Just a thought.

_____

I pulled a muscle in my back, Internet. Even as I type this I'm lying on a not-quite-ice-anymore pack. It was terribly exciting to even get the chance to work out on Monday evening, and then I tweaked a muscle. So between the phlegmy behavior and the decrepit gait to my walk and my inability to pick things up off the floor and my complaints about workload, I believe I have gotten a glimpse of what it will be like to be 64 years old: a perfect maelstrom of complaints. I will be old enough to blather on and on about my health problems and how it sucks to get old, but young enough to still whine about work.

Maybe you're realizing I'm having a dark moment or four, Internet. You'd be right. I can't get rid of this blasted cold I've had the past two weeks. It's driving me mad. I go around snorting all the time, hoping to clear my sinuses.*** That didn't work so well, so then I attempted to use the phlegmy-ness to get lobbyists to leave me alone at work. It's done nothing of the sort because rather than recoiling in horror as they ought (and then properly excusing themselves from ever speaking to me again), everyone just gives me strange looks or sympathetic sighs and keeps right on talking.

_____

But seriously, though. There have been some really great moments lately, too. Last Sunday's was a really excellent sermon at church. A kind soul has provided me with a foam roller for my back. I have a really great streak of Scrabble wins going. It's my mom's birthday on Saturday, and we're celebrating. I have been eating animal crackers with a jar of chocolate frosting all week. See? All positives.

xoxo,

Minny LinnEy

*I do not actually condone feeding baby cows crack. Well, maybe cracked corn. Or better still cracked olives! Mmmm. Cracked olives. I would eat cracked-olive-fed baby cows, preferably garnished by more cracked olives. But I don't care about those little yippy chihuahua dogs - feed them all the crack you want.

**After all of that talk about milk duds earlier, now the very thought of Big Daddy makes me want to eat a Sugar Daddy. Or Sugar Babies. Or pretty much any kind of caramel-y goodness. But now all I can think about are Sugar Babies, because they supposedly have bacon extract in them, and we are all extremely well acquainted with my bacobsession. But preferably this bacon didn't come from that pig that smoked cigarettes for that PSA.

***Hey, YOU! You with the evil mind, who read "snorting" and started thinking "I know what's dark: SHE'S on crack!" To you and your jumpy conclusions, I take offense. I do not do crack or cracked anything besides some cracked olives. No crack, no plumber's crack, no cracked mirrors, no cracked sidewalks. And no, I'm not superstitious, either. Cracked mirrors just make my eyes and brain hurt and I don't want to go all cross-eyed. And we've established that my back hurts, so I don't need to be tripping on any cracks in sidewalks and falling down, making it all that. much. worse.

Wherein Minny LinnEy talks about minutiae that's possibly not worth reading, and shares a joke that's really not worth repeating. *

Internet,

Sorry I've been so reticent lately. I've been a tad busy. But please know that I miss you: I love the carefree feeling I get when I have spare time to wander to and fro throughout Internetland. Okay, maybe I just miss free time.

_____

Do you know that stage of a cold, the one at the end when you're so close to being done with it but your sinuses won't quite cooperate and you whistle through your nose just by breathing? Yeah, that stage. I'm there.

I also seem to have a fondness for choosing cold remedies that involve fizzing water. Is it that I like inhaling half the liquid through my nose as I try to drink it? Not really sure. But I stocked up on Airborne and Alka Seltzer cold medicine and all sorts of other remedies, none of which have worked, yet all of which I am still taking. Maybe I should just drink some club soda or 7Up: I'd get the same fizzy experience with far less expense.

_____

Today was a rough day. I mean, I've had a lot of challenges recently, but this day was especially difficult. How do I measure this? Here's how: I wore clothing that progressively disintegrated throughout the day. All of a sudden my sock sprang a hole, and shortly later so did the left knee of my work trousers. Good thing the work day is over, 'cause otherwise things would be getting pretty dire if the trend continued.

_____

I did manage to workout this evening, which is good, and vented a lot of frustration at a machine I don't particularly care for (the erg - if the exercise itself is frustrating, does that mean I only worked off that workout frustration, and the rest of my stress and frustration from all of the other parts of my life are just being stored up?) for a full 60. Minutes, that is. Though I did contemplate doing 60 seconds and calling it good. But I persevered so I can eat whatever I want for dinner. Yes, Internet, in case you hadn't realized this by now, that's the main reason I exercise: food.

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I would be completely remiss in my civic duties if I don't mention anything political, Internet. So, in honor of Santorum's win here in the Minnesota precinct caucuses last night, I leave you with this (courtesy of co-worker L, who has been gleefully sharing this joke for months now, and it's completely ingrained in my head):

Q: Why does Rick Santorum wear sweater vests?

A: Because he believes in the right to bear arms.

_____

xoxo,

Minny LinnEy

*And she rhymes! And also speaks of herself in the 3rd person.