Seventh Place

Today is the last day for Christmas shopping. I try to do some of my Christmas shopping here even though it tends to be limited. You can find fun gifts from local artists at the Artists Mercantile on Seventh Place. I wish there were more shops like that and I appreciate the addition of the stores that have come to downtown in the last 10 years. I suppose everyone in downtown has their own wish list for adding shopping to our mix. Do we want some big box stores like Barnes & Noble and Target here? I enjoy the shopping experience of places like Grand Avenue or downtown White Bear Lake, and I love Nordstrom Rack at the Mall of America. I guess we are still trying to figure out what we want to be in downtown St. Paul, but the changes for the better are noticeable. My wish list? I wish we had a summer flea market near the farmer's market, a store that only carries jeans (no spandex jeans please), and maybe a Schuler Shoes.

Poinsettia Show

We associate poinsettias with Christmas. I used to get my own poinsettia on my desk as a gift at work but there are too many of us for that now. I would bring it home and often I could keep it around for a month or two before it got too leggy and I'd have to pitch it. Now I associate poinsettias with pre-Christmas visits to Mexico. What I didn't know was that some American guy named Poinsett brought them back to the United States from Mexico in the 1820's and we've been buying them at Walmart ever since. I wonder what they call them in Mexico? I like to see the winter poinsettia show at the conservatory in Como Park and after I've been there I wonder why I don't get over there more often. In some of the garden areas they crank up the heat to tropical proportions and the sunlight coming through the Victorian glass dome is a welcome relief for any light deprived northerner.

I Am Not Here Today

100 percent chance of snow all day and something called freezing fog is what we are getting today in the Twin Cities. I should be Christmas shopping today. I could walk to Macy's, but instead I will cook because This Urban Wife can't afford to eat out every night of the week. This morning I thumbed through a cookbook circa San Francisco 1972 called Eat It by Dana Crumb and Sherry Cohen and illustrated by underground comic book artist Rob Crumb (remember Fritz the Cat and Mr Natural?). I will make my own version of their meatloaf draped in pie crust using a hand-me-down cast iron skillet and heat up this condo like a sunny day in Florida. The radio just announced that bus service has shut down and the airport is now closed so I guess there is little hope of actually getting to Florida today. Evening events are canceling too. The Minnesota Roller Girls bout tonight at the Roy Wilkins has just canceled. I bet Rob Crumb would have enjoyed seeing the Dagger Dolls vs the Atomic Bombshells, but he lives in the south of France now and well the airport is closed anyway.

Blue Sky

According to CityRating.com, we can expect on average 5 clear days, 6 partly cloudy days, and 18 cloudy days in any typical November in St Paul. I'm pretty sure I didn't get my 5 clear days last month. We should expect about the same in December which is why the holiday lights in downtown mean so much. The City of St. Paul had the tree lighting ceremony last weekend in Rice Park, but the blue tree in the Ecolab Plaza is my favorite because it looks beautiful in the early evening sky. On average we should have a total of 95 blue sky days in the Twin Cities in a year. San Jose and San Diego, both places I have lived have 160 and 142 respectively. Yuma, Arizona has a whopping 242 days of blue sky. That might be a bit excessive. Maybe I wouldn't enjoy those blue sky days as much if I had them that often.