The End of my Life (in Minnesota).

Believe it or not, it takes a lot of planning to go on a month-long road trip. Who knew?!?

It also takes a lot of planning and organizing to move across the country. Again, who knew?!? (Actually, I kind of didn't know. I mean, I moved across the country three years ago when I moved to Minnesota and it wasn't particularly hard then. Granted, I'd just finished college and I don't think I'd really ever unpacked the stuff I moved out of my dorm room. But it's been a lot more time consuming of a process this time around.)

Anyway, the past couple of weeks have been an absolute flurry of activity. From packing and organizing and cleaning my stuff, to moving my bigger furniture to new homes, I was on the go with almost all of my free time. Then you add in the fact that I'm moving away and wanted to see all of my friends as much as possible and I hardly had a spare moment.

It was wonderful though. I got to eat at some great new places and visit some favorites one last time. I got to hug everyone that I wanted to. It was a good last week in Minneapolis.

And now, I'm in Colorado! I hit the road before 6 am yesterday and made pretty darn good time. The highlights were seeing not one but TWO cars from Maine on the highway (they were a few hours apart, not together), and when a bird dive-bomb killed itself right in front of me (okay, that wasn't exactly a "highlight" but it did add some excitement to what can be a long drive).

I'm hoping to keep posting (fairly) regularly about my travels over the next few week here, but we all know how shady I am about posting when I say I will/want to. We'll just see. If you're on Instagram, I'll probably be posting there from every stop. I think I'm going to be using the hashtag #AleenaAcrossAmerica so you can follow along like that if you want.

Happy Barfday, Murica.

This post is a little bit delayed in the posting, but I started it on the weekend of the fourth. Everybody's favorite weekend of the year!! Or, you know, not. But it is reaaallly beautiful this time of year, and it's nice that most people don't have to work and stuff. Ya know? So that's something.

I happened to have Sunday completely free from both jobs, which doesn't happen very often. In fact, it's the last time I'll have a full day off while I live in Minnesota (which admittedly is only for the rest of this month. But whatever). Most of the Johnson crew left town for the weekend, so I only worked at the coffee shop in the mornings of Thursday and Friday and then worked the Farmer's Market on Saturday. On Monday I headed to the Johnson's for a while, but again had the majority of the day free.

It was a lovely weekend. I spent my afternoon on Thursday resting and having some down time after a sort of crazy week. Then I went out for drinks with a whole crew from the coffeeshop. I stayed out later than I should have, and ended up taking a long nap Friday after I got done working. Then I enjoyed some time in the sun and got a burger and shake with my friend Annie. I was going to try to make it to The Princess Bride which was playing outdoor at a park, but when I got there sooooo many people were there that I didn't feel like dealing with it. I ended up hanging out with Kendra while she did paperwork at a cafe instead.


 On Saturday I worked the Northeast Farmer's Market. The weekend before had been about 95° and extremely humid (it was "feels like 102°" at one point that I saw) which was truly awful, but this weekend it was absolutely beautiful out. It was the perfect temperature for standing outside all morning. My friend Kay and I both dressed patriotically for it which lots of middle-aged ladies appreciated. Afterward I made my way to one of Minneapolis' many lakes and sat beachside for a few hours, enjoying what was left of the sunshine and reading a book (I'm up to 84 so far this year. It's early July. I'm on track to read over 150 total this year!).

That night I got all fancied up and dragged Kendra out to a restaurant called Eat Street Social, which was realllly cool and also had delicious foods. I got a cocktail called "The Kind of Carrot Flowers" mostly just because I love a song of the same name, but it was really really tasty, so all is well that ends well. After we ate, Kendra made us play bananagrams. At the kinda fancy restaurant we were at. And she was also loud and rambunctious (if you've ever met Kendra, this is not surprising). At one point I said, "Kendra, they're going to kick us out. He's going to kick us out." and nodded at one of the waitstaff guys who was walking by at that moment, who then proceeded to turn back toward us and say, "We're not gonna kick you out. We're literally never going to kick you out. There's nobody else in here and you're keeping the place lively." Cool, man. Thanks for the assist.




On Sunday I got to wake up without an alarm-- WOO HOOOO! I made my way to a neighborhood of Minneapolis called the North Loop which is like the warehouse district of the city and has all sorts of cool stores and restaurants in it these days. I got some coffee at the newest branch of Spyhouse, a local coffee shop (the new branch has been open since August, I just hadn't made it there yet) and then walked over to meet up with my friend-bosses, Rachel and Gretchen, for brunch at the Bachelor Farmer Cafe. That place is so beautiful.

After that, I poked around a bit in the North Loop neighborhood, ducked into a shop I really like called the Foundry Home Goods. It's full of really beautiful...home goods. I once bought my mom a dishtowel for Christmas from there. It was the only thing I could afford.

On Monday, I got to sleep in and get up without an alarm again!!! PRAISE THE MAKER. Then I dressed in a festive fourth outfit and took myself out to breakfast. At noon. Oh well. (Side note: The "festive" outfit I was was a plain blue tank top and the red with white polka dots skirt I wore on Christmas day. Yes, I wore the same skirt outside on both Christmas and the Fourth of July and wasn't cold on either day. Admittedly, on Christmas I wore a long sleeved sweater and boots, and on the fourth I wore a tank top and sandals, but STILL. It's kind of ridiculous.) Then I picked my friend Sarah up from the airport, headed to work for a few hours, hung out with Sarah and Kendra for a while, and watched some fireworks over the Mississippi with Sarah.

All in all, it was a pretty successful Fourth of July weekend. I hope all of you had an enjoyable time as well.

Tiny Prayers to Father Time.

The title of this post is a reference to the song "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie, which starts off with the line "And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time." So, basically (for those of you who may be a little dense), this post is about my upcoming plans. Also, I am writing this from my brand spanking new macbook air. Woohoo! Kind of.

As some of you probably know (and others probably don't), I am in the midst of planning a road trip for the entire month of August. I'll leave Minneapolis August first, head down through Colorado to Arizona and then basically head up the coast as far as Vancouver, stopping in several cities along the way. Then I'll start heading back East across the Northern states, with a stop in Montana. That'll all take about three weeks after which I'll stop back in Minneapolis for a few days, pack up all my possessions here, and head to Maine, possibly making a few more stops to visit friends along the way.

In case you were wondering what that looks like, here's a picture of the trip overall.

That being said, I've been working really hard to save money to finance this trip. I mean, I work pretty hard just in general anyways, but I've specifically been saving a large chunk of every paycheck since January. I had just passed the halfway point on my "fundraising chart" (it's really more of a savings chart, but whatevs) when I decided that my attempts to plan this trip without a functional laptop were causing me way more stress than it was worth. Between trying to do it all on my phone and going to the library to use the computers there for an hour at a time, I was hardly getting any planning done at all and I was about two months away from my departure date. I decided drastic steps needed to be taken, so I went to the Apple store and bought myself a new macbook air.

So yeah, that's what's up in my life these days. It's been over six months since I've posted anything to this blog. Now that I have a computer that isn't as slow as cold molasses you'd think I might post more often, but I've had it for about a month now and I've still not published a post (til now). So I think it's safe to assume that I'm going to be as sporadic and inconsistent with the posts as always. It is worth acknowledging that I really am extremely busy which doesn't make sitting down to write blog posts any easier...

Anyway, I'm in the thick of road trip planning now. If you live near one of the little yellow tags along my route and are reading this, there's a decent chance that I'm going to ask to stay at your house for a night or three along the way. I'll be contacting people with specific dates shortly.