Milwaukee Loves Her Brew

Cities, like people, get tagged with nicknames. Milwaukee has her share: Brew Town, Brew City, Cream City, City of Festivals, and more.

By no authority vested in me, I bestow one more nickname on Milwaukee: Moon Fun City.

Moon Fun City is not completely logical—that’s part of the point. Milwaukee isn’t completely logical either. One major contradiction: The city’s population is shrinking while its sophistication is growing. A renaissance is happening here. Twenty years ago, Milwaukee had (maybe) two theater companies. Today, the city boasts more than a dozen. Foodies now flock (why must foodies always flock?) to Milwaukee’s trendy restaurants.

I’m on my second time around in Moon Fun City. On my first lunar landing, the city ranked 15th or 16th most populous with 660,000 city dwellers. As of the 2010 census, Milwaukee dropped to 28^th. Check out this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s 2009 analysis of the city and county’s population.

Despite the published population stats, I can at least vouch for  a “plus-2” in the population since October 2012. (The Big Apple: minus two. Yeah, I called you “The Big Apple,” New York City. Whatcha gonna do about it?)

The Moon Fun Shop

Long Live Art Smart’s

The name “Moon Fun” doesn’t come from outer space; it comes from a long-gone, ramshackle shop on (pre-Grand Avenue Mall) Wisconsin Avenue. As a Marquette freshman, I found Wisconsin Avenue desolate, with few places I could walk to, except that stuffy, might-as-well-be-Sears, Boston Store, and the funky Potato Brothers on Water Street. Moon Fun Shop, a small beacon of light—funky, in a Spencer Gifts (now just Spencer’s) kind of way—sold stacks of black light posters and smelled of incense.

Why is Spencer Gifts (excuse me, Spencer’s) still around and the Moon Fun Shop not? Hardly seems right. But I have proven over and over again that I am lousy at predicting which stores will last and which ones will go under. Back in 1985, I predicted that a store with a name like “Art Smart’s Dart Mart” would last five minutes. [Spoiler alert: It's still there!]

Sorry to be gone so long, Mil-WAH-kay. You’re a moon fun city if I ever saw one.

The post Milwaukee Nicknames: My Kinda (Brew) Town appeared first on moonfun.net.

Aimee in 2007

Get your dog fix and your dog fixed.

I started volunteering at Animal Haven, a shelter in Lower Manhattan’s SoHo, a few months after our Yellow Lab, Aimee, died of kidney failure.

I figured I could get my “dog fix” without the full-time responsibility, without the drudgery of early morning and late night walks, without waiting for an elevator to ride down 18 floors and back up again three or more times a day. Kinda like getting the milk without having to buy the cow, or so I thought.

I got my dog fix, all right. But I also began to really understand the plight of shelter animals. Did you know that . . . ?

• An estimated 6-8 million dogs and cats enter US animal shelters each year
• Of these, approximately 3-4 million are euthanized
• Only 15-20% of lost dogs are returned to their owners
• 21% of owned dogs were adopted from shelters and rescues
• 25% of dogs that enter local shelters are purebred
• 78% of owned dogs are spayed or neutered
• Only 10% of dogs received by shelters have been spayed or neutered

Think about that. Twenty-two per cent of dogs are NOT spayed or neutered. Therefore, 90% of the dogs received by shelters come from the pool of 22% unaltered dogs.

Three million euthanized animals is a huge number. But effective spaying and neutering campaigns and programs have reduced the number and percentage of killed animals considerably. Since animal cruelty organizations and animal shelters are not regulated at a national level, available stats are estimates that range widely, but the trend remains.

Shelter Life

At Animal Haven, the small dogs, the sick dogs, and the new dogs stay upstairs in the Intake room. The larger dogs live downstairs in cement corrals. The downstairs dogs remind me of prisoners running their tin cups across the iron bars of a jail cell with their howling, their barking, and their sadness.

It breaks my heart to be only able to take care of one dog at a time. Even with all the cleaning and the washing and the walking, it never seems to be enough.

Few of the dogs are housebroken. Shelter life untrains those few pretty quickly. Walks are irregular. The cutest dogs probably get 15 walks a day, since most volunteers work two-hour shifts and walks are not logged. So the dogs sit in their corrals with their poop and their food and their Kuranda cots. Blankets and toys are not allowed in the corrals, for good reason.

Someone told me that Animal Haven is a boutique shelter—it is like the Hilton compared to Animal Control. Wow, I thought.  I know the entire staff at Animal Haven has the best interests of the dogs at heart, but they can only do so much. What is the city pound like?

How long do you think it took to walk out of Animal Haven with a dog?

One month.

The post Spay or Neuter Pets to Keep Shelter Population Down appeared first on moonfun.net.

In Season 21, all eyes will be on the team who wins the first leg of The Amazing Race. That team competes for two million dollars while the rest vie for just one measly million. I’m curious, how often has the team who won Leg 1 gone on to win the entire race?

TAR needs to make this first leg EXTREMELY hard, so a top talent team wins. If the winner of Leg 1 is eliminated in Leg 2, the pot enhancement will be a wasted plot twist. Starting the leg with a repel impresses as tough, but the repel will not be the deciding factor for any team.

Shanghai, China

First stop: Shanghai, China. Seven teams will be on the first flight. The producers don’t usually let us or the teams know that in advance.

The first challenge in China (was it a Detour or a Roadblock?) is to score a point against a young champion Ping Pong player. We seem to have a national fascination with Ping Pong lately. The animated Ping Pong icon in the corner of the screen seems vaguely offensive, like it were mocking the Japanese game show genre.

My food delivery arrived just in time for the Fallopian Tube of a Frog segment. Yuck!

At first, I thought Rob and Kelley would be the first team eliminated. Now I am rooting for them since Rob ate two servings of the Fallopian Tubes. At least two other teams in the back of the pack made the same error of not eating the gelatinous mess with chopsticks which turned out not to be a punishable error.

The team that landed on the mat first (Abbie and Ryan) could have been more gracious to Amy and Daniel. After all, Amy and Daniel handed Abbie and Ryan first place.

This should be an interesting season!

The post The Amazing Race Season 21: Shanghai, China appeared first on moonfun.net.

We all feel shame—it can’t be helped, Brené tells us. Shame is the fear that we are unlovable and that we don’t belong.  People deal with this universal shame by withdrawing, becoming too eager to please, or lashing out aggressively to shame others.

Daring Greatly dares us to go on a journey of self discovery. If we apply Brene’s tenets to our lives, we can deepen personal relationships, abandon stifling masks, and get along better at work. Her shame resilience tactics can help us when we are making big life changes or figuring out next steps—as I am now.

Reading Daring Greatly when I am at a personal crossroad is serendipitous. I must ask myself: am I daring greatly?

I resigned from my job last week—when 23 million Americans are out of work. I am leaving New York, the media-job capital of the world, the city of “never enough.” Finally, I’ve had enough. Where else is self-worth tied so much to achievement? Where else are there more people “chasing down the extraordinary”?

Brené says we adopt armor to protect ourselves from the discomfort of vulnerability. In New York, the armor is out in full force. Here, we can be alone in a crowd, with invisible, barbed-wire shields around each of us.

New York is also a city of disengagement. Picture me reading Daring Greatly on the subway. I don’t want to people to see what I am reading or worse, what I am underlining. New Yorkers don’t make eye contact, but they will read over your shoulder. I feel vulnerable.

As I read the book, feeling the eyes of jaded New Yorkers on me, I recall grade school experiences that shaped my attitudes and actions more than I realized. Over time, I worked out a lot of my vulnerability-avoidance behaviors, though I never called what I was doing “vulnerability avoidance.” I care A LOT less about what others think. I let go of “perfectionism.” I compete only against myself.

Most of the book’s anecdotes come from Brené’s life. By the last chapter, I felt I knew husband Steve, son Charlie and especially daughter, Ellen. By revealing so much, Brené makes herself vulnerable and most importantly, credible.

This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

The post Review: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown appeared first on moonfun.net.

Fact: fast-food restaurants over serve their customers. Knowing how many calories and how much sodium in each menu item when you approach the counter will help you navigate this minefield.

I have eaten at McDonald’s exactly once in the last nine years, when a dental problem made eating painful. I got my hands on a vanilla milkshake and it was darn good. Prior to 2003, I saved visits to McDonald’s for severe weekday hangovers. Those hangovers were thankfully rare.

I can’t say I will never eat at McDonald’s again, nor must I have the proverbial gun to my head to enter the golden arches. But I would have to have a severe shortage of options.

Driving down I-95 or across I-80, one of those shortage scenarios might arise. I will be headed down both those interstates next week. If I run out of food options on the road, and am faced only with fast-food restaurants, which should I pick?

Posting Calories Helps Make Better Choices

I checked the nutrition information for both Burger King’s and McDonald’s menus. Reading the long lists of calories of every sandwich variation made me numb to the calorie counts. After a few pages, 500 calories didn’t sound like so much.

If I navigate the menu carefully, I could order a reasonable meal at each house of worship. Even though the lowest calorie sandwich at both McDonald’s and Burger King is the humble hamburger, I don’t eat red meat. So that option is off the table.

I don’t do deep-fried either, so the Filet-O-Fish is also out. The cheesed-up, tartar-sauce slathered Filet-O-Fish is worse than a burger. But I ate Filets for years thinking it was a better choice. At McDonald’s, I might opt for the Grilled Chicken Sandwich (350 calories, 820 mg sodium).  The grilled version is just over half the calories of the Crispy Chicken option (620 calories, 1200 mg sodium). In a previous life, I would have considered the two interchangeable.

If the sodium level of the Grilled Chicken Sandwich scares you off, try the Honey Mustard Grilled Snack Wrap (250 calories, 670 mg sodium).

Over at Burger King, the Tendergrill Chicken Sandwich is 470 calories with 1330 mg of sodium—too high. But you can save 110 calories if you hold the mayo.

Breakfast: The Most Fattening Meal of the Day

Surprisingly, fast-food breakfast meals can be much worse than the lunch fare. Judging by the name, I would know to stay away from the BK Ultimate Breakfast Platter (1450 calories,  2920 mg sodium). But the sodium content of the Southwest Burrito (1790 mg) makes a sensible-sounding choice not so sensible.

At McDonald’s, if the breakfast includes hotcakes, stay clear. The Big Breakfast with Hotcakes has 1,090 calories and 2150 mg of sodium. Here’s where the Fruit n’ Yogurt Parfait (150 calories) can be a life saver.

The post Fast-Food Calories: What to Eat at McDonald’s or Burger King appeared first on moonfun.net.