223: New old stuff

More shameless self-promotion. I've updated my Etsy shop with some 1960s-1980s clothing. Take a look!

221: Road trip

photos via We Heart It

It's been years since I took a real road trip, and when I came across some photos of my mom with her packed-to-the-gills yellow Corolla getting ready to drive to L.A. about thirty years ago, I got a hankering for some long-distance driving.

220: Tick tock

timrobisonjr on Flickr

Watching BBC coverage of the riots in the UK. Insane, and nonsensical -- burning stores with housing over them does nothing but hurt the small business owners and the people who rent the apartments.  Perplexing and very sad.

(Photo unrelated, but makes me marginally less dispirited.)

219: Reflecting

Downtown Minneapolis, 2006.

Minneapolis: even the skyscrapers are nice.

218: Out the door

(imagine this as a Liz-Lemon-style exclamation, i.e. "drat")

 Already running late.  Going to a bachelorette party tonight.  Hope I'm not supposed to bring a gift.

217: Toreador

Nîmes, France, 2007.

Outside the Roman arena in Nîmes, France.  Fun trivia from my high school French textbook: also from Nîmes is a fabric originally called serge de Nîmes, known today as denim.  Trufax!

216: Baguette

I know I feature French stuff on here frequently, but this is genuinely great: Le Late Late Show avec Craig Ferguson à Paris has been going on all this week.  Voici:

Full episodes are available on the CBS website.  (Or if you find their player as crappy as I do, on YouTube.)

215: On a stick

illustration by Brian Danaher

There's only 22 days until the Minnesota State Fair starts!  Unfortunately, I'm flying to Vancouver on opening day, so I'm going to miss it for the first time in about a decade.  Oh, well.  There's still Read & Ride day, when you can get discounted admission by presenting your library card.  Until I do make it through those storied gates into food-on-a-stick nirvana, I'll just enjoy this illustration of some of the traditional fair foods.

214: Flashback

Found these photos while going through old, old snapshots in preparation for my grandmother's 90th birthday party.  I'm not sure who was behind the camera (Grandma? Grandpa?), but it looks like the Minneapolis Aquatennial Grand Day parade from sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, and it's a fun look back at the history of the (now less than) 10 Best Days of Summer -- check out the dentists watching the parade from their second-floor office window in the fourth photo.  (click to view bigger)

213: Off the page

click for source.

This is a lovely concept: Darcy's letter coming out of the book.  Another Tumblr/Flickr discovery.