One More Puzzle Piece

Our neighborhood is awesome. But it could use...

5. One more nice bar
4. A co-op (credit goes to Emily for that suggestion)
3. Thai food restaurant (True Thai is close, but I want one even closer)
2. An Indian food restaurant
1. An easier way to get to all of Minneapolis west of Hiawatha Avenue.

Well, we can scratch item #2 off the list.

Thanks to Nora's observant parents, we learned that an Indian food restaurant has indeed opened in our neighborhood! Gandhi Mahal is located along 27th Avenue (that funny little street that runs between Minnehaha and Lake Street, right by Town Talk Diner).

Great food. We did take-out, but the restaurant interior is very attractive.

Click here for a review.

Click here for the restaurant's website. So many restaurants have come and gone from that location, but they haven't been as good as this one. So if you like Indian food even half as much as Emily and I do, you should go.

Conversations With Emily #7132897

While watching the finalists line-up for the 110 meter men's high hurdles.

Me Oliver looks like he's dirty, but I have to cheer for him. He is an American afterall. (Editor's Note: Dirty = performance enhancing drugs. Click here to judge for yourself.)

Emily What about Urkel? Aren't you going to cheer for him?

By Urkel she, of course meant Dayron Robles, who won the event.

Click here to judge for yourself.



Urkel indeed. She called the winner of the race. She made an Urkel reference.

Well played.

Hurricane vs. Blizzard

What happens when the Olympics meets the Minnesota State Fair head on? We'll find out this weekend, when they co-occur. Maybe Emily and I will just deep fry all our meals this weekend and watch the Olympics in our backyard and encourage people to walk all over our backyard. Then we can experience the Olympics as if we were at the State Fair.

Actually, we are doing the Milk Run again this year. Click here for Emily's full preview.

Random Question #425

Trampoline is an Olympic event. What the shit?

Class Acts

a quick Olympic post. Michael Phelps has amazed not only for what he has accomplished, but with how he has handled himself througout. Cool and classy in victory.

And Tyson Gay impressed me even more in defeat. No Handle Chad has blogged in the past about alibis and running. Gay had a built in alibi. The trackside reporter, Bob Neumeyer (sp?) even tried to hand it to him after Gay didn't make it out of the semi-finals. But Gay refused to accept it. No excuses. He tried his hardest and it wasn't good enough.

I find as much inspiration in that as I do in what Phelps accomplished.

"He's Doing Another Feet-First Dive!"

All of us normal folks know we would look ridiculous in the Olympics. The question is, which event would I look the most ridiculous participating in? Remember: I'd be wearing the same garb as the other athletes and competing without irony. Imagine me on TV...

5. Diving
Weaknesses: I have never taken swimming lessons and I don't know how to dive in the water head first. Emily impersonated an announcer when I asked her how I'd look in the Olympic diving competition. "Unbelievable! He's doing another feet-first dive!"

Strengths: I can also do a cannonball.

4. Weightlifting
Weaknesses: Good God, have you seen my physique? Even in my weightlifting heyday (college, when I was forced to lift three times a week), the most I benched in reps was 125 pounds.

Strengths: If "Jogging In Place With Heavy Hands" ever becomes a medal event, I'd be awesome.


3. Gymnastics
Weaknesses: I can't touch my toes. I can't do five dips or pull-ups unassisted. All limitations I have for diving and weightlifting would apply here.

Strengths: My dad was an All-American gymnast at Indiana University in the floor exercises. I'm shitting you negative. However, I'm not sure how these genes (that I somehow missed out on) would help me with my floor exercise routine, which would feature doing push-ups, jumping jacks, a few somersaults, and holding some plank positions for 30 seconds. But the scary part is this would be my best gymnastic event (what the hex would I do on the rings, just try to hang on for two minutes?), unless the judges would allow me to treat the vault as if it were a wet jump in the steeplechase.

2. Swimming
Weaknesses: Did I mention I have never taken swimming lessons? I know zero strokes outside of the doggie paddle and I could wing freestyle. Also, I sink like a rock. My natural buoyancy finds me underwater just below my eyes. In college I had a knee injury during one of the cross country seasons, so I worked out in the pool a lot, running in place. Only I had to wear an aquajogger to avoid drowning.



Kind of like floaties for a grown-up.

Strengths: I could at least finish the damn race, assuming it's freestyle... as long as I'm allowed to rest on the lane lines every thirty seconds and hang out on the edge of the pool for a few minutes when I reach the turns.

1. Figure Skating
Weaknesses: I've never been ice skating in my life. So it's like my inability to swim but worse. Figure skating is like floor exercises on ice. I'm screwed.

Strengths: I can't do my somersault and jumping jack routine on the ice, but if the judges let me do some plank on the ice with my skates on, maybe I can pick up half a point that way.

Conversation With Emily #672392

This one was an incredibly short conversation, as Emily had a question I couldn't answer. We were watching the Olympics and they showed footage of the Great Wall of China, high atop the Himalayas.

Emily What's the point of that wall? Did it do any good? I mean if someone could climb that mountain, wouldn't they have no problem climbing over a wall?

Me Silence (Editor's Note: She does have a valid point. I just had no answer).

Oh Mylanta

Yesterday I had an e-mail exchange The Anginator, a fellow Olympic enthusiast about our favorite Olympic moments. This list is not to be confused with The Greatest Olympic Moments. Instead, it is more personal. Simply, which ones mean the most to you. In other words, which ones would you go to YouTube to watch? And seeing as how three of my moments predate me, YouTube is the only way I can go.

5. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists on the medal stand. Mexico City, 1968. Whether or not you agree with what they did, you have to agree it is one of the most poweful and provocative moments in Olympic history. Carlos and Smith now sound like a couple of grumpy old men sniping at one another. Carlos now says he let Smith win and both bicker over whose idea it was to don the gloves and raise their fists.

Interesting side note: Peter Norman, the Australian silver medalist in the same race (200 m) wore a badge in support of the Project for Human Rights and to support Smith and Carlos. Norman's nephew has made a documentary about the medal ceremony called Salute.

4. Jessie Owens wins four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Sometimes the significance of an event is bigger than the man himself that created it. Owens life post-Olympics matches any fall from grace movie. A pack-a-day smoking habit. Racing horses for money. Bankruptcy. Tax evasion. But that's not how I'll remember him.

Gold medals in the 100 m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100 in front of Hitler. Calling out FDR for not even sending a letter or giving him a phone call after the Olympics. That's how I'll remember him.

3. Billy Mills, 10,000 m, Tokyo, 1964. "LOOK AT MILLS!! LOOK AT MILLS!!" One of the biggest track upsets of all time. You could watch Running Brave or watch the footage below.



But what I would do is rent Tokyo Olympiad. A hidden gem is during the marathon footage you will see Billy Mills is running in the middle of the pack. I had no idea he had doubled in the 10k and the marathon until I saw this documentary. There are some visually stunning moments to this movie. Well worth renting.

2. US men's 4x100 freestyle relay team beat the Frenchies, Bejing, 2008. I don't normally get fired about swimming, but that come from behind victory on Sunday night was special.

1. Miracle On Ice, Lake Placid, 1980 We beat the freaking Russians! I watched five hockey games my entire childhood, growing up in Texas. All five of them were in 1980. Who didn't watch those games? During those games, my mom took me and my sister to the flea market where we bought some of those newfangled tennis shoe rollerskates.

My friends and I tore up the lenoleum in my family's knotty pine rec room acting like we were either a bunch of Eric Heidens or the US Olympic hockey team. I had these giant tinker toys. The green pieces were long enough to be a hockey stick (er, pole) and there was even a piece (a black plastic disk) that could pass as a puck. And that was how we did winter sports in South Texas.

Bejing Magic

That title is a reference only Emily and her sister will get.

Anyway, the Olympics officially open tonight. I am one of 17 people left in this country who is completely freaking stoked! In fact, I'm so excited I had to see my take on the Athens olympics four years ago.

Only two posts came up...
The first post is a lament about the lack of love NBC gave el Guerrouj got for winning gold the 1500 m and 5k in Athens. But as I re-read this post and recall a conversation I had with Fancy Kirk last week (about Morroccans and doping/performance enhancing drugs), I can't help but wonder if el Guerrouj was clean or not in 2004. I have no way of proving anything. But I will say this: they're all probably cheating.

And the second 2004 Olympic-related post is pretty amusing in my opinion. Sure the opening ceremonies were as weird as ever, but not nearly as weird as a camel racing five midgets. And if memory serves correct, I think I still owe Angie a special treat from four years ago. She answered my trivia question at the end of the post. But else would you expect from one of the other 17 people left in America who still loves the Olympics?

Gone Fishin' Part III

The final part of Vacationfest Aught Eight found Emily and I driving over ten hours to Eureka Springs, AK at 5:30 a.m. on Monday morning, July 14th, about 12 hours after we landed in Minneapolis.

My mom turned 70 this June, so we spent the week with her and my two sisters' families to celebrate. The town itself is like Stillwater, but built on a bluff.

Highlights included...

going to Thorncrown Chapel



swimming and bumming at a nearby lake...




and visiting Pea Ridge National Military Park. I neglected to bring my camera to Pea Ridge. It was the first Civil War Battlefield I've ever been too.

When I was in college we ran a cross country meet in Virginia. We were not actually on a battlefield, but we must have been close to one. So for some reason in the hour leading up to the meet, a bunch of dudes dressed as Civil War soldiers (some were blue and some were grey) fired off a cannon every ten minutes. And then there were some Revolutionary War dudes there as well. They had their own cannon which they also fired off. So pictures that one: a bunch of skinny dudes in running singlets warming up on a golf course and then a bunch of other guys dressed in old military garb shooting cannons for no damn reason. Random.

But I digress. This was my first up close look at the Civil War. It was grim. When we were leaving the park, I stated the obvious to one of my sisters: I was glad I didn't have to fight in that war. And if I did get drafted, I would have gone AWOL, runing full speed backwards before you could even say, "Damn the torpeedos!"

And then I added that even though my sister wouldn't have had to fight, life would have sucked for her too. To which she added, "Yeah, like I'd wake up one morning and wonder what the hell I was going to do with 300 dead bodies in my front yard."

Which brings me to my point. Ever since I was a kid I have always wondered and never asked, what happened to all the bodies in the Civil War? Was there an agency to recover and bury people? Did soldiers go back later to get their fallen comrades? So I posed that question to a very informed volunteer at Pea Ridge, and he recommended this book. I don't know if I want to read it, but for some reason I feel I should.

Top Five Things I Learned On Trip #3
5. David Sedraris is a morbid dude. Maybe it's fitting, given that we spent a day at a Civil War battlefield, that I learned that David Sedaris can be just as grim as he can be funny. I bought a eight disc CD set of him reading latest book. We listened to most of it on the way to Arkansas and back. But I couldn't take more than 100 miles of it at a time when he got down dark and deep.

4. My family loves cake. Emily still has fun saying, "The Nawrockis... the family that has a cake a night." Indeed, we did bake a cake for each dinner for the week we were there (except the last night because we had to finish all the leftover cake). That's how we roll.

3. Smaller government is a good thing. I'm not about to start listening to conservative AM talk radio, but leave it to big government and beauracracy to ruin a good idea. Lipton Tea has sponsored a program to get people having a healthy experience in the national parks. So far so good. Wal-Mart chipped in on Lipton's program, at Pea Ridge, and donated a bunch of bikes to the park. As a result we could bike the eight mile loop as a family, rather than drive in a car. So far, so awesome.

The hiccup? Most of the bikes were in disrepair (missing any combination of pedals, gears, and brakes) and no one at the park was in charge of bike maintenance. And to be fair, they shouldn't be. They are park rangers, not bike repair pros. And that's what got lost in the shuffle. When this many huge companies are involved in a very local program, who amongst them is going to step and say, "Oh yeah, we'd love to supply the bike mechanics as well." That buck is just too easy for all three players to pass.

2. You get what you pay for. I'm not about to write flaming left-wing Letters-to-the-Editor crying out for more government spending and taxation, but leave it to our business and politcal culture to underfund a cool program like bikes in the national parks.

1. When canoeing in the fog, be alert for crazed jet skiiers. I went canoeing in a dammed river with Emily, my mom, and one of my sisters. It was really cool to paddle through the morning fog. Well, until we heard and eventually saw three jackasses blazing past us on their jet skis. There's no way on God's green earth they would have seen us, which is why we canoed over the river bank.

Add canoers vs. jet skiiers to two cultures that will never get along.

Conversation With Emily #125

Emily and I went to the Twins game Wednesday night. The Twins stunk up the joint so we had some quality time together, along with 40,000+ other disappointed Twins fans. Being bored, Emily thought she'd be all wife-life and cozy up next to me.

Emily (with her hand on my bicep) Hey, don't you usually flex when I touch your arm? (Editor's Note: When I do this, I flex with irony)

Me I am.

Emily No, I mean really flex.

Me I am.

Emily Are you sure?

Oh snap.



Nasty Nate took this picture of me after I ordered a salad in a bar and grill last week. In my defense, I had a wild game burger the night before and wanted to take a breather from red meat.

Gone Fishin Part II

July 11 found Emily and I celebrating our five year wedding anniversary in a very boring remake of Planes Trains and Automobiles. Well, I say it's a very boring remake because our travel plans went as scheduled. No crazy adventures with John Candy. But we did take the light rail (trains) to the airport (planes) and rented a car (automobiles) once we got to Sacramento. We went out there for a wedding and came back Sunday night, two days later.

So we drove out to Grapes of Wrath country but hung out on an organic farm run by yuppies-turned-farmers, rather than a Bossman and his 1200 Okie day-laborers. Hybrids ruled the scene, not jalopies. It was a very relaxed setting, with one exception. We stayed in a casino hotel near the farm. walking through the seizure-inducing, smoke-filled casino = not very relaxing.

Top Five Things I Learned On Trip #2

Four years later this blog has finally completed the hostile takeover of my other blog. So all lists will be found here, keeping Mrs. Deets off my back.

5. A lot of people in the casino probably couldn't tolerate five minutes in a Chuck E. Cheese. Irony, or just a contradiction?

4. This may have been a mistake.



According to to someone who knows a lot more about water resource management than I do, farm creek water, no matter how organic, is, um, less than clean. But I am sure the same can be said for any body of water.

3. Emily is a doctor. But this guy is The Doctor.



But I wouldn't follow his medical advice. He's not a real doctor. Well I guess I already knew that, so that's not something I learned. He's also not a Yankees fan, despite the Yankees hat. The Doctor is a Cub's fan. I'm also not sure why he's wearing two t-shirtd. He's an enigma. It was good to kick it with The Doctor again.

A lot of shenanigans went down at The Doctor's wedding many many moons ago. When I compare that to how tame this California wedding was, I realize we have indeed grown up over the years.

2. I ain't too bright. The car Emily and I rented had a keyless start. You push a button to start the car. We sat in the Hertz/Avis/Whatever parking lot for five minutes, the midday heat beating down on us, as I failed and failed again and again trying to figure out to start the damn car. Finally I had to get an attendant to help me. Turns out they don't teach "Car Starting 101" in college or grad school.

And then, once at the farm, I lost the keyless key for about ten minutes. Turns out they don't teach "How To Keep Track of Your Belongings" in academia either.

1. I love being married to Emily. Full disclosure here: I was hesitant to fly to Sacramento for this wedding for a weekend and then turn around the next day and drive to Arkansas. But she really encouraged me to do both trips, because she knew how important it was that I go to this wedding and how glad I would be once we did it. And she was right. It's not always fun to push someone into action (or be pushed), but I am so glad we went out to California.

Coming Soon: Our trip to Arkansas