In 2010 I ... joined a bowling league

My good friend Carissa is extremely talented at asking me to do things when I'm most likely to say yes. Most recently she put this skill to use when asking me to join her bowling league. She asked me seconds before this picture was taken:

(You can even see half of her conniving head in the background.)

A few beers in to a friend's going away party, C mentioned her bowling league (through The Onion, which is great) was in need of a fifth teammate. Stupidly, I said sure.

Don't get me wrong - I like bowling. It's fun. I just wish my skill set matched the enjoyment I get from beer, bar food and bowling.

Yesterday marked the league's first night, and four of our regular five teammates were in attendance (C, Justin, Corey and me) with Patrick subbing for Eric. After knowing P for several years, I was totally unaware of his semi-pro bowling status. We're talking monogrammed bowling ball and personal bowling shoes. Wow.

Probably explains why the evening's best round (or perhaps just my best round) looked like this:


Honestly, I'm pretty okay with that 106. The score has three digits in it. Feeling pretty good about that. Plus, it leaves me little room to go anywhere but up.

In 2010 I ... ate my way through Mardi Gras

There's a major problem with having great cooks for friends: the calories.

Morgan hosted his second (perhaps third?) Mardi Gras party last night, and the food gets better every year. And to take a bit of the burden off M, almost all the party guests brought delicious (homemade) treats as well. My contribution, not surprisingly however, was purchased:


Traditional Mardi Gras king cake was a fun contribution ... my kind of non-cooking fun. Plus it comes complete with a little medallion that gets hidden in the cake - once cut, whoever finds the medallion in their piece is the recipient of a year of good luck or something like that. (I would know more except I didn't find it, Bryan did.)

Beyond my no-make cake, M whipped up amazing shrimp and catfish po' boys, Diana pulled together lovely crab cakes, Carissa and Justin wowed with homemade gumbo, and Alex deep fried benginets on-site. I think the group favorite might have been the benginets, unexpected little bundles of fried, sugar coated dough amazingness. Enough said.

Thanks to this food fest, Mardi Gras is quickly climbing up my list of favorite holidays!

In 2010 I ... celebrated Valentine's Weekend

Last year, some lovely friends and I enjoyed an unexpectedly fun Valentine's show courtesy of Lucy Michelle & The Velvet Lapelles at 7th St. Entry. To our amazement, they did it again this year at the Cedar with more guests and fantastic love song covers.

Big Trouble and Dave Campbell started the set, and Lucy hopped on stage for a really cute run of songs from notable romantic comedies (photo courtesy of Jess).


Before the show, Carissa suggested happy hour at Hell's Kitchen, and we chowed on pulled pork nachos, sweet potato fries and delicious cocktails. In honor of Valentine's, we even shared a Mai Tai with two straws.

Then C & I jumped on the light rail to meet up with the rest of our Valentine's posse at Acadia before heading to the Cedar. It was a great time and really fun to have so many friends with us to enjoy the show we claimed "the best Valentine's Day ever" last year.

To close the night, the group headed to Grumpy's for beers, nachos and deep-fried delicacies. Happy, full and tired was the ideal way to round out the Valentine's weekend (see example of happy, full and tired below):

In 2010 I ... took a printmaking class

My first ever Mpls Community Ed class: printmaking. At Diana's suggestion we registered for this two-session printmaking class (just $25!) with D's coworker, Maura. I was definitely nervous that this class would take much more artistic skill than I possess, but the instructor was great (and a bit nutty) and made the first class easy to understand.

Beyond that, the three of us agreed we really appreciate the lack of structure - our printmaking guide gave us a rundown of the night's activities and really let us do anything we wanted. A very refreshing change from how I remember classes going ...

D & M were much more prepared than me, having brought images they wanted to transpose into prints, so I stuck with basic text projects. The simplicity of it was almost laughable - we were given thin sheets of Styrofoam and pencils to impress our designs.

M designing a card template into Styrofoam.

After designing our text/images/patterns, we were given rollers with black ink and paper - the next step was to simply smooth the ink over the Styrofoam, press paper over top and voila: a print!

My first attempts at text prints.

D got smart with her Styrofoam and trimmed it to make a more interesting frame for her text:


Easy, cheap, fun - the first round of printmaking was a success and a fun stress-reliever, too. This Wednesday we're back in class for our second and final session, where we'll actually be carving patterns into rubber eraser-like material. Fingers crossed I can handle the upgrade from Styrofoam.