It’s been a whirlwind folks, busy busy busy (I wrote busty as first, which is actually sorta true too), but I wanted to tell you about my Minneapolis trip before it becomes old news. A long time ago I told Katie of willikat that I’d be out there for four days and would she like to hang out. She said she would, so we emailed for awhile, but never made official plans. At the last minute I also found out that Angie is from the same area and knows willikat. My master plan was to meet both these ladies at one big blogger night of fun, but master plans never work out. So the first thing I did when I got into Minneapolis, while still on the shuttle to my hotel, was text Katie and make lunch plans. Since I didn’t have any work obligations until the next day, I knew it might be my one and only chance to meet her.

I’ve never done an actual blogger meet up before, so I was nervous and excited at the same time. I’m not good at meeting new people, so if I hadn’t have felt like I already knew her, I probably would have made up some excuse about being busy with, um, some work thing I just found out about. But she and I have been reading each other’s blogs for awhile now (what? couple years?) and we have this joke about our ‘parallel’ lives since we have so many odd things in common. Like okay, when we’re making plans for her to pick me up outside my hotel, she tells me she’ll be driving her Elantra. I drive an Elantra. At lunch? We ordered the same thing.

Basically what I’m saying in my rambling way is that I’m a little bit in love with Katie. Whenever bloggers meet, they always report back about how amazing and sweet and spectacular the person they met was, and I’m making no exception. I mean the girl just got laid off from her job and she shows up to lunch in a cute dress and heels. I was looking a little rough in full-on travel mode, just short of a hoodie and flip-flops (see below). We had lunch and gab gab gabbed about all kinds of stuff, then we stopped at a cupcake bakery where I snapped the only two pictures of our visit.

Then she drove me around and showed me the twin cities. She even felt comfortable running an errand while we were out, that’s how tight we are already! Seriously, it was fun. And it made me want to meet more of you. So come on people, let’s work it out!

The rest of my trip was mostly work stuff. I ate well, as is usually the case on business trips, but I didn’t see much of the city. By the time I finished work obligations and dinner with colleagues each day, I was pretty exhausted and ready for bed. Which by the way, sucked. I promised I wouldn’t go into details of the suckiness, but shut up. It was a sleep number bed, which I discovered is nothing more than a glorified air mattress. I spent the first night moving up and down the number scale, unable to sleep. Number 65, try to sleep, too hard. Release some air. Number 50, try to sleep, no good. Release some air. Number 35, try to sleep, too soft. Add some air (which sounds like a jet plane by the way), no good. All. Night. Long. The second and third nights I popped some Excederin PM before bed and slept hard despite the awful mattress. But on the last night I forgot to take the meds, and if I don’t take them before I try to sleep, my body isn’t fooled. I was wide awake, watching bad tv and eating vending machine snacks until a few hours before my shuttle picked me up. I even shaved my legs in the bathtub out of pure boredom at 1:30am. They hadn’t been shaved in, I’d guess, a month or two, so it was nice and time-consuming.

Minneapolis, or what I saw of it, is actually really nice. Their public transportation system is about 823% times better than GR’s, and hello, the skyway. I walked all the way from my hotel to the Convention Center (a 15-20 minute walk) and never once went outside. All Twin Citians are probably laughing at my fascination with this, but seriously, it’s genius. I want to sleep with the skyway it’s that wonderful.

I’ve been busy since the moment I set foot on Michigan soil, but I hope to return to a normal life as soon as possible. Hope you’re still with me!