52 New Things -- Week 11 -- Exploring my German Roots in New Ulm, MN

Okay, I admit it: I didn't really go to New Ulm just to see all the German stuff. My college friend Amanda lives there, and along with our friend Erin, we had a mini Augustana reunion weekend. But I did think all the German stuff was pretty cool. I mean, where else have you seen a giant statue of Herman the German?

Sidenote One: There are only two of these in all of America, so if you name a place other than those two spots where you've seen Herman the German, you're a big fat liar.
Sidenote Two: Under the shadow of Big Herman, I proved myself not coordinated enough to walk backwards and talk at the same time as I fell off the sidewalk and into the snow while trying to tell Erin and Amanda something that I'm sure was incredibly important.

Other German highlights from New Ulm:

I can read that! And here I thought the only German I remembered from my childhood was O Tanenbaum . . .

Plenty of cuckoo clocks and beer steins!

Buttons and t-shirts are not enough. We should get a holiday. We're as good as the Irish, darn it.

I brought along my old college photo album and we had a few laughs over it, particularly looking at how much flannel we wore and how every shirt was an XL. What were we thinking? Here's our gang as sophomores . . . count the flannels:

We got better with age. A couple of years later? Down to one flannel. (And those boots! Remember how popular they were?)

And by our senior banquet, just before graduation . . . no flannel in sight!!

And holy cow! We had shapely bodies that were hidden under XL flannels for four years!?! What were we thinking?

Anyway, it was really fun to catch up with Erin and Amanda . . . and even Kristen via FaceTime! We're hoping to do a summer reunion in New Ulm, too. Next time we've got to get the boys to join us . . . and wear flannel to make the reunion more authentic.

52 New Things -- Week 10 -- The Po-po

My new thing of the week was going to be skiing at Mt. La Crosse, the local ski hill we have yet to try. I was all prepared to write about how tiny it was compared to Colorado, but how much I love skiing so it doesn't matter . . . but instead I ended up filling out a police report. Stinkin' thieving bastards.

When I went down to our basement storage area to get my skis, they weren't where I'd left them. I stared stupidly at the spot where they were supposed to be, then started moving boxes, wondering if Kevin had set them somewhere else. I called him to ask, hopeful that for some odd reason he'd stuck two pairs of skis and four boots behind several boxes. Nope. He hadn't touched them.

Here's the thing: you need a key to get into the basement. Here's the other thing: we have a padlock on the storage area door. But here's the crappy thing: the storage units are just wood frames encircled with chicken wire. Someone pushed the chicken wire in on the unit next to my skis, then pulled the chicken wire off between the two and snagged my stuff.

Silly me, thinking my stuff was safe behind two locks when the frickin' chicken wire makes stealing stuff oh-so-easy for some idiot in my building. When Mr. Cop came to check it out, I suggested a unit-to-unit search of the other five apartments in my building, but he said the chances of finding anything were slim. Most likely my skis had been pawned already.

Pawned.

See, that's the thing with being a non-thieving citizen: I hadn't even considered that option. I went on Craigslist while waiting for the police to arrive, hoping some stupid criminal would have posted my skis and envisioning justice being done when the guy meets me in a parking lot to sell me my skis and suddenly ten cop cars surround us and the thief realizes it's a sting. Because the police have the time and man-power to make my skis a priority . . . in my dreams.

Long story short, the cop said there is little to no chance of ever seeing my stuff again. As far as we can tell, that's all that's missing, but then again, we didn't even know the skis were missing until I wanted to use them and they were gone. There might be other things we just haven't missed yet.

Kevin said he's never seen me so mad. I was even tossing out swear words here and there while yelling about the stupid idiot that took my stuff. I think he had to try hard not to laugh at me, which was smart; it might have been cute and funny to see me so out of character, but I probably would have punched him. After letting me yell for a while, he gave me a big hug, and then I might have started to cry a little. The one pair of skis, though more expensive than the other, were just given to me last year by a teacher friend whose friend didn't want them anymore. The ones I was really upset about where my old Colorado skis. I spent a lot of time on a lot of mountains on those skis; I may be able to replace the skis, but the sentimental connection to Colorado is gone.

So now we're trying to figure out insurance stuff . . . we have renter's insurance that will get us some of our money back, but I want to know first if that will make our premiums go up and make it worse for us financially in the end. I'm also trying to figure out the forgiveness piece, 'cause right now I'm just really bitter and angry that I work hard to pay for things I want while other people steal from hard working people to get what they want. I'm not feeling especially Christian-like quite yet. Instead of turning the other cheek, I'd like to kick someone in the face.

Hopefully next week's new thing will be more fun . . . or at the very least, less costly to my bank account.

52 New Things -- Week 9 -- Threading

"Are we doing your eyebrows today, too, or just the haircut?" the stylist asked as she led me back to the chair. This was about five years ago. I'd like to think I kept my cool, but there's a good chance my expression betrayed me as I thought, "What's wrong with my eyebrows?"

Like most women, I could easily list a number of things I'd like to change about my appearance . . . but my eyebrows? I'd never given them much thought beyond making sure I didn't have a unibrow.

As I've gotten older, I feel like I've gracefully accepted the physical changes that go along with aging. I noticed my first gray hair at 32. No big thing. Wrinkles? I prefer to think of them as laugh lines around my eyes, showing what a happy life I've lived. But yeah, the fact that my eyebrows look more and more bushy -- like my Grandpa Malcom's Scottish eyebrows -- every year? I suppose I had to do something about it sometime.

So when I saw a girl doing "threading" at a mall kiosk last week -- and noticed that it was only $10 -- I thought, why not?

Here's why not, friends: it hurts!! When I asked how much it would hurt, the girl said it's less painful than waxing. I think we've established that I've not maintained my eyebrows via any beauty method before, so that really didn't mean anything to me.

Once I got in the chair? Owwwww!!

Yeah, I suppose I'm not really a good judge of pain. Maybe if I'd have experienced childbirth, this would seem like a walk in the park, but as it was, I nearly told her to stop multiple times. I was afraid, though, that I would look like Joey. (That episode of Friends was all I could think of as I sat there gritting my teeth.)

So anyway, I now have stylish, skinny eyebrows . . . and you know how many people have noticed? Absolutely zero.

Here's the before, during (one done and one not), and after shots . . . huge difference right?

At least it was only ten dollars. :)

(Not sure what threading is? Here's a tutorial: http://video.about.com/hairremoval/See-the-Threading-Technique.htm . . . I'd recommend taking some Tylenol before you try it.)