Tag: Downtown Market

daily walk: the floating head tree

Dear Internet,
Last night I was utterly exhausted when I crawled into bed around midnight with the hope that by reading, I’d be able to nod off and get to sleep. My brain had other things on its mind because I finished the book around 1:30A, and still wide awake at 5:11AM watching Bob’s Burgers.
I took half a Klonopin around 4ish, which I think finally drove me the edge into wonderland of sleep. However, I bolted upright in bed at around 9:30AM as if I had slept for days.
TheHusband, who was appreciative of me being quiet as a mouse while I watched terrible television last night, tried to cajole to go back to sleep but I was BRIGHT EYED AND BUSHY TAILED. LIke a squirrel on speed.
I decided to harness this extra energy by walking to the Downtown Market for their Saturday Farmer’s Market since we needed an assortment of veg. The round trip is about a mile and would also count as part of my daily walk series, PLUS getting some kind of exercise should help with the mania.
Win-win all the way around.
floatingheadtree
As we walked to the market, I had forgotten the house with the floating heads was on our way, which marked the perfect beginning of the journey.
downtownmarket
Because of some dilly-dallying on my end at home, we didn’t get to the market until after 12PM, so most of the fruit/veg were picked over but we still ended up scoring us some great finds. We were hoping to have lunch at Grampas’s Pasty Co., because goddamn their Conrish influenced pasties are delicious, but they were down to two flavors we weren’t rather fond of so we skipped them this week.
After loading up our messenger bags with our finds, we walked the Market’s inside hall to see if we were missing any else and to get lunch ideas. We ended up with a few treats from Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe for later, but still no lunch options were tempting us. Since we’re right downtown, we decided to see what was open.
stellas-2
Stella’s is one of our favorite spots to eat in the downtown core. They have awesome burgers, great fries, and metric fuckton of old video games to play. But we weren’t in the mood for Stella’s so we kept walking and ended up at Meena’s Joint, which serves stoner food with a Rasta vibe.
TheHusband might looks like he partakes but we are aging alternative hipsters and coupled with the Coheed and Cambria on the stereo, we were definitely not the clientele they are catering to. The food is basically anything that could constitute a sandwich filling packed into a grilled tortilla and the taste was merely, “meh.”
With our bellies full, I was ready to keep on walking around downtown, maybe do a stroll through GRAM or a saunter down Monroe Center,  but the threatening rain finally decided to open up the skies.
We decided to just walk home in rainy, companionable silence.
fitbitwalk-july12
Distance: 3 miles
Walk time: 1:00:54 (This is total walk time, does not include time we shopped at the market or lunch)
Pace: 20:17/mile
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010

small perfect moments need recording too

The house where I spent 12.5 years growing up.
The house where I spent 12.5 years growing up.

Dear Internet,
As I have some hours to burn before my contract ends, I’ve been arranging schedules to make the most of my last few months at work. Today was one of those such days where I took a half-day to spend the afternoon with TheHusband. You know, kind of like a date.
We recently purchased a membership to Meijer Gardens to get in on their summer concert extravaganza as it would be way cheaper to buy the tickets and save zillions on convenience fees. We ended up with tickets for Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite, Rodrigo y Gabriela, G. Love and Special Sauce & Keb’ Mo’ Band, and Lake Street Dive. We were looking at double that number to attend, but prices start to get crazy inflated. $150 per ticket for Santana? Do we look like DeVos’ here?1
While the shows don’t start until June, we decided to use our new membership to see the Butterflies in Bloom, the yearly exhibit at the Gardens, since this was the last day. It was — underwhelming. Except for the butterfly orgy, which was taking place everywhere. Then obviously I had to spend time looking up the mating rituals of butterflies and mind = blown that male butterflies have penises.
Do not ask me how I made it through high school science because seriously, half the time I do not know myself.
Spring is still struggling to get out of her own cocoon, but we’re getting there. Some early spring flowers were in bloom around the outside of the main buildings at the Gardens, but it was too wet and still too cold for serious walks, so we continued on with our day.
We made a trip to the YMCA to update our billing info and then headed to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which was right down the street. I haven’t been to GRPM in almost a decade, and with the new LEGO exhibit, this seemed like a good time to go.
GRPM was also a bit underwhelming as many of the exhibits I saw ten years ago were still in use. The LEGO exhibit was neat in that a certified professional LEGO builder recreated famous architecture, but the supporting smaller exhibits were a bit meh. Ye Olde Tyme Grand Rapids is always a big kick to see what the city was like, but again, not much had been updated in the last decade. They did, however, do a more indepth “where are you from” to cover the different cultural groups around the city, and it was a pleasant surprise to see how diverse the city has become AND is getting. But the fact this place still remains run by old, crusty, white Dutch dudes tells you how the attitudes need to change even if the landscape has already shifted.
Since the walks through the two museums did not take long, we had time to hit the main branch of Grand Rapids Public Library for TheHusband to obtain his library card and me to pick up holds. They have been rearranging and cutting back so much at the main branch, I barely recognized some areas. The Dewey Cafe was completely gone, replaced by vending machines and the periodicals room seemed to be barely hanging on. I was there to mainly scout out materials I will miss when I leave MPOW, like BBC History Magazine. It seems GRPL does not carry the magazine, which means I have to get it elsewhere on the cheap.
Stopping at GRPL and not having the same services I’m used to at current position just underscores there will be four main things I will be desperate for when I leave MPOW:

  • Unlimited access to the OED
  • No fines
  • Magazine routing from the collection
  • Extended loan periods for materials

We headed over to the Downtown Market for dinner, but nothing was catching our interest so we headed over to our regular spot, Brewery Vivant, instead. After dinner was consumed and we headed home where we settled into our evening routines.
And here we are.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 1998


1.Mayhap only people in the grand city of Grand Rapids will get this joke.