Saturday meme -- & stuff

Mood: Good
Hair: ponytail with hat

I'm at work. Yes, it's my day off. Yes, the sun is shining. Yes, I should be weeding my garden, or doing a million other things. But I'm here. And I can't blog, because I have absolute BUTTLOADS of stuff to do here. On my day off. Before I go to the next Little League game. So this is my little reward to myself:

From BloggerSeeds:
Random Questions; Random Days... Friday, May 14
"Here are some interesting facts I found about ice-cream. They came from the book called "Dates with the Greats" by Susan Ohanian. May 13, 1777 was the first public advertisement of ice cream. Confectioner Philip Lenzi announces in the New York Gazette that his ice cream "may be had almost every day." During the summer of 1790 George Washington runs up an ice cream bill of about $200 - very roughly the equivalent of about $6000 in today's money. Thomas Jefferson also likes ice cream a lot. He creates his own 18-step recipe for making it. Dolley Madison is the first First Lady to serve ice cream at White House state dinners.
That leads us to today's questions: What is your favorite kind of ice cream?"

I used to not really care for ice cream. I still really don't crave ice cream.

Except for Dairy Queen blizzards. Over the past 10 years, I have developed a real 'thing' about those, primarily Cookie Dough blizzards, but also Heath bar blizzards and Butterfinger blizzards. DQ is the main reason I never lost the pregnancy weight. They are b-a-d (and they are right around the corner from work). Ice cream alone...eh, not so much. Especially not chocolate.

I also like butterscotch malts. And Kopp's Custard in Milwaukee--especially the daily flavors--is to die for. Absolutely edible heaven.

Ice cream always reminds me of Leningrad. When I was there, 19 years ago last January (yes, in January!), there were ice cream kiosks on almost every corner. Everyone was eating ice cream--grandmas to toddlers. There was ice cream for sale in Moscow and every other city as well. The difference in Leningrad seemed to be that there was just more joy in the air, and people were willing to embrace that joy and combine it with ice cream. After the ballet, after hockey games, after sledding: ice cream. It wasn't very good ice cream in our jaded Western opinion, but to Russians it was happiness in a bowl for 50 kopecks. Apparently.

And yes, I do know it's not Leningrad anymore, but that's what it was called when I was there. I'd love to visit St. Petersburg; I wonder if renaming a city really substantially changes its persona, so to speak...but that's another blog entry. I really must get to these piles of work and push them off onto someone else's desk! :-)