Through the magic of the book of faces (and why I'll probably never leave) I'm having dinner tonight with a friend from my early post-college days in Chicago who I haven't seen in at least ten years. She's reminding me of all this crazy/dumb stuff I did there which I had completely forgotten about and it's cracking me up.

I wish I could say "who was that person?" but 90% of it is stuff I would probably still do today. Ha!

Sounds like a personal problem.

Haven't figured that out yet. Any suggestions?

Outside possibility we may end up staying with our friend who works at the Mayo Clinic so I'm assuming she's in Rochester area. Most likely she'll have relatives staying with her, though, and we'll end up at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Either way I'm going to have to be in Minneapolis area on Saturday.

My friend is very spontaneous so this is all very last minute and not super planned out. We just got the invitation a week ago via Evite- she walked into a dress shop same day and walked out with a dress off the rack that she said doesn't need alterations. The MN ceremony is a precursor to an excursion to Chile (where she's from) in February. We're going to spend a week hiking/camping through these incredible nature preserves down there and then there will be another outdoor wedding with her family. (I'm very excited!!)

The ceremony is in Cottage Grove at 3PM so I could do an early brunch - like around 11:00 AM. Would just need to get out by around 1PM. And/or I might be dressed in wedding guest attire.

Wedding is Sept. 21. so it will be that weekend. I'm probably going to fly in Friday and fly back Sunday. I might be available for drinks on Friday but most likely would be looking at an early brunch either Saturday or Sunday. Looking at flights today.

Side note to the texting scandal with the Governor of Puerto Rico.

The minute I read that he had referred to a "former NYC politician" as a whore the first thing that popped through my mind was "Melissa". Sure enough!

She ran in the Public Advocate race I was working on last year and I heard her talk a few times. Not a well liked person and she's had some dealings that have been less than above board. You would be hard pressed to find someone with something nice to say about her. She also pretends to represent the working class but the reality is she inherited millions of dollars from her father who was very politically connected in Puerto Rico and has never worked a day in her life.

Not that any of this excuses misogyny in any way. Just that she's not a completely sympathetic character in her own right.

Yay! It's going to be a quick trip but we'll have to try to plan something!

Do we have any Crassers in Minneapolis? It's looking like I'm going to be there towards the end of September for a friend's wedding.

Interesting. So maybe it's just a "road not taken" thing for my mom. Your mom still would have been exposed to way more than my mom was, though. There were less than 40 students in her all-girls Catholic college. Something like 5 of them were African American - my mom says she was friends with some of them but they sat at their own lunch table. She spent every weekend back at her parent's house - she has a story about going to one college party at U of M and leaving within a half hour because she felt overwhelmed. I definitely feel like if she had been exposed to more she could have had a broader world view.

What's also interesting is that she did try to push that world view on my sister and I. My sis and I were always very smart and I can remember my mom being totally freaked out by that - she used to get very anxious about how we needed to be careful because if we were too smart no one would want to marry us. In that way I'm almost glad we had a dysfunctional relationship because it forced me to think for myself from a very early age and not listen to that. Still to this day my mom is in awe of my having a career - she'll ask me questions like "How did you learn how to do that stuff? How did you know that you could?" with this total consternation in her voice that's funny to hear.

I get that and I think that could be true for a lot of supporters.

I also look at my mother who's a rabid Trump supporter. She graduated college in '69 but grew up in a small town, went to a tiny Catholic college run by nuns (my dad joingly refers to it as a finishing school), and was not exposed to any of the cultural revolution of the 60's (she couldn't name a single Bob Dylan song if her life depended on it). She was incredibly sheltered. At school she had the option of studying to be a nun, secretary, nurse, or teacher. That was it. She met my dad while she was still in college, got married the minute she graduated, and started popping out babies.

Only very recently has she started expressing some regret for not having pushed to get her high school transcript sent to a public university where she would have had more options (the Catholic high school she went to made that very difficult) and for not having had time as an adult post-college to experience the world and become her own person before getting married. At the time she subscribed to the world view that was pushed on her without questioning it. Trump is coming in and telling her that was the way it should be - that we should actually try to get back to that world view. Going against Trump would mean having to question every decision she's ever made in her life (or lack thereof) and I don't think she's prepared to do that.