From Minneapolis to Miami to Buenos Aires to Santiago...

T-8 days until my flight to Miami, an impossibly long layover, and then BUENOS AIRES here I come!

Again, I have done nothing to prep for this trip. I was resolving to spend my Saturday shopping for summer dresses and sandals, knowing that because it's totally fall and almost winter that I wouldn't find anything. Then I remembered that this summer never really happened and so I ventured down to the basement and found an entire bin of summer clothes that I stored down there in the fall of '08. I didn't even bring them out this year. Equal parts ecstatic and furious, I rummaged through it and realized that I have plenty of clothes and shoes to bring on my trip. YAY!


And this one won't be a backpacking situation, we're talking hotels with showers and I'm bringing my flatiron and makeup and more than one outfit to wear for two weeks.


I'm going to pick up gifts and stickers for the little kids that I'm sure to meet on this trip. I had a contact card made so I can keep in touch with any new friends (a big thank you to Matt Rector who designed and printed them up for me).


So, I guess this next week will be all about throwing items towards an open suitcase in my bedroom and Saturday will be all about getting that suitcase to shut and dyeing my nasty nasty two inches of bad roots. Then Sunday morning, bye bye rainy cold Minneapolis and hello Sunshine and 80 degrees!

My blog busted me

Today AT WORK I was bending over, trying to show the ladies that I was really glad I had a long shirt on because my low-riding jeans dont at all cover up my underwear. So I lifted my shirt, bent over, and everybody in unison, including me, realized that I was wearing leopard print underwear. On Friday. The same underwear from my Wednesday post. The day I went to the grocery store.

I want to die.

Ol' Hal

So my dad doesn't like to leave International Falls. And I dont think he ever would unless forced. Well, mom and Keri must have twisted his arm because he is on his way right now to Ohio where my sister Kelly lives. They stopped over last night as I mentioned, and this morning, at breakfast, my mom insisted that dad take out my garbage because it STUNK. BAD. So he goes, "is it safe?"

(Probably because last night as I was directing them to my house I was trying to steer them safely through the streets of Minneapolis to my place. There was lots of talk of 'bad neighborhoods' and 'bad areas', etc.)

Anyway, I explained that it was safe, and dad said that he would probably see a little kid walking a dog and poop his pants. Then he said,

"They're probably lining up waiting to whack me with a stick."

When Judgy McHypocrite Runs Out of Toilet Paper

I have no idea how this happens, or WHY SO OFTEN, but I run out of toilet paper all the time.  Sometimes I resort to such measures as the half-empty kleenex pack from my purse, and sometimes, if I'm very lucky, I'm saved by the basement bathroom, and find a partial roll.  One such night, as I was cleaning in preparation for a visit from family, I remembered I was out of TP minutes before they were set to arrive.  That half-roll wasn't going to cut it.

I booked it to the grocery store located a block-and-a-half away. In my haste, I forgot that I was wearing threadbare pajama pants over leopard print underwear, and a sweatshirt.

When I was heading down the aisle, with the MONGO MEGA pack of 12 triple rolls, (and some coffee filters, popcorn, and french bread) I saw some pathetic lady fingering the sweatshirt rack. "What a nerd," I judged and laughed to myself, "who buys a sweatshirt at the grocery store?"

Before the mean haggy thought completed itself in my brain, I remembered the sweatshirt I was wearing. The Lake Nokomis sweatshirt.  That I bought from that very same rack.  Then I really laughed out loud. An old man looked at me, and obviously wanted to know what I was laughing at, but it was too hard to explain.

("Hey Kettle, this is Pot.  You're Black.")

One time at the airport...

...The man checking my passport and ticket said,

"You shouldn't have cut your hair."

Ridin around with Murphy

So, I dangerously took some photos of my cutie pie because I busted him making faces at himself in the mirror. When I got out my camera he didn't even notice it, so this is really him making faces at himself in the mirror and not for the camera. HAHAAHA

More Orr, MN

We stayed at a hotel in Orr that boasts free continental breakfast and a waterslide pool. We checked in late, woke up early and played in the pool until it was time to get ready for the funeral.

Right outside our room was Pelican Lake, just as glassy as you please:


Here are my nieces and nephews, in the urine-infused-chlorine-water-spitting-frog-side.

Here's Miyo, refillin' her gun:

Who would hire this guy?

Just saw this dude on the road, and thank goodness I had my camera handy.

Couple things wrong here:

1. SmarteCar

2. Criminal Defense Attorney

3. "Big Hair"

4. This MAN FOUGHT the SMOKING BAN? But it PASSED, right?

5. Please go to his website. He actually calls the legislators behind the smoking ban "pink-lunged".

Orr, MN

I went to a funeral on Saturday for my sister's dear father-in-law Frank, and in order to fit all of his friends they had to have it at the Orr High School cafeteria. I had to laugh at this sign on the wall. Check out the class colors:



Is 'camo' even a color?

MY 400th POST!!!

This morning when I hit the snooze button...I muttered inside my brain sha-ZAM!

Like, take THAT, alarm clock.

Goodbye Scandinavia

Ok so everybody knows I have been home since Oct 5, so it's time I quit blogging about my stupid trip already. I'll leave you with the last photos that I took of Ross and I, trying to make frowns when we were walking to the train station in Stockholm about to leave Scandinavia perhaps forever.

I love trying to make a frown, it always ends up making me laugh so hard and then it's really really really impossible to make a frown. But, check us out. I think my frowns are a little more upside-down-smiles than Ross' straight-across-mouth.

Goodbye!!!

Oh, and then on the plane ride home I had to get a pretend photo of me sleeping on Ross' shoulder. And how, dear reader, do you know it's pretend? Because who else is gonna take the photo? Me. Cousins-style. Hope you enjoyed reading about our fun adventure!

At first this seemed really cool...

When planning for the trip to Norway, I watched Rick Steeve's Scandinavia (from Netflix) and he mentioned that in Sweden you can stay. In a Hostel. On the water! It's a boat!! So, when planning the trip, I got it in my head that we would stay in a boat hostel when we stayed in Stockholm. I didn't book it though, as you'll recall...I only booked through the flight TO Stockholm when planning here from my bedroom/cube computers and I decided that I would worry about Stockholm...later.

So when we arrived in Stockholm, and we found the Viking ship right away, we explored Old Town (a little island within the city known for shopping) and found an Internet Cafe where I googled "Stockholm Hostels" and the first, most inexpensive one that came up was the boat hostel! Rygerfjord, it was called. YAY!! Just like on the Rick Steeve's movie! So I booked it. And then we got on the 25 hour boat ride to Helsinki, spent two nights there, road 7 hours of ferry to Estonia and back and rode the 25 hour boat ride back to Stockholm and the last thing I wanted to do was freakin' sleep on a boat. But, we had to. And so we did. And by this time we are so excited at the prospect of going home. It's only one night away!!! All we have to do is explore the awesome sights of Stockholm for about 24 hours and then it's Home James! But. The boat. ARGHHH...I can't stand the thought of sleeping on a boat. But, we had to. I already said that. But, we really had to.

I really didn't want to bring out my 'hostel sheet' any more because I had washed it at Bergen and it was all clean in the bottom of my bag. Ross was in the same boat. Literally, but also he didn't want to use his king-sized flannel sheet for the last night of our trip. Then, like a light bulb went off he remembered that he had brought one of those emergency tin foil blankets and decided he would use it for a sheet and then throw it away. I immediately got very jealous because I am not as good a packer as he, and I didn't have a disposable sheet to use. So I had to get out my sheet, and Ross got out his huge tin foil situation, and we watched some office and went to bed. Well, during the night about 6,000 times, I thought that he was fed up with the sheet and balling it up to throw it away. Turned out he was just turning over in his sleep. That thing was LOUD. And sweaty. So, in the end I was glad I didn't have one. Look at my cozy, tiny little upper bunk bed:

One other funny thing that happened on this boat is that there was a window, that was a circular boat window and the room was HOT. I wanted to open the window, and the bathroom upstairs of us had their window open, so I figured we could open ours. We tried and tried, but it wouldn't budge. Then I got into my upper bunk bed and saw out, and it turns out that we were just about level with the water, and so if we had opened the window (or been able to) water would have come in. So I says to Ross, "Ross! hahahahaHAAHAHAAHAHAAAAA!!! get up on this bunk and look out at the water level." And he goes, "I can see it".

Because he's 6'4".

I'm On a Boat!

So there is this thing called the "party boat". It goes from Helsinki to Stockholm and vice versa. It's a 20+ hour cruise and lots of people take this trip back and forth to visit relatives, to buy alcohol from the duty free shop, and it's also like a huge college kids' party. We took this boat twice, were on it for a total of something like 50 hours and we never saw any party. In fact, we spent a lot of time in our room. Here's a picture of it.

Here it is with the beds down:

Look how luxurious! Look how HUGE! And we had our own toilet, sink and shower! Why would anybody want to leave this room?!

But, after watching an entire season of the office, we got a little bored, and tried to pass the time:

Ross wouldn't play.

But I would!

YAY!

Here's some photos from the deck:

There were eleven levels. Guess where our cabin was? Level 2. WAAAAAAAAAAY down at the bottom of the photo.

Our last meal in Helsinki and the "Cousins-Picture"

Peppermint Schnapps, Finnish Licorice and Mini Marshmallows. A delicacy in Finland. I guess you can't get them there and the girls opened a bag of them especially for us as a huge treat. And they were.

Here's my new hat, the one destined to get left in some country somewhere. And I think Ross looks Super-Handsome in this one, in his Hexum's Guide Service hat:

Here's us, waiting for the bus that would take us away from Helsinki forever.

These are examples of what we called the "Cousins-Picture". Where Ross, crouches WAY down, and I hold the camera out and we try to get both of us and the landmark in the picture. As in, "Ross, we better take a "Cousins-Picture here", or "can we quick get a Cousins-Picture before the bus gets here?" Normally I fly solo in these self portraits and so it's a little bit tricky to get your 6'4" cousin in them too.

A couple times I had the camera facing the wrong way or it would be a half-Kady, no Ross picture. Of course I would take several tries each time. All-in-All, I think we took about 173 "Cousins-Pictures" over the course of 2 1/2 weeks. Here are some misfires:

Why do I always make this weird toothy smile in a self portrait?

Not necessary to always open your mouth really wide:

This one's not so bad

Hate my hair here, and that tooth thing again!



Too much Kady, not enough Ross:

Too much Ross, not enough Kady. P.S. Ross is only laughing because we were all done with the 5 hours of hiking and my shoes were still white but in order to try and get this shot I had to stand in mud and he thought it was so funny that I would probably get my shoes muddy just trying to get a "Cousins-Picture" in front of the Preikestolen sign. And he's right it would have been funny.

Too much Kady not enough Ross


Too much Ross not enough Kady



Ross says I take too long and that's why his eyes are always closed...



Teeth!



These next two are just scary. (of me)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed a post of photos I probably should have deleted on the camera the moment they were taken. But instead, brought them home, uploaded them, and now shared with all the dozens of you.