So Here's the Thing...

I've been living in Minneapolis for nearly a year now (I lived in Roseville, a suburb, for the first nine months after moving to Minnesota. The house I live in now is right in Minneapolis- only a couple neighborhoods away from downtown.), and I love it.

I know, I know,  I complain all the time about never getting out of the city.  And it's true that city life absolutely does get old for me when I haven't left the metro area in months, but I honestly really enjoy living in a city most of the time. I think it helps that the street I live on is pretty quiet and always has plenty of street parking available so it's never stressful to get home. Since moving to a city though, I've come to realize why so many people love it. Yes, cities can be scary and yes, navigating cities in cars can be seriously distressing, but it's really cool to live in a place where there is always somewhere to go and something to do. I just didn't have that growing up.

Now that I've realized I enjoy living in a city (small though Minneapolis is), it's hard to imagine living somewhere as quiet as Hallowell, Maine again. I just can't see myself settling back into the nothingness very well. Don't get me wrong, I still want to move back to Maine, but I'll probably head the Portland direction pretty quickly when I do.


Anyways, here is some evidence that I actually do like living here.

There's this one block in downtown where all the food trucks go during lunch time so that all the cubicle dwellers can go eat at them. It's only a 25 minute walk from my house, so a few times this Spring I've walked Liam's dog downtown to grab lunch from my favorite food truck, The Moral Omnivore.

This is the sun setting over the city as seen from the Stone Arch Bridge, which is only for pedestrians and cyclists. So beautiful.

This is the view of the skyline from a walking bridge over the highways about a 15 minute walk from my house. It's pretty great.

This was my lunch at Birchwood Cafe a few weeks ago. It was really delicious. It's two miles from my house, which isn't always "walkable," but on that particular day it was beautiful and sunny and breezy and I did walk there and it was glorious. Their food is  all locally sourced, so their menu is highly variable depending on what season it is, but it's all really really delicious!

Sometimes I get to meet up with Kendra for tasty foods. We recently went to Glam Doll Donuts. I couldn't decide which one I wanted and ended up with two...whoops.

Sometimes I get to meet up with Sarah and drink ciders. This week was Minneapolis Cider Week and one of our favorite restaurants was doing fancy cider flights so we got to try a bunch of European ciders. Delish!

Maybe you noticed that most of these things are about the view, food, friends, or being able to walk places. And yeah, I guess those are mostly the reasons why I like living in a city. But I think they're pretty great reasons.

People, LISTEN UP.

If you have at all enjoyed the popularization/revival of folk music in recent years then I am about to tell you about the best thing that you maybe already know about because it started ten years ago!! Get ready...

This morning at the coffee shop a song came on that I've heard a few times before. It was "Yellow" by Coldplay, but it was a bluegrass version. It plays on the Pandora there sometimes and I think I've even heard it elsewhere, too. It's part of a "Pickin' on Coldplay" album, and a coworker and I had a conversation about how there are actually a few different "Pickin' on..." albums; I was pretty sure there was one for Bob Dylan and maybe Tom Petty?

So we looked it up.

And.

Turns out... there are a BAZILLION "Pickin' on..." or "Bluegrass Tribute to..." albums out there! There's one for Relient K (Whaaat?!?), Jewel, Beck, and on and on. There's even one for Nickelback. There are a bunch of country music compilations (which seems a little silly, but hey I guess if they wanna they can) and classic rock and modern hits and just EVERYTHING you could imagine.

So when I got home I scrolled through the extent of Spotify's "Pickin' on.." series' and made a playlist of all the songs I know/like. It's six hours long. Guess what I'll be listening to as I clean the house today? Just so you can check out a song, I'm putting one here for you all.

 Enjoy.

And here's a link to "Yellow" in case you were interested in hearing that too. (Although if you enjoyed the R. Kelly one, I strongly suggest investigating this glorious sub-genre of music on your own.)


Apparently Wednesdays are "share music with the world" days. I don't hate it. I hope you don't either.

Have a Listen.

The coffee shop where I work has ad free Pandora and sometimes I make stations on it. Occasionally the songs that I like are ones that my bosses hate; I like them because they remind me of my early childhood and Rachel and Gretchen (who might be reading this since we're facebook friends now...HI GUYS!) hate them because they remind them of their high school and college years. Pretty funny.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I made a James Taylor station but Pandora decided to take it an awful country music-themed direction and I promptly changed the station. Today I came back to it and spent some time "thumbs up" and "thumbs down"-ing the songs that came on so that it played songs from the genre I actually wanted to hear.

And it was a good morning. Full of James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, a smattering of The Beatles, etc. I danced in the kitchen a little. It was nice. So then I came home and continued with my own (unfortunately, not ad free) Pandora. I really love this song. I thought I'd send it out into the world for you all. Take a few minutes and enjoy some Simon and Garfunkel. Sing along. Get dancey. It's a beautiful day. You're welcome.