Leah Mansfield

Dear People Not From Minnesota,

There is so much snow here. It’s everywhere.  All the time.  And I don’t just mean everywhere.  It’s in great, heaping piles blocking every single intersection everywhere in the entire city.  People have all tunneled through the snow to clear the sidewalks and it’s built this big wall of snow between the houses and streets.  Kids can play on top of these walls.  When I take the dogs for a walk, they have no where to poop because the snow is over their heads in every direction we go.  My roommate and I built a snow track in the yard so they could run around.  Turns out this is the 5th largest one day snow fall in MINNESOTA history.  Minnesota gets large one day snowfalls ALL THE TIME, compared to everywhere else, except Canada.  It’s been a week, for goodness’ sake, and it’s not melting.  NOT MELTING.  They have snow removal teams.  The largest snowblower you have ever seen is dumping snow into dump trucks and carting it away to a snow dump.  A SNOW DUMP.  When I was in the military, I used to think, “man, someday I want a job where I don’t have to pass cows on my way to work.”  But that was only because I didn’t know how low things could get.  I didn’t even fathom living in a place with a snow dump at that time.   I had to stop listening to the news, because every day they predict more snow, followed by the phrase, “where are we going to put it? haha.” I don’t know.  One of the 10,000 lakes?  You know that’s the number only in the spring when all the snow melts.  And I’m pretty sure they’re including ponds as lakes.  Some of these “lakes” seem a bit sketch.    I hate the rain with a passion, but I’m looking forward to going to Seattle for Christmas just because I know I’ll be able to see the ground.

Well, I can’t think of anything funny, because my asshole “friends” can’t stop responding to the worst Facebook email I have ever received, and I can’t get it to stop coming to my inbox.  I better never meet Daniel Howard in a dark alley.

Which brings me to the point of this particular message, and that is a great way to get in shape for free, and reduce the murderous feelings I have toward stupid annoying people.  Corepower Yoga has a fantastic program for anyone that has more time than money.  I started Work For Trade (WFT) at the Uptown Location here in Minneapolis.  This great program lets you get on the cleaning staff with one 2 hour shift per week.  In return you get unlimited free yoga.  OMG that’s such a great deal.  Because two hours of cleaning at my current day job rate is only worth $14.50 (but plus tips!), and I’m pretty sure a month of free unlimited yoga is more than that.

Yoga has been really fantastic at helping me stay in shape.  Here are some other benefits:

- Reduces Murderous Feelings

- Reduces Fat

- It’s mostly women

Come on, who doesn't want to do this?

If you are interested in getting in great shape for free, contact:

Bryna Fahrner
Management Team Uptown
2930 Emerson Ave So
Mpls, MN 55408

Studio: 612-822-9642

E-Mail: bryna.fahrner@corepoweryoga.com

Well, I guess you don’t.  I suppose since your face is more proportionate than normal or you’re more skinny or you have perfect hair means you can just act how ever you want as long as you get your way.  Don’t bother to tip, ok?  You’re so beautiful, just being in your presence is enough.  When rent is due, I’ll recount this meeting with you to my landlord and I’m sure she’ll be pleased to reduce my rent because you’re too beautiful to tip people.

Let me explain.  Today, a woman who works at a certain tanning salon 2 doors down tried to order a large soda for delivery.  I’ll give you a second to let that sink in, then I’ll expand on this to drive the point home.

Tanning Salon <——-Approximately 20 feet——–> My workplace

She wanted a delivery.

For one large soda.

20 feet, you guys.

The manager explains to the lady that we don’t offer delivery service for less than one sandwich.  She then walks the twenty feet to our door in a perfect demonstration of what one of us would have done, but in reverse.  She then proceeds to berate all of the in shop employees (who have nothing to do with this, I might add), and wouldn’t speak to the manager.  The General Manager of the store.  No sir, not high enough leadership to solve this issue of why we can’t deliver a large soda the 20 feet to her doorstep.  She wants to speak to the owner.  The owner of the store. Yes, let’s call the owner of this 20-something store chain and chat about one large soda, shall we?

Ring, Ring.  (Or whatever.)

“I want to speak to the owner of the store, I have received terrible service from your company!”

“Oh my (he doesn’t swear in front of customers, I bet), that sounds terrible!  What can I do to remedy this situation?  Please, tell me what’s happened.”

“They wouldn’t bring me a large soda 20 feet for no tip.”

(I always imagine a long pause here, followed by some throat clearing.)

“Did they explain that company policy is a minimum one sandwich delivery?”

“Yes.  I still want them to bring it to me.”

“Did they explain we don’t even deliver large sodas?”

“Yes.  They should still bring it to me.”

At this point several employees have snuck in and begin to beat this annoying woman with large loaves of bread.  Unfortunately, she’s too tan to bruise.

This is the same woman who made me go make exact change for one sandwich out of a 100 dollar bill, then didn’t tip me.

What's this sandwich doing here? Is anyone going to eat this?

ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE!  And I mean, omg everywhere.  This year was the 6th annual Zombie Pub Crawl here in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The number of participants topped out over 10,000 this year according to someone who talked to someone who said they heard it was around that anyway, which is double from last year.  That’s a lot of zombies, you guys.

My first one was last year, when I dressed as zombie Princess Leia.  It was fun, but after awhile it got kind of exhausting having everyone want to take your picture every 5 seconds.  This year I dressed as a zombie missileer, but since no one knows what that is, and you look like a pilot, I just nodded along.  Sure buddy, whatever you think is probably right.

Patti's arm looks like it hurts.

The route is quite long, and I haven’t heard of anyone making it from one end to the other and enjoying it.  We started on the 501 side of the route, and it was fun to see all the great costumes.  Sorry if I got drunk and grabbed anyone’s boob.  That happens once in a great while.  I started with my roommate and her girlfriend, then I met up with Max and Vicky and some people they knew.  Then some other stuff happened, and I ended up in front of Sgt. Preston’s around midnight with Jessie and a gazillion other people.  Then I went home.  Go back and read this paragraph again, but this time with a dirty mind.

That's Max there in the middle.

It really was a very fun night.  If you’d like to see all the pictures, just clicky click right here to see my Facebook album with all of them.  My advice for next year is to get some friends who are fun and start at noon.  You’d be done before the obnoxious college kids come out, and we can have some zombie chill time at someone’s house or something.  Won’t that be fun?

In front of Sgt. Preston's around midnight.

Please, sit down.  Make yourself at home.  What would you like?  Coffee?  Creamer?  I keep trying to find pumpkin pie creamer, but the so far no luck.  I got some gingerbread instead which is also quite delicious.  I’d offer you food, but it appears I ran out.  Unless you’d like noodles with cut up honeycrisp apples and Everyday seasoning on top of it.  It’s what I’m having for dinner.  I would order you a Jimmy Johns sandwich, but ironically, I live outside a Jimmy Johns delivery area.

We have some tap water too.  I can get you that.