Make Your Own Nametag

    I went to a member event at the Loft in Minneapolis tonight after work. When I arrived I checked in and was asked to make my own nametag. It included the name of my mentor, and I decided on a former boss from when I worked in suburban Chicago. We haven't spoken much since I moved to the Twin Cities over nine years ago. On a wall we were asked to include advice that mentors gave us, I chose a different mentor for this exercise- from comedy. I shared two things, one was basically 'Go big or go home' and the other is to be self-validated. Another one I liked was how the teacher teaches the student to teach themselves. This was a happy hour before readings from three writers. The first did a short story about ancestry and 'Eating her dad', who was a Vietnam veteran apparently. The second was a teacher and passed out one poem with a few lines highlighted, we were asked to help read the highlighted lines. The third, the headliner, was really animated and I liked this as I like seeing those who have enthusiasm. She has various books about New Orleans, despite being a Pittsburgh native and now lives in Phoenix. One of these is a children's book called 'Ninth Ward', inspired by Hurricane Katrina. After the reading I did have more of the food, which included chicken on a stick and quesadillas. I passed on what I was told was tofu, saying 'I'm from small-town Iowa and we didn't eat tofu'. It led to being introduced to somebody who said she was from Des Moines and lived in the Valley Junction section of West Des Moines like I did. But she did so in a different time, from 1978-1981 and I lived there for a year and a half, all of 1997. I saw a writing instructor there who recognized me from an earlier event. Eventually he said he's on his third marriage, after I spoke of how there were plenty of weak marriage jokes on 'Hee Haw'.
   The 'Nightline' edition had a feature about a war correspondent, based on what I saw since I joined it in progress. I was trying to watch a VHS tape but fell asleep. So I decided to shut it off and switch over to the show but it meant unplugging the video player first. There was also a segment about the decade of the 1980s, saying much of the technology we use today had its start in this decade. It seemed relevant as there will be a mini-series about this decade soon, on another network.
   Before I went to the loft event, I did have to brush heavy, wet snow off of my car as I didn't drive it anywhere yesterday. There still was some light snow falling at this time but it was no problem getting around. I heard the Nirvana song 'Rape Me' on my car radio on the way there.