Tag Archives: Instagram

Twenty two

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This week’s food post is my standard breakfast: granola, blueberries and yogurt. I never really liked yogurt before, but since I’ve been home, I eat it daily. And this granola comes from the farmers’ market and is delicious.

When my friend Kate recently moved she made a bucket list (she got the idea from this lovely blog) for the town she and her husband were leaving. So, borrowing her idea, I thought I would make a bucket list for America, but because I am always thinking about my next meal, it will be foods that I must consume before I am no longer in the land of milk and honey or the full and plenty.

I should be losing weight for my brother’s wedding, but I had food dreams the last time I was in Africa so I need to stock up for the next two years. A few extra pounds is worth the deliciousness.

Also, food is better with friends, so I wouldn’t mind some company knocking a few of these off.

1)   A Grandma Emma from Zesto

2)   Popcorn from Bob’s

3)   Coffee and my journal at Pier 347

4)   Sweet potato fries and a large Boulevard from Pub 34

5)   An IPA from Monk’s

6)   Tabouli and a fatayer from Sanaa’s

7)   A veggie sub and salt and vinegar chips from the Pickle Barrel

8)   Black coffee and a monster cookie from Queen City Bakery

9)   Cucumber and avocado rolls from Tokyo OR Sushi Masa

10)  A mocha or tea from Michelle’s

11)  Deep fried pickles, popcorn and a beer from O’Hares

12)  Veggie enchiladas, margaritas and enormous amount of chips and salsa in New Mexico

13)  Cupcakes and coffee in Omaha

14)  My own tabouli

15)  Reese’s Pieces

16)  Grilled cheese

17)  Greek salad

18)  Nachos

19)  Garlic bread

20)  Veggie lasagna

I am sure there is more, but I need to limit myself so I can fit on the airplane. Also, maybe I will Instgram and blog about these as I cross them off. It could be my followup to the Instagram project. Look at me, being a blogger.

Twelve – Moving On

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The first photo was taken seven weeks ago, at the height of the Missouri River flood flight in Pierre. Our office is three blocks, or so, from the river and, housing very expensive printing equipment, it was necessary to protect the building.

Today, the hay bales came down. The facility manager cleaned the muck left behind and our building now stands alone, victorious.

All around people are moving back into homes and tearing down sandbag berms. The river has not returned to its banks quite yet, but releases out of the Oahe Dam are decreasing steadily and the river should be close to normal by September. This hellish summer for Pierre and Fort Pierre is almost over.

We are moving on.

These photos represent when it is easy to move on. Moving on is forced and is needed, but sometimes it’s harder than just proceeding on with life.

I have never been good at moving on or letting go. I am afraid to. In relationships, it often takes me awhile to rebound, even if the relationship was shattered and I’m the one that did the ending. There was once love and that’s enough to hold on, even if I’m aware it’ll never come back. I fear if I let go the good will never come back, in any form.

I have been struggling with Niger quite a bit. Memories and visual reminders of life in the desert attack me daily. It’s still so painful and I am not sure I’ll ever stop longing for that place, to go back to that perfect time.

But, Niger is now my past and Lesotho is my future. I need to look forward and prepare myself for a completely different future. I have been terrified that I will be known as the girl who starts everyone sentence with “Well, in Niger …” I don’t want to be that girl. I want to be the girl who looks around her and says “This is amazing.”

I will never stop thinking about Niger or loving the people that I met there, but I can stop writing about it. So, from here on out, I going to try not to blog about Niger anymore. For more than a year, I’ve blogged about my adventures there and in the last six months I’v posted about my struggle of leaving so abruptly. It has definitely been a healing process, but like the end of this flood, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

It doesn’t mean that my love for that piece of my life is gone, but it’s time to move on.

 

 

 

Ten

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Sorry, today’s post is lame. My weekend will mostly be consumed at the ball field covering a state tournament. This is a photo from the crows nest of everything I have to do at any give time – keep book, take notes, shoot photos, keep a live blog and input information into social media. Visual, text, online – it’s all important to today’s coverage, but can be tricky when you are a one-man show. Anyway, that’s my day. Hope you have a good, and more exciting, weekend.

Eight

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s an insane week at work. It’s one of those busy times where you don’t feel accomplished at the end of the day. I have a preview that has to be in today, so I decided to escape the newsroom for a few hours and pound it out at a local coffee shop.

I love time in coffee shops, whether it’s with my computer writing a blog post, a book, my iPod and journal or friend, new or old. There is this sense of hope and ability to do anything or go anywhere when I curl up in a booth and shut the world out for a while.

Since I graduated college, coffee shops have seemed to define my existence in any given place. There is Idaho, Brookings and two in Sioux Falls, here and there. And now, Pierre. When I go back to those places, though, they are never as magical as I remember them – the service isn’t great, the environment has lost its luster or the drink isn’t a taste-bud satisfying. Or, more likely, it’s I who have changed and these locals are figments of the past, like journal writings or photographs. In a way, that’s reassuring because it indicates that I’m growing and evolving.

Either way, I have a baseball preview to write and deadlines do not care about nostalgia.

À tout à l’heure.

P.S. Eight days with the daily Instagram – one week!