One More Puzzle Piece

Our neighborhood is awesome. But it could use...

5. One more nice bar
4. A co-op (credit goes to Emily for that suggestion)
3. Thai food restaurant (True Thai is close, but I want one even closer)
2. An Indian food restaurant
1. An easier way to get to all of Minneapolis west of Hiawatha Avenue.

Well, we can scratch item #2 off the list.

Thanks to Nora's observant parents, we learned that an Indian food restaurant has indeed opened in our neighborhood! Gandhi Mahal is located along 27th Avenue (that funny little street that runs between Minnehaha and Lake Street, right by Town Talk Diner).

Great food. We did take-out, but the restaurant interior is very attractive.

Click here for a review.

Click here for the restaurant's website. So many restaurants have come and gone from that location, but they haven't been as good as this one. So if you like Indian food even half as much as Emily and I do, you should go.

Conversation With Emily #7812

This afternoon when I got home from work, Emily alerted me to the fact that we were out of toilet paper. I have been married long enough to know that this was not a conversation starter or a statement of fact, but an indirect request for me to go to the store and buy some toilet paper.

So I grabbed the keys, let the dog know he was going for a ride with me to the store and was halfway down the stairs to leave when Emily stopped me.

Emily Wait. You know you need to buy a certain kind right?

Me Oh yeah I forgot. You're protesting the bears right (Editors note: I actually had forgotten Emily has specific toilet paper requests. Good thing she reminded me, or I would have ended up buying a Hannah Montana spiral notebook because it was on sale: two notebooks for 99 cents. I'd figure we could use the notebook paper as toilet paper).

Emily It has to be Cottenelle, the one with the puppy on it. No bears shitting in woods or bitches who cross stitch.

I have no idea what "the bitches who cross stitch" reference is all about, but I knew I had better come back with some toilet paper with a puppy on the wrapper. So I came back with mixed news: somewhere during the course of the evening I had to let Emily know I was able to buy Cottenelle, but only in a four pack.

Emily But they had jumbo packs of the other brands?

Me Yup.

Emily Well they must have been sold out of the big packs of Cottenelle because it's so popular.

I should add that she made this statement as if it is one of God's truths.

And what I love is how this was perfectly logical to Emily. It is assumed everyone who shops at the Walgreen's on 46th and Hiawatha in the Longfellow neighborhbood of Minneapolis adheres to the "Don't Buy Toilet Paper With Wrappers Depicting Bears or Bitches Who Cross Stitch" rule. As if it's a widely taught bathroom rule, right up there with "If it's yellow let it mellow" and "Knock before entering a Port-A-Potty."

There Goes The Neighborhood

In early November, or more accurately from early November to mid-November, a friend of mine from high school stayed with us on and off for about ten days. It's a long story, but he was stationed here as part of his job. And it's an even longer story to explain why part of his job entailed having a Penske moving truck parked in front of our house while he was here. I was just happy to have another crazed Spurs fan to hang out with.

But one morning Emily took Pancho for his morning walk and found that my friend's moving van had been tagged with graffiti.



It is kind of funny that his van got tagged. But it is not so funny that such an elaborate paint job occured in front of our house. Kids/gangstas these days...