...and put up an - Aldi???
On Saturday we made the trek to Brooklyn Park to get Dunkin Donuts coffee. As we got to the bend on Brooklyn Blvd (at Zane Ave), I said, hey, shouldn't it be there on the right? B said, no, I think it was after the first bend and before the second.
So we drove all the way to Xylon Ave, no DD, turned around and came back. B remembered some of the the places around the DD, but it seems that the building and parking lot have been replaced by an Aldi. Across the boulevard they demolished the strip mall and it's just a big vacant swath of dirt, awaiting something else.
Later B checked the Internet-of-all-Knowledge, and it's true: there is no longer a single DD left in the metro area. The corporation isn't even selling franchises in this area at the moment.
What was so weird is, in a temporary landscape like Brooklyn Boulevard, how a couple of changes make the place unrecognizable. I wasn't even totally sure the Aldi's was in the DD location, because I didn't recognize the adjacent properties, even though I surmised that the heap of dirt across the street was where the strip mall had been. For an infrequent visitor, there really is no there there - just a succession of relatively interchangable national chains. Disposable architecture.
I suppose that if you grew up near there and traveled the strip frequently, you'd have memories that would help to fix the places - here's where the IHOP used to be where we went after parties; here's the plaza where the KMart was, remember the time that sales clerk threw us out, etc etc. But this whole notion of place associations is a tricky business. Memory is fiction, and the place re-seen is both different than it was, and different than your memory of what it was, even when it hasn't changed a bit.
I resist the temptation to go all Snob Designer on the strip - because the memories of such places are what, very often, constitutes place for Americans. But I think of my adopted hometown, and wonder: has it really gotten that much uglier in the last 2 years? Or am I seeing it differently? You get used to the visual impoverishment, and seeing it anew is always a shock. (See: I can't get over the snobbishness.)
Anyway. RIP Dunkin Donuts. Hello Rainbow Foods coffee.
...you run out of all the Dunkin Donuts coffee you got for Christmas.
Dunkin Donuts is an awesome RI-based coffee operation with THOUSANDS of stores on the East Coast, extending roughly as far west as the western suburbs of Chicago. I am told that there used to be LOTS of DDs here in the Twin Cities, but now there is only one, in Brooklyn Park, which is half DD and half Baskin Robbins. "Want a rum raisin cone with that coffee?" - go figure.
Anyway, people from the East know to give/send me lots of DD coffee. But now it's all gone, and B has proposed an expedition to Brooklyn Park today for more. (He is tired of drinking the dreck from Rainbow Foods.)
In New England, you can give directions based on DD locations: "go to the fourth DD and take a right; then at the third DD bear left." If you don't believe me, check out Google's map flyover of Boston (www.keyhole.com; click on Fenway) and watch all the tacky little orange and fuschia logos appear when you search on coffee places.
One could (but probably should not) write a thesis on the geographical distribution of DDs and other coffee establishments. Such a thesis would not establish you as a great serious scholar, but the party departments would want to hire you and you could actually talk about your thesis at parties and have people care.
I went to the same DD every morning for, oh, I dunno, 12 years or so. DDs tend to be frequented by cops and construction people, so it's a regular Joe kind of operation, not like the yuppie-infested Starbucks franchises you see everywhere.
Anyway. Tomorrow, instead of drinking the current bizarre pot, a blend of Bed and Breakfast and Fogcutter (or whatever it is), I should be sipping a cup of regular old Dunkins. I may report on how great it is....
Just picked up some language tapes from the library, to find that someone had taped classic rock from some radio station in LA onto the flip side. Oops. I doubt if anyone from the library ever checks these unless someone complains.
I was thinking I could run a tape in the "background" while typing this entry, but that's too much multi-tasking for me. It's one or the other, so my dream of playing Polish tapes constantly so that I can get this language by a sort of osmosis isn't going to work.
Better I should update my advisor on my "progress" on developing reading lists...
Here's a little recap of an email to some friends. They liked it; I hope you, dear reader(s), will as well --
Go to store on sunny warm day. Buy marlin steaks with intent to grill them. Forget to do that until weather turns cold again. Decide to grill anyway.
Curse self for not buying a mango or at least some nectarines (hey, they
were on sale) for a salsa for the marlin. Rack brain to think of acceptable
substitute. Decide on canned pears.
Chop 1 can of drained pears.
Add 1/4 C chopped red onion.
Add "some" diced jalapeno pepper. (Yeah, "some" should be a hint of a problem-to-come.)
Taste. Pears too bland; add some pear-ginger marmalade left over from
Christmas.
Re-taste. Holy shit! Too much jalapeno - how'd that happen!
Dimly remember that vinegar cuts hot flavors; add some. Question
accuracy of memory.
Ignore husband's plea to add more pears to dilute peppers. Add chopped
cilantro instead.
Ladle salsa on marlin. Drink lots of water/wine to cool the burn.
After dinner, sigh with resignation and add another can of pears to
remainder of salsa.
Store in fridge. When salsa grows hair and fuzz, toss in garbage can.
In an effort to manage my time better, I've decided that I'll spend Sundays working on my reading lists for prelims. This is how it worked yesterday:
Get up around 10:30; lie on the couch and read and fall asleep; have lunch; read and sleep some more; have dinner (outdoor grilling: yummy!); read and sleep some more.
The idea is that by using Sunday for work that has a May deadline, I'll use my other time more efficiently, by reading for history and studying Polish on Monday, which are both "due" on Tuesdays. It's an effort to outfox the "work expands the time to fill it" problem, which has afflicted me the last 3 weeks.
B. absolved me from self-punishment for poor performance. He said, "well, you're sick; you need the sleep." Maybe so - but lately I sleep a lot all the time. What's up with that?
I learned this morning that one of my oldest* friends has cancer, and his prognosis doesn't look very good.
It makes all the drivel of this blog seem pretty shallow. I want so much to DO something - improve his place so it's more comfortable for him; invent a successful treatment for cancer; make a time machine so we can go back and do some things differently.
But that's not the reality. I don't know what to do. I just feel so, so sad.
*it's not he who is old, but our friendship. He's in his mid-40s.