Coping with Winter in Minnesota

The Bookman and I took a little break from business as usual yesterday. We both took the day off from work. What did we do? We went to the blight-upon-the-landscape known as The Mall of America. There are few things that can drive us there in spite of it being located ten minutes from our house. The top reason to go is out of town guests. The second reason to go is the Apple computer store. Its clean and uncluttered Apple goodness is an oasis in the overstimulating mallscape chaos. The third and final reason to go there, and the reason that got us there yesterday, is the need to walk around for awhile without the accouterments of winter--no coat, no hat, no mittens. A person can amble around for several hours without going into a single store and still see plenty of strange things, like the woman who looked like she had a poodle on her head. Really, we even followed her for a bit because we couldn't believe the hair-do. It was bleached nearly white, permed within an inch of its life and she had the top of it teased and shellacked up into a big poof that no hurricane would ever be able to blow down. It should be listed as the eighth wonder of the world. When we grew weary of the constant noise bombardment we headed back out to the car to discover that the sunny day had turned to snow. But at least, for a little while, we were able to pretend otherwise.