Random List #5

1. Favorite Noble Gas Argon

2. Least Favorite Noble Gas Radon

3. First Team I Ever Played On 1st grade soccer team. We were called The Recyclers.

4. Favorite Ice Cream Flavor Mint Chocolate Chip

5. Strongest Sign That I've Become A Midwesterner (aside from the fact that I have lived in the Midwest for 16 years if you include college and I love the Minnesota Twins) I refer to soft drinks as "pop" and no longer call them all "Coke."

6. Strongest Sign That I Will Never Be A Minnesotan (or "One of us" as they call each other up here) I will never ever refer to mint chocolate chip ice cream as "peppermint bon bon." You will find me using "borrow" and "lend" interchangeably before I ever say "peppermint bon bon." And for the uninitiated, there is a subset of Minnesotans who do use "borrow" to mean "lend" (as in "I'm gonna borrow him the book."). What the hell is wrong with you people?

7. Dumbest Thing I Can Remember Doing As A Kid I grew up in a very hilly neighborhood. At the bottom of one hill, on one side of the road, was a layer of loose gravel that was there for at least three years.

I always rode my bike home from school, rain or shine. As part of my grand finale of my daily sortie home, I would ride my bike to the top of the big hill. Then I would bike as fast I could down the hill, as fast as my toothpicks, I mean legs, could pump the pedals on my SX-2000 dirt bike. I would then bike through the gravel layer making sure to hit the breaks right when back tire hit the gravel. I could easily skid over 20 feet across the gravel patch when I did this.

The dumb part is that this hill I sped down was three blocks long. And the two intersections I sped through had stop signs intended for me. So for three years, rain or shine, on every school day, I took the risk of getting hit in, not one, but two intersections, all for the sake of skidding through gravel on my SX-2000. Granted, this was a sleepy residential neighborhood, but the law of averages state I should have been hit at least once over this three year period.

8. Biggest Piece of Irony In All This If I biked directly home from school, it would have been a two mile ride. But my mom had me double the length of my route. I had to bike an two extra miles out of my way so I could cross Broadway, a busy street, with a police officer crossing guard named Officer Hubbard. The danger of crossing Broadway at a traffic light WITHOUT Officer Hubbard was clearly too dangerous, so I had to bike all the way down Broadway to cross safely with officer. and then ten minutes later, of course, I was speeding through stop signs and skidding through gravel patches.

9. Number of Times I Cried In Front of Officer Hubbard One. In fourth grade someone stole my SX-2000 from in front of my mom's bookstore. Officer Hubbard was the first responding officer at the scene of the crime. When he asked me to explain what happened, in my own words, I started bawling because I could't believe my SX-2000 was gone. I don't know how he transcribed that into his police report, but he probably went something like this, "And then young Mr. Nawrocki said, 'Waaa fucking waa."

10. Biggest Reason Why I Break Into A Cold Sweat When I Think About What It Would Be Like To Have A Child Of My Own See Item #7.

Blognation: Will The Madness End?

Another link to add to the blog canon. Are you still out there Rachel? I ask because the last time you blogged there were some people who still thought Pluto was a planet and Mike Hatch would be an awesome choice for governor of Minnesota.

Anyway, Rachel got Emily and then me into blogging many moons ago. I would like to think that Emily and I have since influenced the inception of a few other blogs, including the latest entry to my links section, Life by the Falls.

So is this blog for you? Well, I would say at least one of the following is true for 90% of the people who read this blog (so that would, ummm, 4.5 people):

1. You presently live in Texas or have Texas roots.
2. You presently live in Minnesota.
3. You are a runner.
4. You take pride in your neighborhood.

If any of these are true for you, then Life by the Falls is a blog for you!

It is written by my friend Nathan and, as of press time, every post he has made is about running, Minneapolis neighborhoods, and Texas. So there is something for everyone.

Nathan has made an anonymous cameo on my blog before. Back in November I talked about the tranquility of running with a friend at 5 a.m. It all sounded so ideal at the time. What I left out of the post is that repeated running at 5 a.m. left me with too-tight hamstrings and a strong feeling of sleep deprivation. So we abandoned the 5 a.m. routine.

But the identity anonymous friend from this post can now be revealed as Nathan, since he now has a blog of his own.