The Sweatshop of Love Blog

And then, magically, my summer in Minneapolis was over. It hardly feels like three months ago that I got here, and here I’m already packing up to leave. But before I head back to Chicago Friday, we knew we had to have the weekend to end all weekends. And we surely did, starting Friday with a trip to Target Field.

See those people WAY up at the top there? That is where we usually sit. But Friday? Ohh no! Friday PT got CHAMPIONS CLUB tickets for the game, which meant that we got all you can eat and drink free food, and our view for the game was this:

I was so happy during this game tears were shed. The food was amazing, getting to drink all I wanted to was amazing, not waiting in line to pee was amazing! But the baseball. It was RIGHT THERE! It was almost scary how close we were.

And then there was the fair. This is me, trying to eat a deep fried Reeses Peanut Butter Cup covered in powdered sugar. Because there isn’t enough sugar on the inside of that thing that it needed more. And yeah. It was good. Because EVERYTHING IS AMAZING AT THE FAIR!

This is my third Minnesota State Fair, and I think ever time gets better. It’s Tuesday and I’m still recovering from this trip. It’s just that glorious.

I love that I take the same pictures every year. In 2009 it was food, bunnies, crop art, and baby sheep. In 2010 it was food, baby sheep, and crop art.

This year is shaping up to be food, bunnies, baby sheep, and crop art again!

And, of course, the underwhelming shots of knitting.

We were at the fair for 11 hours, so it’s really no wonder that I’m still recovering. I could barely walk yesterday! I’m already excited for next year.

And I’m already excited to come back to Minneapolis! I kinda love this place. I’m Chicago bound Friday, which means I’m frantically packing up my life and finishing all my unfinished projects before I’ll be away from them. Why does leaving always sneak up on me?!

But we went out with a bang, Minnesota. And those 5 deep fried pounds around my middle will be with me for a long time.

I’m back home in Chicago gearing up for the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend and going through pictures of the last two legs of my trip. You want to see the happiest boy in the whole entire world?

That would be PT, a boy who grew up watching indoor baseball at the hellhole of a Metrodome we saw last year but is seeing Target Field, the new ballpark where the Minnesota Twins now play, for the first time.

This trip included two baseball games, one at Yankee Stadium and one here at Target Field, and I can’t express enough how much more I enjoyed my time at Target Field than at Yankee Stadium.

Target Field is fun. It’s beautiful and you can feel how excited everyone is to be outside watching baseball, which is something the rest of us take for granted. Twins fans are just happy people watching baseball. They are tickled pink that their team is in the race but I’m pretty sure they would be just as excited if they had the worst team in baseball. They love everyone. Everyone gets cheered on, every ball could go out, every out is huge, every moment is awesome, and that is just a fun way to watch baseball.

And, when you are with someone having the best time of their life, you just gotta get on board. PT looked like this the entire time. Seriously. But so did everyone!

It’s beautiful and fun and comfortable and their food is reasonably priced and they’ve got these fancy bars all over the stadium that are accessible to everyone.

The Tigers lost in extra innings. It was a rough game, but I still had a great time. THAT is how amazing Target Field is!

So, Yankees, I have no idea what you did with that $1.4 billion, but you should have built Target Field in the Bronx and saved yourself $855,000,000. That is right, Yankee Stadium cost EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS more than Target Field. I can’t comprehend how much money that actually is, but that is a lot of zeros for something to have cost more than something else.

If you find yourself in Minneapolis you should get yourself to Target Field. If you find yourself in the Bronx you should get on a plane, fly to Minnesota, and get yourself to Target Field. It will cost you less than going to see the Yankees.

Upon arriving in Minnesota Thursday afternoon and entering PT’s mom’s adorable little house, I was greeted with this:

“Aw PT! You were so cute!”

“Yeah that is my senior picture.”

“THAT is your SENIOR PICTURE? I was going to guess 8th grade.”

PT was anxious to take me on a grand tour of St Paul, where he grew up, and Minneapolis, which is like a whole other world according to PT’s mom.

St Paul has about 300,000 people and Minneapolis has about 400,000, and St Paul is known as the small, quaint city, and Minneapolis as the big city.

I didn’t, and still kind of don’t, understand why they are two cities. Wouldn’t it just be easier to have one big city separated by the Mississippi River, instead of two cities that are just like one big city anyway?

It’s like the sharks and the jets, so I probably shouldn’t have even said that while still in Minnesota.

In any case, both cities are beautiful; full of parks and old buildings and tree lined boulevards. Our first stop was in Minneapolis, just over the river, to Minnehaha Falls. See? Lovely waterfall inside the city limits!

I had forgotten that F Scott Fitzgerald grew up in St Paul, but PT was on it and took me to see his house. I love him, and I love Zelda, and I really love Ernest Hemingway who grew up in Oak Park but whose house I still haven’t seen, shamefully.

We had lunch on the banks of the Mississippi River, which I can safely say I’ve never done before.

PT’s favorite sandwich place in St Paul is called Acme Deli, where you fill out a sheet of options, hand in your worksheet, and get a sandwich. I got a tuna with lots of veggies, cheese, and horseradish, and it was awesome.

PT got the turkey breast with olives, of course.

Where we stopped for lunch also had a waterfall called Hidden Falls; less hard core falls than Minnehaha and much more mosquito filled, but still! Lunch+Mississippi River+waterfalls? This place is great!

And we got some ice cream for the trip to Minneapolis! PT worked at Izzy’s for a summer, so it was part of the PT life tour. At least I can justify going the first time that way, anyway. The second time, this time, I was just being a fatty. But, I mean, salted caramel ice cream? With a little taste of whatever other ice cream flavor you want? It’s a good thing I don’t live here.

We stopped at Lake Calhoun, one of the many lakes in Minneapolis, and walked on the path around it. There were lots of people out biking and jogging the paths, enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

We stopped at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden that I loved.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘What’s to get? It’s a cherry and a spoon.’

PT sees things pretty clearly.

PT never asks to get his picture taken. I take pictures like a crazy and PT puts up with it like a champ, but this moment was a big moment in PT’s life. He was riding the light rail to the Metrodome for his last Twins game at that hell hole. So many people were riding that thing to the game! He was a very happy boy.

Or I thought he was a happy boy, but in comparison to how happy he was to see the new Target Field where, in a matter of months, his beloved Twins will play, outside, like baseball should be played, he was catatonic on the light rail.

I didn’t understand exactly what a big deal this was. The Tigers got a new stadium a few years ago and it was a big deal but I wasn’t losing my shit over it. But then I went into the Metrodome to watch a baseball game.

Entering the Metrodome, sitting down, and realizing you are about to watch baseball was kind of like seeing my best friend get punched in the face. Like, they took baseball, something I love so much, and dropped it into the shittiest place on earth. I was pissed! How could they do that? How could they stick BASEBALL in there?

But they were giving away Joe Mauer on a stick, which was fun. I don’t know why they didn’t throw some makeup on him and pluck his eyebrows down a little before blowing up his face that big, but it’s Minnesota. He might need those brows for warmth.

Besides the location, it was the perfect night. PT’s last Twins game in the Metrodome was a win, the Tigers won, the White Sox lost, and we light railed it back home.

Day Two? STATE FAIR! EVERYTHING DEEP FRIED AND ON A STICK!

I’ve got to charge my camera batteries.