Clever...

Give me a C-U-T-E!

Give me a S-I-D-E-W-A-L-K! 

Give me an A-R-T!

Gooooooo CUTE SIDEWALK ART!!!

My Garage Sale Story

This past weekend, my lovely friend Jean, my awesome Mom and I hosted a garage sale. It was slammin'. First of all, my Mom is a garage sale maven and is also really good at making everything really fun. Plus, Jean is super cool and was very generous in letting us host the sale at her adorable new home in the Linden Hills neighborhood, complete with white picket fence, porch, bird bath and corner bakery.  I might be a touch jealous. We sold a ton of stuff, met a lot of really cool and nice people, got sunburned, drank wine and laughed a lot. It was awesome. I made about fifty bucks since I decided to price pretty much everything at 25¢, but that made it super easy to haul the leftovers to the thrift store at the end of the day. Ironically, I spent fifty bucks at the gas station on the way home, but I am still considering the whole day to be a huge success.

In the process of cleaning out my apartment and packing up my truck, two interesting (well interesting to me) things happened. First, one of my neighbors stole my really nice desk from behind out apartment building. The night before, it sat out by the back door for maybe two hours max while we hauled stuff over to Jean's cute house. When we came back, it was gone. VANISHED! I left a note on the back door for the day, asking that if someone possibly mistook it for free (although it had a price tag on it). I requested that they kindly return it. Nothing happened. I also asked "the friendly neighbors" if they had seen anything. They hadn't. THEN, last night, there was an old ugly desk sitting next to the dumpster. Grrrrrr...

Ears burning, I instantly began to plot my revenge.

So, "Operation: Find the evil desk stealer" has commenced. There are only four apartments that could have possibly taken it. Really, only two if you consider the proximity of where the desk was and who would have actually seen it. It's either the guy across the hall, which I assume we would have overheard hauling furniture OR it's the rude girl in the basement that never acknowledges anyone when they try to be nice and say hi to her. My money is on rude girl. As soon as I have confirmation on the nasty little thief, I will be withholding all friendly greetings from this evil desk stealer. Neighbors should never steal form neighbors. It's against the neighborly code. Did she not watch Mr. Roger's when she was little!?! I knew a psycho girl in college who shoved crickets under the door of a boy she didn't like...  if I spot that desk through rude girl's window, I may be making a little trip to the pet store.

I am open to alternative forms of revenge, however, so please comment if you have any suggestions.

So, what's the second interesting thing that happened? I found my old MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and Paula Abdul tapes!!! Hammer Time and Ice, Ice Baby are great, but let me tell you -  that Paula can really transform a car ride. It's like an instant feel-good dance party once her beats start blasting from my speakers. Almost good enough to help me completely forget about "Operation: Find the evil desk stealer." Almost.

I am posting the video of my favorite track from her "Shut Up and Dance" album. I have many fond memories of dancing in front of my Barbie doll audience in the living room to this one. Looks like you can buy your own copy online for about five bucks. Totally worth it my friends. I would buy an extra copy but I'm a bit short on cash. Like about five bucks... which is how much I had that desk priced at...





Paula Abdul - Forever Your Girl
Uploaded by jpdc11. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Someday

I don't actually want to become someone who sleeps till noon everyday, but I am super excited about leaving the office for my own classroom. I hope it has windows. I miss windows.

Another post about AFP... because I just really love them

I just never get tired of the site Awkward Family Photos. It cracks me up every time.  Brings me back to my brief stint as a portrait photographer. If you stop and think about the nearly impossible task of forcing people together into a small room in front of a draped piece of fabric and making them pose, smile, sit still and look natural all at the same time, it's no wonder there are so many hilariously bad portrait studio photos in the world. 

I've done some pretty cool things in my life, but portrait studio photography was not one of them. It's not something I would ever want my art professors at St. Olaf to know about. I did my best to try and convince the soccer moms and well-intentioned dads to go for the more tasteful photos, but all too often, the customers would get a tad overzealous with the matching outfits and draped tulle. 

There was no turning back once they started requesting things like back-lit hair, family pyramids, and the old random Grecian column. Can someone please tell me why Greek columns are such a staple of portrait photography studios? I may or may not have whipped out a killer arm shelf whilst leaning atop of a classic Greek column during my own low-budget senior year photo shoot, but I was young, naive, and shockingly not as cool as you might think. Pretty sure I spent more money on my science fair board than I did on my senior pictures. That, my friends, is what makes those awkward portrait photos so funny - because we've all been there. We all have them, and at some point, we've all rocked the arm shelf.

Instant Karma

I like to tease people in a non-malicious, lighthearted way. That's what we Westby's do. It's how we show love. We like to joke and tease, and on occasion, we openly laugh at people and their ridiculousness. We're not haters, we're just really good at finding the humor in things. And with our family, there are just so many things. You should hear us around the dinner table - but be careful if you do decide to join us. The moment you slip up, we're gonna be all over it.

One of my favorite people in the whole world is my friend Carol Klimek. She grew up on a farm north of the Twin Cities and, although she was just minutes from downtown, went to the same college as me and is now working towards becoming a physicians assistant at Augsburg in Minneapolis, I still love to tease her for being a country bumpkin, farm girl. Truth is, I love her family and their farm and I think they are the coolest people ever, but that doesn't stop me from poking fun. (Maybe I'm just jealous.) I was lucky enough to spend last weekend at her brother's farm celebrating his wedding and it was one of the best weddings I have ever been to. The pictures were so cute that I even decided to make one my profile picture. Me and Carol on a bright red tractor. Awwww!

So, randomly today, Carol calls to tell me that my brother was on the COVER of one of the family's farming magazines. At first I thought it was a clever joke. My brother's name is Kale... like the vegetable. I was immediately fantasizing about how I would frame the featured article of green leafy Kale and hang it in out parents house for him to notice on his next visit home. Gold! Then I got another message from her telling me that it was actually the flesh and bone version of Kale that I was on the cover for some tractor design competition. Ohhh... so much for the lettuce jokes...

My brother is not only special because he shares his name with a garnish. He is also brilliant when it comes to math and science. He is a top student at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology and he is majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Yeah. The competition it intense. I am constantly on my toes trying to stay on top as the favorite child, but he really makes it tough with all his winning and acing tests and being honored with lame academic blah blah blah...

So, anyway I couldn't let this go without getting a good jab in before Mom and Dad heard the news and started glowing with pride over their golden boy's glorious cover spread. I decided to go with the ever familiar farm jokes that I was so used to delivering to Carol. Yeah. That was gonna be my angle. I quickly crafted my clever message and posted it to his wall for all to see.

Muwahahaha...ha...ha...huh!?!

Then I realized quickly that this time the joke was on me...

Click to enlarge

It's hard to effectively tease someone about being on the cover of a tractor magazine when your message is flanked by a photograph of yourself sitting ON A TRACTOR!!!

I'm guessing that this might come up at the next Westby family dinner.

Me gloating again about the Mpls bike paths...

Yesterday our office closed for the afternoon and we all headed to the new twins stadium for a matinée game against the Cleveland Indians. It was my first visit to the new Target Field and I was very impressed. It was really beautiful. Even the big video screen thing looked awesome. I also loved how it felt to be nestled right in the middle of things with an amazing view of the city. You could look right down 6th Street! Our seats were in the shade, which made it even better. Despite my SPF 75, don't know how long I would have lasted in yesterday's sweltering heat if I had been sitting in the sun. The Twins redeemed themselves with a 6-0 win. They opened with a military tribute and four dudes parachuted with flags hanging from their feet. There were also fireworks and and an air force jet did a very close flyover, which was all the more exciting when you considered the proximity of the nearby Minneapolis skyline. It was quite a show. My very favorite part of the whole experience was how easy it was for me to get there. Once again, the bike paths led me right to where I wanted to go and I never even had to cross the street. From the moment I locked my apartment door, to the moment that they scanned my ticket at the gate, it took all of twenty minutes. I parked my bike right outside the gate free of charge and got home faster than it took some of my coworkers to get out of the parking ramps.

Minneapolis bikeways for the win!

Oh yeah, and the Twins too :)

 Check out our great seats!

What is that awful buzzing sound!?!

So, the 2010 World Cup is over. Spain has been crowned champions. South Africa has bid the crowds farewell. The vuvuzelas have been silenced... or have they?

What do you do with a vuvuzela after the World Cup?


Go pay BP a visit :)