State Fair Round 1

Today Emily and I made our first sortie to the Minnesota State Fair. This time we both ran in the Milk Run, which is a 5k the State Fair hosts each year. For $18, you get to run in the race, get admission to the fair, a coupon for a free milkshake, and $1 off coffee from the farmers' union stand at the fair.

If you click here you will see I came in third place for the men (one woman did beat me, so I got fourth overall). This is significant because I got a huge 3rd place ribbon. Growing up my sister got these huge ribbons for showing her horse. She would come home from horse shoes with a dozen ribbons so impractically big, just one 7th place could cover a table for 12 on its own.

And now, over 20 years later, I finally won one of those ribbons my sister got on a weekly basis as a kid. But mercifully, to win this ribbon, I didn't have to put my life in the hands of a half ton beast with half the IQ of my dog. Instead I just had to run around St. Paul in oxygen debt for a little while, which for me is a much more pleasant choice than riding around in a circle on a horse wearing my formal suit.

So I knew I had a ribbon coming to me, which prompted Emily to say (jokingly) that she was still ahead of me in the State Fair ribbon contest becuase she has RED 2nd place ribbon for a mosaic she entered into last year's fair. I tried to impress upon her the ENORMITY of my white ribbon, but she was unimpressed. A third place ribbon, even if it's the Hummer of 3rd place ribbons, is still inferior to the tiniest of second place ribbons.

But then things got interesting. They began giving out prizes for age-group winners at the Milk Run, and I got to double-dip. This means I got a ribbon for 3rd overall male and 2nd place for the 30-34 year old age group. That means I got a small red ribbon as well. I also got $50 worth of gift certificates to running stores. Last year Emily won $4 for her mosaic.

So I think that puts me ahead, for now, in our household competition for Most Crap Won at the Minnesota State Fair.

Another highlight occured before the race even began. I was talking to a friend of mine who was wicked hungover, but still planning on running. He had about three synapses firing an hour as he tried to stretch out. Then the State Fair mascot, Fairchild, came up behind and mirrored his stretching, mocking him.

My friend saw this and said, "It doesn't get any lower than being mocked by a mascot does it?"



I pointed out to him that Fairchild had a race number and it actually would be quite a bit lower to beat by the mascot in a 5k. Fairchild ended up running a respectable 31:00 5k (respectable only because he was wearing a freaking gopher costume), and my friend was safely 10+ minutes of the mocking mascot. Take that Fairchild!

Emily also ran a great race, and afterwards said she loved doing the Milk Run. This is significant, because as we were driving to the fair she wondered how she could have ever thought registering for this race was a good ideq and predicted just how much the 5k would suck. Keep in mind, this was coming from Minnesota's #1 State Fair fan. Now I fear she'll whip herself into shape and come home with ribbons for mosaics AND running. Then I'm doomed.

Back from the Dead

Holy crap has a long time passed since a) I thought about blogging, b) looked at a blog, c) and definitely written a blog.

I am busy coaching a marathon training group for the Twin Cities Marathon in October. So a lot of my time on the computer is spent here mapping out runs for the group's long run on Saturdays.

Or I have to answer e-mails from members of the group about injuries, training suggestions, and things of that nature. Coaching is very fun but time-consuming. I also write about three e-mails to the group a week. This means that these people get blessed with my insight and wit. Plus with 100+ people in the training group, my readership has never been higher!

But I will try to post more.

Since I last wrote, I have stopped running with Pancho as much because it's too hot and he's slowing me down (I have been trying to step up my training), I went to Germany for a week, I saw another wild turkey on River Road (that was actually today), Isreairaqanebanonganistan continues to be depressing and real mess, and the Twins have had one roller-coaster of a season.

Damn! So much to write about and here I have been churning out e-mails about dehydration prevention and training theory. I guess that's what happens when I merge my creative outlet with my athletic outlet.

And in closing, has anyone used the blogger spell check? It is ironic that it identifies "blog" and "blogging" as spelling errors.

Twins Win!!!

Emily and I finally made it to our first Twins game together, this season. She has actually been to a game this year without me. This is the first time we went together.

It was as fun as always. But this is frustrating: 17 games ago, the Twins were 11 games out of first place. They have won 15 of those 17 games. They are still 11 games out. How is that possible?

This is also the first time I have been to a game since Joe Mauer has finally been playing up to his hype. Some of the meathead DJs on the all-sports radio channel her (KFAN) call Mauer "Baby Jesus" for all the hype and love he gets from the fans. That's actually damn funny. And it's true. Granted, Mauer went 4 for 5 with 5 RBIs tonight (including a triple and a double), but the way the crowd acted everytime he came to bat, you'd think he walked on water on his way from home plate to first base. I'd like for someone to start a "Baby Jesus" chant at the Dome. Fear not, Emily, it won't be me.

As an aside, going to a baseball is like a box of chocolates. You never know who you'll end up sitting next to. I was sitting next to and in front of a bunch of real charachters. They annoy you just as much as they entertain you. Such a paradox.

Obe Wan Has Taught Me Well

My friend Zander and I ran Grandma's Marathon last Saturday, in Duluth, MN. Zander ran with me in college and this was the first marathon he ever ran. He started training in February and I felt I had enough of a training base to half-ass train and still keep up with a rookie marathoner. Perhaps that is why my last name rhymes with "cocky." It turns out the student had become the master. Zander is now, in my mind, a mix between Mr. Miyagi and Obe Wan.

So, mid-March, I go for a long run with Zandypants and come to realize he is in way better shape than I thought, and in fact, better shape than I was. So I said a few non-flattering things about that son-of-a-biscuit-eater named Zandypants, sent his dad some biscuits to eat, and amped up my training.

I am happy to say that this is the first marathon I trained easily for. I never went over 50 miles a week and I stayed as far away from tracks and speed workouts as possible.

But the marathon was such a great experience not because of my training, but because Zandypants taught me the art of patience. Sure I ran a 3:14, which is 15+ minutes off my PR, but I trained a lot less this time around, and it was a wickedly hot and humid day. But throughout the first 10 miles of the marathon, Zander kept on talking about how he wanted to take it easy. We even stopped for a few pee breaks, something I would have never done before. I'd rather hold it for two hours than sacrifice those crucial seconds. But Zander taught me to pee away and enjoy the experience.

Of course that lasted until the half-way point. Then I lost Zander at a water stop and looked for him a few times before saying "screw it" and I took off, as this picture hopefully illustrates. It is me at mile 19.



The girl I am running with was the MOST HAPPY AND POSITIVE PERSON EVER. WE WERE AWESOME, she told me, THERE WAS NO WAY WE WOULD EVER GET TIRED!!!!!!!! I appreciated the company and pacing partner at that point in the race. I tolerated the overly positive vibe for as long as I could, but I had to part ways with her at mile 21.

And thanks again to Zander and our patient start, I was able to run the last four miles, agony free, even though my legs were out of glycogen. It was the least painful "wall" I've ever hit. All told, I probably passed over 250 people over the last 13 miles. So sure, I missed by PR by 15 minutes, but my ego has never been so inflated by the end of that race.



Here I am finishing, This is the happiest I've ever looked at the end of a marathon. That's what happens when you run the second half a marathon faster than the first half.



You can read Emily's summary of how I ended up turning my 26.2 mile day into a 30.7 mile day of running. Oops.





Here's I picture of some of the guys I trained with this summer (sans-Zander) hanging out and celebrating in downtown Duluth (the marathon was earlier that day). I'm the jackass in the middle. If I knew that, in a few hours I'd be running another 4.5 miles just to go to bed, I would have wiped that ridiculous smile off my face.

Blog for Jake

I have this brother-in-law who fancies himself as an old school Texan. He does the bit with the horsies and the drawl. But when push comes to shove, Tex is just as big a cybergeek as Mark Cuban. I say this because he has been on me non-stop to update this blog. What's the deal... you guys aren't satisfied reading the ass soup story over and over again?

So here's a new post. I am going to Germany with my sisters in less than a month. My sister heard this story on NPR that people who received measles vaccines betweeen the McCarthy Era and man landing on the moon need to get new vaccines. And these people traveling to post-World Cup Germany should be doubly-sure to get vaccinated since Germany will be be hosting the World Cup of Communicable Diseases once all the people leave.

My sister, being the oldest and therefore the most protective, assertive, and thorough, promptly e-mailed our family doctor in Texas and asked if we should get re-vaccinated. The doctor said we all should, including me, born in 1971 AFTER the guy with the strong arms kneeled on the moon. So be it. So upon receiving this news, I wrote an e-mail explaining why I didn't have to go get re-vaccinated. Jake wrote back in a terse e-mail saying that the story belongs on my] blog....

Here you go Jake. You thought the ass soup story was stale the second time around; is reading this re-run any fresher?

Editor's Note: Names changed to protect the innocent, and some lines changed to make thisstory more entertaining.

Thanks to Joe and Harry Yomamma, I think I'm in the clear. Joe never missed a day of school from third grade on. He bragged about this from time to time, as Harry was growing up.

So Harry hadn't missed a day of school since second grade and was out to break Joe's family record. My sophomore or junior year Harry was feeling sick but had to keep the streak alive, so he kept coming to school.

Turns out he was coming to school with the measles for half a week, until he was quarantined to his bedroom.

The result? Joe's lame streak stays alive. He wins I guess. Oh yeah, and the rest of the Alamo Heights student body loses. Measles vaccines for the whole school!! I have no idea if the school district's taxpayers tried to get the Yomamma family to foot the bill for all those vaccines.

Harry Yomamma will now forever go down in my high school memories as one of the all-time jackasses for the measles epidemic he started.

But I guess I should thank him, as I know I have 1988 measles vaccine flowing through my bloodstream and none of that nasty 1960s shit you got stuck with.

What Is This? Ass Soup? Can I Get The Recipe?

If I could give my wife Emily one gift, it would be the abilty to not criticize herself so much. But when the following conversation goes down, there's not much I can do to help her.

We were in the kitchen together tonight and I was warming up some leftover soup for dinner. This soup was some corn chowder she made a few days ago. As I was putting the soup from the tupperware into my bowl we had a conversation that starts in typical fashion in this household.

Emily: Did you fart?

Mike: NO! (Incedulous that could suggest such a thing)

Emily: Then why do I smell something like ass?

Mike: I don't know. Is it this?

And I put my bowl of soup that she made under her nose for her to smell.

Emily: Yeah. That's what it is.

Fall Is The New Spring

Nothing says "Spring is here" like turkey.

A month ago I posted this bit about what signals Spring up here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Well then Spring sprung. Baseball and track has started up at the high school a few blocks from us, the lower path on West River Road is clear of snow, and the running trails are once again packed with people training for the summer marathon season. So I've been busy with Pancho, letting him swim in Minnehaha Creek and he relishes going on long runs with me and trying to stop to sniff every new smell that Spring unearths.

So, no blogging has been done.

But I am happy to report, I have a true, new sign of Spring: wild turkeys.

Check this out. Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote about a wild turkey that landed on our neighbor's roof. Well, last week, right when it finally felt like Spring for more than 48 hours, the turkeys showed their feathers again.

I was riding my bike to work, through the Highland Park business district in St. Paul, right across from the Ford plant. And there I saw two turkeys walking down the sidewalk. They were walking past a Wells Fargo bank and a Lifetime Fitness Club branch. I assume they were walking back to the woods of the Mississippi River after working out at the gym and making a deposit at the bank.

So I pulled over to get a closer look. At the same time, a guy in a business suit started taking pictures of the birds with his cell phone and a tough guy from the Ford plant also came over to see Thanksgiving in April. And again, nothing brings a town together like Wild Turkey.

The three of us, a machinist, a suit, and a dork on a bike, struck up a friendly conversation. I got to tell them how a wild turkey swooped onto my neighbor's roof last year. It was deja vu all over again. Just like my wife said last year, Mr. Suit said "I don't think turkeys can fly." And then the machinist was happy to help me out and let him know that wild turkeys do indeed fly.

By that point the turkeys were on there way down the hill to the Mississippi River and I pointed my bike back up the Ford Parkway hill, and forgot to look back to see if they went into Haskell's to take advantage of their Spring wine sale. Maybe they bought some Wild Turkey and headed down to the banks of the river for a day-long bender, as those who loiter on the banks of the river are wont to do.

Tonight I was on my bike again, this time biking home. I was going along East River Road in St. Paul between the Ford Parkway and Highway 5, not too far from where I saw the turkeys last week, and, significantly, right next to the Mississippi River. And there, walking on someone's perfectly manicured lawn, as if he owned the place, was a wild turkey.

For those of you not familiar with River Road, it is lined with fancy houses with lawns nicer than Wrigley Field. I do not know enough about real estate to know if a wild turkey crapping in your yard raises or lowers property value.

But I do know that Spring is here. And just like last year, it was ushered in by the bird of Fall. Benjamin Franklin would be so proud.

BLOGNATION: Population 16

I finally got around to updating a few new links on my blog. Both are long overdue.

The first is my newest nephew's blog, Follow Art. Art is only four months old, making him Blognation's youngest blogger. Actually, his parents (Emily's sister Jessie and Jessie's husband) do all the blogging. He just acts like a baby in front of the camera and gets a blog named after him. For all you baby lovers out there, go give it a look.

I actually babysat Art all by myself for an hour this evening. I fed the dude, burped the dude, listened to him cry, and dodged a crap-filled bullet by not having to change his diaper. We watched the first half of the Duke/LSU game together and he was very happy during that time, while LSU played well. This makes me happy as I may be playing a part in making him dislike Duke as much as I do.

The other blog I have added to the list is Coach Dub, the finest DJ Grinnell College ever partied to in the 1990s. He also is a mighty fine blogger. I have neither changed Coach Dub's diaper nor watched a basketball game with him. But I do have fond memories of going to the 620 (RIP) with him when I lived in Iowa City. Anyway, check out his blog.

Spring Should Be Springing

Those of us who live in a state with four seasons have individual ways of marking the start of spring.

Emily has said in the past that for her spring begins when they put the handles on the water pumps along the Minneapolis parkway running trails.

I have a similar definition. Spring for me starts when the lower footpath on West River Road is clear of ice and snow. Granted, it is a definition very specific to our neighborhood. But I will report when this path opens, and we'll see if it matches when the rest of you Twin Cities types think spring has sprung.

What's Your Shoe Size?

In ecological terms, I wear a size 13. As in I take up 13 acres of Earth to live my life. Not bad, compared to most Americans, who take up 24 acres.

The bad news is, it would take 2.9 Earths for everyone to live like me.

Click here to learn the size of your ecological footprint. It's a short quiz that took me two minutes to.

Revolutionary War II

The first season of the British version of The Office finally made it to the top of my Netflix queue. AND I'm having a hard time deciding which fruit I like better: the apple (pie) version or the limey variety.

It looks like 200+ years later, we're back to the United Stated versus Great Britain. Sure we can kick their ass in any sport, but soccer and cricket, and their Prime Minister is our puppet, but I think their version of The Office wins out over ours.

For starters, the BBC shows run the full half-hour, giving them the time to develop their charachters and let gags and rants run for an extra minute and gain some momentum. I am amazed by how eight extra minutes really changes a show. But it makes sense, when you consider eight minutes is more than a third of an American show.

I also like the BBC version better because they make the "normal" male charachter (Tim) much more pitiful and human than the US version (Jim). In the BBC version, Tim still lives with his parents and is a bit more awkward and quirky than Jim. In the US version, Jim's most humanizing flaw is he has a crush on a girl and can't get over her. Big deal. Especially compared to the nut jobs he works with.

It reminds me of Seinfeld, where Jerry's biggest flaw was he was heartless and too neat, while all the other charachters were equally heartless, but riddled with quirks and flaws. So while his friends were annoying and quirky to the point of making us laugh, the lead charachter's biggest flaw is he was neat. I have found that I was the only person who was annoyed by this.

Is there something about the American TV, where the protagonists we sympathize with have to be perfect and cool, rather than a mirror of ourselves? Maybe we like to think that these ideal people are actually mirrors of us.

Getting back to The Office, the British version also wins out because thhe boss on the BBC show is slightly funnier and more dynamic than the boss on the American version.

So, while we may have dumped their sorry-ass stale Earl Grey tea in the Boston Harbor and ran their red-coated asses off the continent simply by hiding behind trees and throwing rocks at them, the Brits have us beat in the Battle of Dueling Sitcoms.

They also get extra credit for being the originators of the series.

Big deal. We'd still kick their ass in basketball, baseball, track and field, football (not that pansy kick the can version they love), hockey, tennis, NASCAR...

Mascot Mayhem

Mama didn't raise no Big Fool. So rather than get my photos with sports mascots, I'm going after coprporate mascots.

Here I am with the Gorton's Fisherman. The Gorton's Fisherman has a special place in my heart because when Emily and I went to the mascot baseball game before the start of a Twins game a few years back, the Gorton's Fisherman caught a ball using his net. Well played.



The other guy with me is a friend from high school who had the job two weekends ago of setting up the Gorton's mascot event at H.E.B. grocery stores throughout south San Antonio.

The idea was for kids to get their picture with Gorton's Fisherman. And that makes sense. I mean who better to send your kid to see than a sailor? Kids love the crazy antics of hard drinking womanizers who can curse a blue streak strong enough to make Andrew Dice Clay turn red!

The close observer will note the Gorton's Fisherman made out of Legos at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. A professional Lego artist was hired to build that. It's a crazy world.

"And We'll See You... TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!"

Jack Buck, during the 1991 World Series, announcing Twins center fielder Kirby Puckett's game-winning eleventh-inning walk-off home run in Game 6 against the Atlanta Braves' Charlie Leibrandt.

That is for me, the most memorable call from a baseball game in my lifetime. I can still get goose bumps thinking about that home run. That was arguably the greatest World Series ever, and Kirby Puckett was at the center of it. And this was well before I became a die-hard Twins fans. Kirby had retired three years before I got into the Twins.

Click here for a very eloquent remembrance of Kirby. Non-baseball types might even want to take a gander. It is much more eloquent, concise, and insightful than anything you'll read here. I really really like what Bat Girl has to say about mourning the loss of Kirby for the third time now, and what she has to say about the God-like status we put on athletes, who are just as imperfect and flawed as we are.



I may not have grown up a Twins fan. But I was Kirby Puckett fan, even when I was a high school kid in Texas or a hayseed at a rural Iowa college. Emily owns one baseball card. I was shocked to know she even owned that many. Not surprisingly, it is Kirby's rookie card.

And it is also no coincidence that I have the exact card. Emily likes to say our Kirby Puckett cards are married.

What amazes me about Kirby Puckett is those who followed baseball all loved him. And we all loved him for the same reasons: the smile, the warm personality, and the fact that he looked and played like the fat guy in the softball league that can hit the ball a mile and somehow blaze around the outfield. And the 1991 World Series.

Obviously Kirby wasn't perfect. It would be disingenuous of anyone to talk about his life and gloss over the alleged domestic abuse, the infidelity, and his overall fall from grace after he had to retire from baseball. But this is where we have to be careful as fans. Judge an athlete for what he does in the game, how he treats his teammates, and what kind of effort he gives the fans. You tread in dangerous water when you judge these guys as people. If you can't take the good with the bad, you shouldn't follow sports.

That being said, one of my favorite Kirby Puckett moments did occur away from the baseball diamond. It was when he was on David Letterman in 1997 and he read the "Top Ten Ways to Mispronounce Kirby Puckett" on-air. I don't know if I laughed harder when he said "Turkey Bucket" or "Punky Brewster," but I remember both. Click here for the whole list.

Kirby meant so much to the state of Minnesota. It is sad that he couldn't control his personal demons. And it is sad he had to die so young before he could overcome them. We can only hope he found peace in his life these last two years that he faded from the public eye in the Twin Cities.

My Pockets Have Been Hooverized

While not the most scientific indicator of consumer spending, the contents of my pockets in a seasonal coat can be very revealing about my economic health.

Anyone who lives in a state with four true seasons knows you need at least two sets of coats: the spring/fall jackets and the winter armour. And anyone who lives in these states knows that the pockets of these coats can be time capsules when you put them on for the first time when a new season starts.

For example, when I put on my winter coat for the first time this winter, I found $5 in it. Awesome, but not as awesome as when I was in my 20s. My disposable income was soaring, I wasn't saving, and I'd find $20 in these pockets at the start of the season. Anything less than $10 would be a disappointement.

So last night I went out with a couple friends to a local brew hall. It wasn't the gathering of friends at my house as I had suggested in an earlier post. But as I predicted, nothing was planned until 5 p.m. last night.

But I digress. The point being that spring has sprung early this year in Minnesota. So before I left, I had to unearth a light spring jacket. I put it on for the first time since early November.

I was a little giddy as I put the jacket on and my hands searched the pockets. It's like your own personal FOUND magazine. What would I find? Petty cash? A receipt from a restaurant? A zany note or cartoon? Did I mention petty cash?

Nothing exciting whatsoever. An unused poop bag for Pancho and a shopping list for the grocery store. A sign of the times. The days of disposable income are over.

However, hope springs eternal. I still have a fleece and one more jacket in my wardrobe that I have yet to break out in this premature spring. Just like we're disappointed when we don't win the lottery, I'm bound to be let down by the beer caps, candy wrappers, and gas station receipts I'll find in these soon-to-be-explored pockets.

But who knows? Maybe I'll find an unclaimed winning lottery ticket in one of these pockets.

What Makes Something Shitty?

If you asked me to name the worst movies of all time, three movies come to mind:

Legally Blond 2, Armageddon, and Daredevil.

And wholly shit is Daredevil so much worse than those other two.

And I am fully aware that there are many movies probably much worse than Armageddon and a few other movies that sucked more than Legally Blond 2, but none have annoyed me as much as these three.

Which raises the question, what makes us hate or love a movie? For the most part, a movie can be judged on its own standing. No matter what you were doing and where you were when you saw films like Casblanca and Crash, chances are you will like them. And movies like Gymkata or Earnest Saves Christmas will be universally ridiculed.

But there should be a subgenre of films that we judge mostly based on the context of how we saw them. Movies like Son-In-Law, Starship Troopers, Kingpin, or, well, Armageddon could be fondly remembered or loathed depending on who you were with and what you were doing when you saw it.

Take Son-In-Law, for example. I saw it when I lived in Iowa City with a bunch of fellow cooks that I worked with in a restuarant. It may have been related the kilo of dope they smoked over the course of ten years, but they thought Pauley Shore was a comic genius. And then, so did I. But then I rented Jury Duty awhile later, and hated it. Same jackass actor, same dumbshit jokes, but since I watched it by myself with a frozen pizza instead of four burned-out cooks, the movie sucked ass. Pauly Shore a comic genius? Not so much.

Kingpin will always be a comic tour-de-force for me, since I saw it on a "Pissing the Day Away Saturday" with my friends back when I was in grad school (including this girl whom I hadn't yet considered dating yet). So I pissed the day away with this hip 20something crew, by eating some brunch, walking around a lake, playing some football, watching Kingpin, and then drinking some beers before going out to drink more beers. How can Kingpin not be the greatest movie ever under those circumstances? It may have been a much worse movie if I saw it on an airplane or in a hotel room by myself.

Or I remember watching Weekend at Bernie's and Look Who's Talking in a dollar theater, back when dollar theaters were a new concept, and was thought those movies were hilarious. This could only happen because I was 1) in high school, so my time wasn't the premium it is today 2) I only paid $1 to see it, back when paying $1 for a movie was a novel concept. It was a perfect storm of timing for these movies to be funny to me.

But seriously, there is no way Daredevil can be saved. A Frog Takes A Shit would be a better movie.

I don't care if they showed it on the jumbotron before the start of a Spurs/Pistons game 7 of the NBA Championships AND I was there with 300 of my closest friends AND it was free beer and taco night AND the Spurs went on to win the title when Bruce Bowen blocked Rip Hamilton's shot and threw the ball down to a wide-open Tim Duncan for the game winner AND then afterwards a scientist announced the discovery of a mint chocloate chip ice cream that is good for you and cures cancer AND Emily defended and passed her PhD dissertation, while she was at the game AND she was offered a kickass job before the start of the 3rd quarter that made it so I could be a stay-at-home Dad for our dog Pancho AND during the first period I ran sub 14:00 5k around the upper deck of SBC center while watching the game.

It wouldn't matter. Daredevil still would have been a shitty shitty movie. Serioulsy. Worst movie ever. I challenge you to come up with a worse movie.


You can't.

A Great Idea Pissed Away

I went out to lunch with some friends from high school on my last day in San Antonio on Tuesday. We started bouncing off great ideas for stories and business we had, that had never been realized. These guys still have some relevant ideas; they just need to get around to putting them into practice.

I became a little depressed on the plane ride home because I concluded the window opportunity for my one money-making idea has long since been closed. I thought urinal cakes with rival cities printed on them would be a hit sports bars. For example, is there a crazed Spurs fan out there that wouldn't relish in pissing all over a urinal cake that said "LOS ANGELES" on it when he used the bathroom at a San Antonio sports bar? But now that urinal cakes are a thing of the past, so is my idea.

And I've had this idea for years. Long before some jackass thought up Osama Bin Laden toilet paper.

Party Time

I have received some heat on several fronts for not updating this blog lately. This is surprising, given that so very few people actually read this.

Anyway, I was in Texas for the last five days and got back late last night. Emily then left for Arizona this afternoon. So I will have seen her for a grand total of two hours (not counting when we were sleeping) between last Thursday morning and this upcoming Sunday night. That's two hours over 11 days.

I am going to live it up BIG TIME. Like right now, I am on my way to Sears at Mall of America to pick up some glasses I ordered last week. Maybe I'll get crazy and get some Chic-Fil-A as well. Or maybe not. I have to run when I get back.

Friday I am going to get the timing belt replaced on our second car to cross over to 100,000 mile threshold.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Actually I am planning to have a few friends over Saturday night to knock back a few Coca-Colas. It will be a minor miracle if a) this event gets planned before Saturday afternoon and b) we actually leave my house.

Vice City

Now that I am into day two of trying to change my eating habits, I have been thinking a lot about vices. I have a few of them and none are too serious. This is the list I came up with:

1. Coffee--In the past, I have weaned myself to the point that I only had it two or three days a week. But nowadays I am back to my usual 20 ounces a day habit.

2. Lethargy--Today I signed up for Grandma's Marathon. So that should take care of current bout with lethargy. I ran the Twin Cities Marathon in October and that marathon was so very shitty for me. Well it was shitty only if, like me, you wouldn't enjoy bleeding from both nipples and walking a good portion of the last 13 miles in front of thousands of people. So I got a little discouraged, and quit running for awhile. But I am back on the fitness train. But lethargy is a true vice for me, as a cycle in and out of it at least twice a year.

3. Alchohol--Beer is really good. It would be a true vice if I had three beers a night, but that is not the case. But to avoid such a fate, I better err on the side of caution and call it a vice.

4. Rise of Nations--By design, I do not own any game systrems, like Playstation 2 and do not want to even see Everquest being played. I don't think I'd ever leave the house. I only own one computer game, and it is Rise of Nations. A very run of the mill civilization game, and that average game alone can suck up my weekend faster than you can say, "Mike is in the dog house."

That's a pretty short list, and it's happily free of, I don't know, crystal meth, soliciting prostitutes... So right now, I feel pretty good about myself. Of course, that's because I haven't wasted a day with Rise of Nations over the past week.

If I had to give up all vices, but one, coffee would be the one I'd keep. It gives you bad breath, yellow teeth, and can be a real inconvenience. But Caribou Coffee and our local coffee shops, Riverview Coffee and Minnehaha Coffee are so good that it is worth it. I'd go so far as to say that Minnehaha Coffee has the best coffee I've ever had.

No Bullshit

A friend of mine tried this diet out. For those of you who know me, fear not. I am neither anorexic nor do I have body dysmorphia. But I do think I have some snacking and eating habits that do not lead to optimum help. Specifically, second and third helpings at dinner and a sweet tooth bigger than Dallas.

But this no-s approach looks pretty appealing to me.

Check the Cawendar To See What Howiday It Is

Seeing as how over 90% of the people we service at work are white, perhaps it is fitting that we did not get Martin Luther King Day off today. So I had a full schedule of clients.

One of my favorite kids is on my Monday morning schedule. He's six year's old and loves football. Obsessed, in a healthy, non-autistic way, is more like it. I have never met a more knowlegable six year-old when it comes to football. And, as my job dictates, I have met my share of six year-olds.

So this kid comes barreling into my office (he's already the size of a 1960s offensive lineman), as per usual, belting out all the information about the weekend's games that he knows.

"The Steewers beat the Coats 21-18! I know duh Panfers beat duh Bears but I don't know duh score. And dat guy who got shot? He used to pway football too. But not in cowege. Just before dat."

It should be appearant by now that we are working on his "L" articulation. In fact, it is the only sound he has left to work on; his "TH" can wait a few years. So if he could only learn to self-monitor his "L," I can discharge him, which is always bittersweet when the kid is as likeable as this guy.

Likeable or not, when a kid who is working on monitoring his "L" comes in talking like he was, I make him start all over again. Only this time he'd better say "SteeLers" and not "Steewers."

But this time I let it slip, mostly because I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about at the very end.

"A guy got shot?" I asked.
"Yeah and he used to pway football."
"Pway?"
"Play football."
"That's better." So he can correct his "L." That's a start. Now if I can only figure who got shot.

And then the hamster in my head starts a running and powers the lightbulb in my brain. I slowly put two and two together.

"Wait a second," I say, "Was he shot yesterday or a long time ago?"
"A wong time ago."
"A what."
"A long time ago."
"And is today his birthday?"
"Yup."
"Are you talkking about Martin Luther King?"
"Yeah! Martin Lufer King! He used to pway football."

And I'm shitting you negative the only "L" he marked correctly this entire conversation was the "L" in "Luther." How's that for paying respect to the man?

So now I'm curious. I know the dude loves football. And he's only six. But has he gone so far as to define people as important as Martin Luther King as to whether or not they played football? So I ask, "What else is Martin Luther King known for?"

And then he says, "Mike," in his way that lets me know he knows I'm playing dumb. He knows I know the answer to this question.

"You know what he did. He made it so Bwacks and Whites can go to school togever," he says and looks at me and shakes his head in a way that screams "No duh."

Well that's a Hell of a lot more accurate than he played football before he went to college.

Anyway, there's something to be said for having the perpspective of a six year-old. Jim Crow. Bombingham. The KKK. George Wallace. None of those things are important. In fact they don't even exist. When you're six years-old, what matters isn't the color of a guy's skin, but whether or not he played football at any point in his life.

It's not exactly what Martin Luther King had in mind in his "I Have A Dream" speech, but I as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty damn close.

Better Than Atari

Tonight Emily and I went over to her sister's house to have dinner with Emily's sister, her husband, and their baby. Well, the baby had breast milk. We had food.

Anyway, afterward we played Parchesi, which I haven't played in so long I have no idea if I just spelled it correctly. It was surprisingly fun. It's no chess, but is has more strategy than Yatzee or Go Fish. And seeing as how I play Go Fish over 20 times a week at work, this Parchesi game is mind boggling.

So next time you're at a thrift store, look for the game. You'll get your two dollars worth.

However, when four people play, the game has the half-life of Monopoly. So we couldn't finish the game tonight. Instead, my brother-in-law took a digital picture of the game board, with out hands by our home bases, and the dice by Emily's hand. That way, when we play again, we'll know who's turn it is (Emily's), who is what color, and who has what home base.

Digital cameras. They put a new twist on an old game.

Geography Class

My sister in Texas sent this to me: a place the state game. It is harder than you'd think. At least when you do the first ten states.

I did the intermediate level. The website gave me a score of 94. My average error was ten miles. And it took me 428 seconds.

Word.

Random Thought

Whenever I go for a walk, be it with my dog or to the bus stop, I am careful not to step on a crack out of respect to my mom's back. Lines are also avoided for fear of breaking my dad's spine. Sad but true, all these years later, I still find myself following the golden childhood rules of walking on a sidewalk.

But when I go running, I don't follow the rule; Scoliosis of the Parents be damned. And now that there will be a matted inch of snow on everyone's sidewalk between now and March, walking just got a lot easier. The lines and cracks are nowhere to be seen.

As a sign of some maturity, I did give up knocking on wood not too long ago.

I also stopped holding my breath when I passed a graveyard. However, I was holding my breath more out of a personal "Can I Do It?" challenge than a fear of being buried in a specific cemetary. But I really let go of that superstition a few years ago, when Emily and I used to live by a cemetary. We drove by it at least twice-weekly. It became tiresome to hold my breath each time, especially since we drove along one side of it, took a turn and drove along another side of it.

Well now that I think of it, I first broke that superstition in a college cross country meet that had us running through a graveyard. Running close to oxygen debt makes it tough to hold your breath; so I breathed, DEEPLY, through that random cemetary that was somewhere in Wisconsin, Iowa, or Illinois. Does that mean I'll be buried in that cemetary, wherever it was? Was it Missouri?

Actually, I've always had trouble embracing this superstition. My understanding was if you couldn't hold your breath all the way past the cemetary, you'd be buried there. This has always troubled me, as you had little to worry about if you simply breathed in front of multiple cemetaries (unless, of course being drawn and quartered was in your near future).

This has become a grim post. Maybe it's because my annual employee review is tomorrow in less than 12 hours. I have little to worry about as I have done my job well this year, as I do every year, but still. Ugh. Do I really need to be blogging about being drawn and quartered at this time?

Question I Have While Emily Talks On the Phone With Her Mom

Emily is talking to her mom on the phone about Lord knows what. I assume the topics are what Emily wants for her birthday dinner that her mom is cooking her tomorrow night and what each of them has been up to the last 72 hours.

Meanwhile I wait for her to finish her conversation so we can eat our homemade pizzas and watch more of Arrested Development Season 2 on DVD.

While I wait, I surf the web. I read Emily's blog about some cookies she made and leave a comment about how I much I enjoyed said cookies. I sign my name as "Cookie Monster."

Then I am left to ponder the following:

Who has less pride, Cookie Monster and his slobby, greedy eating habits, or Winnie the Pooh, and his shirt but no pants attire.

Those of you who know me, know that I should hardly be the one to cast the first stone in this question. I have a sweet tooth bigger than Dallas, half of my food ends up on my face at mealtime, and my personal attire can be, shall we say, lacking at times. But I'm talking about fictitious charachters.

I will have to give Pooh credit. He is a bit more complicated and layered than Cookie Monster. But Cookie Monster's issues may be neurological. I wonder if somewhere in his file is a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome. Look at the signs: Issues with hyposensitivity, obsessive behavior, poor eye contact, pedantic speech centered on his interests, and an inability to monitor his peers' needs relative to his own (i.e. eating everyone else's cookies and/or not sharing).

Even so, I still think he has more pride than Pooh bear. Next time your getting dressed put your shirt on first, and nothing else. Check yourself out in the mirror. Then tell me how much pride you have.

Plus there's that one Pooh story where he ate so much fucking honey and got so damn fat he got stuck in Rabbit's hole. And his name is Pooh.

Seriously. Have some pride.

The Great Minnesota Get Togethers

Tonight for the first time in the nine-plus years I've lived in Minneapolis I went to the Mall of America (MOA) for the sole purpose of shopping. I've been there to meet Emily, gone to movies there, and used to go to some of the restaurants on the third floor before they all closed down.

But never have I gone since to be a shopper. But it just so happens MOA is the closest mall to our house. So unlike the tour buses that ship people up here from Iowa, I went there to buy my wife a birthday present because it was the most convenient.

But I went after 8 p.m. and it was not very crowded. On the way in, I walked through Sears and they had hastily-made signs that said "MERRY CHRISTMAS" taped to the door. The writing was ALL CAPS, Times new Roman, 24 point bold. Black font on white paper. Take that Christmas hatas!

But as per usual, I digress. And I found the MOA to be phenomenal. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but the MOA is basically a more expensive year-round Minnesota State Fair (MSF).

The MSF has the midway; the MOA has Camp Snoopy.

MSF has a lot of fried tasty food that you feel guilty eating, and so does the MOA.

MSF has the farm animals and Miracle of Birth animal center; the MOA has Underwaterworld, an aqaurium.

MSF has tons and tons of vendors selling lots of weird, useless shit. So does the MOA.

The MOA has hayseeds visiting from Iowa; the MSF has farmers from outstate Minnesota showing their animals.

And this leads to my final point. The MOA has all walks of life, just like the MSF. Tonight while I was walking in the mall, a middle-aged couple was passed by a cocky 20 something yapping on his cell phone and a girl in front of me was wearing black pants so very tight you could see the crease of her butt crack. One cheek had the letters LO and the had VE. Yeah, nothing says love like an ass crack.

Only at these two places can you see these walks of life within 20 feet of each other. Great get togethers indeed.

¿Donde Esta El Cuarto De Baño?

Spanish was the cinematic language of choice in our house this weekend.

This weekend I watched Maria Full of Grace and Amores Perros. Holy crap was Amores Perros brutal. But it was as good as it was gritty. I was watching it with my dog Pancho. He was very intrigued by all the dogs barking. But when they started fighting, I had to shield his eyes, much like an over-protective parent shielding his son's eyes from the blue cinema.

I eventually sent him up stairs to be with Emily, safe from the influences of doggie rated R movies.

Regardless, Amores Perros is a great movie, even if I did have to watch a few dog fights and worse in fast-motion. Oddly enough, I tolerated people being shot in regular motion.

Maria Full of Grace is a lot less gritty, which is saying something since it had several scenes of girls swallowing heroin. It was not nearly as layered as Amores Perros, but certainly a lot more fun to watch and just as excellent as Amores Perros.

I Need A Life--Part II

Yet another post about Caribou Coffee's trvia. I have four unrelated areas to cover.

1. I am curious what question Rachel W answered at the airport when she was the only to get it right.

2. An engineer living in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities metro area, who likes to protect his anonymity, has brought it to my attention that George Washington is on the quarter and the dollar bill, meaning there are THREE Presidents on two types of US currency, not just one ( click here to see for yourself), making the question from my previous post the worst question of all time. And that is saying something, as about a week ago, the question was "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

3. Caribou does need to raise the discount for getting the question right. The discount is based based on 1996 dimes, not 2006. I used to pass on answering the question because it was only a dime. But then I figured over the course of a year, I passed on 20 to 30 questions that I knew the answer to. If there was a three dollar bill (I think Roosevelt is on the three dollar bill--shit that makes FOUR Presidents...) laying on the ground you'd pick it up right and away. So go ahead and answer each and every trivia question. It will eventually add up.

4. And now for my primary point of blogging today. Wednesday morning the question was "Which planet has the most moons?" In tribute to my childhood geekdom, I knew right away the answer was Saturn. Fair enough.

Thursday morning the question was "Cape Horn borders which African country?" Well I had no idea how to answer this one since I always thought Cape Horn was in South America and bordered either Chile or Argentina (which one, I had no idea), but clearly I was wrong. So I figured it had to be South Africa or Somalia, assuming that big notch sticking out of the eastern end of Somalia could be called a cape, despite its large size. And it looks like a shoe horn. So Somalia seemed like the guess to make. Plus I was pretty sure the southern cape of Africa was called the Cape of Good Hope.



So I guessed Somalia and was told that I was wrong. I was too embarassed to ask for the right answer and asssumed it was South Africa. My coffee cost ten extra cents that day.

As I walked to work from Caribou, the irony was not lost on me that I knew the geography of the solar system better than my own planet. I even had a title for a future blog about this experience,

Think Interplanterily, Act Locally

.



But the need for such a title vanished when I got into my office and looked at the world map on my wall. Well of course Somalia was the wrong answer. Cape Horn isn't even in Africa. It is in South America, just where I had placed it. So I guess to make up for the question earlier in the week that had three correct answers (you just had to guess which of the three they wanted you to say), they chose a question that had NO correct answers.

The Caribou I frequent happens to be by Sibley Plaza. Sibley Plaza deserves a blog post all to its own. Emily and I drove past it this morning, in fact, and she called it "the strip mall that time forgot."

What is relevant to this post, however, is that Sibley Plaza and most of lower Highland Park (a neighborhood in St. Paul where I work) is heavily populated by Ethiopians and Somalis. They are known to enjoy a cup or two from Caribou like the rest of us. So I was wondering, the rest of the day, if someone with more confidence than I about Africa's geography went in there and set the record straight. I was going to stop in at the end of the day to see if they ammended the question, but I didn't have time if I wanted to catch my bus.

Cripes. Who does the fact-checking for this particular Caribou branch? Jayson Blair? Is this the best job he can find since the New York Times fiasco?

To help me through my angst, I need to harken back to my college days, and the wise words often spoken by a young man we called "Donkey Balls" for reasons I won't go into. But to put your mind at ease, it has nothing to literally to do with his testicles, donkeys, or a donkey's testicles for that matter. Although when we did call him Doneky Balls we were implying that he was, indeed, the testicles of a donkey.

But, as per usual, I digress.

Back to Donkey Ball's words of wisdom. Like most college kids, we always had a hard time squaring completely up after a night at the bar or the Pizza Hut (we were in Grinnell, Iowa, what kind of nightlife were you expecting?) because at least one of us would inevitably be absurdly short on cash. Each time this happened, Donkey Balls could always magically end our squabbling over who owed whom what amount of money and we'd move on to the next activity, which usually involved copious amounts of Busch Lite in cans and some form of public urination (again, we were in Grinnell, IA, pop. 8200, what more can you expect for a nightlife?).

But none of this post-Pizza Hut awesomeness would have happened if Donkey Balls, wise beyond his 18 to 22 years of age, hadn't said "It all comes out in the wash." Hell, to this day, we'd still be arguing about whether or not Strawman and Nitro were square now that the Klassmaster was paying for Donkey Balls' share of the bill, because that would make up for the seven bucks Nitro owes Klassmaster from Wednesday night and the three dollars and change Donkey Balls still owes Strawman from last week's sortie to Pizza Hut. "Seriously. Let's not worry about it. It all comes out in the wash," Donkey Balls would say, as if he were Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. A gong would softly sound in the background. End of conversation.

I need to remember such sage thinking. For every bullshit, unanswerable question this Caribou has offered me, I have also easily answered the following:

Why did the chicken cross the road? (I know I already said this, but I want to make it clear that this was a real trivia question)
How many days away is Thanksgiving?
What is the distance of a marathon?
What Aldous Huxley novel featured alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons?
The first Caribou is in what city?
What are the five great lakes (Hint: the first letter of each one makes up the word HOMES)?
And a lot of either/or questions giving you a 50/50 chance, worse-case scenerio of getting the question right.

So I agree with Rachel W. I love Caribou. The snob in me, that turns his nose up at chains, and mocks poorly written trivia, does indeed love everything about the Caribou experience, corporate chain mentality, drive-thru service, suspect and cheaply discounted trivia, and all.

For Want of a Dime...

If a chain of events leads to my ultimate loss of house, job, family, and friends, we can trace it down to today, this historic day.

Anyone who lives in Minnesota and drinks coffee has inevitably spent some money at Caribou Coffee and probably tried to answer the daily trivia question. For those of you who haven't, there is a trivia question that changes each day and is unique to each location. If you get the question right, you get ten cents off your order.

When I ride the bus to work it drops me off right in front of a Caribou Coffee and part of my morning routine is to get my cup of coffee there and try and save a dime.

Because I am a nerd, I get excited about the trivia question and try to set personal records for how many consecutive days I can save a dime. My record is nine days, and my hitting streak came to an end when I was stumped by the question "How much dirt does a human consume, on average, in a year?" That's a bullshit question, because anything over say, half a centigram will be alarming and disgusting and we all know that the answer will be much higher than that.

So the question might as well have been "Pick a random number between .5 centigrams and 12988347 kilos and if you are right, you get ten cents off your order." I refused to answer that question out of protest, thus breaking my streak. I sure showed them with my silent protest!

But in the interest of full disclosure, at the Caribou I go to, the questions are usually quite easy for anyone with a high school diploma and a functioning long-term memory. Typical questions are "What is the capital of New York?" or "What story is attributed to Homer besides The Oddessy?" and things like that.

So my most recent streak is up to four days and today's question was "Who is the only United States President whose face is on two separate types of US currency?"





I thought it over for a few seconds, made my coffee order and said the answer was Thomas Jefferson.





The guy at the counter said, "Sorry. Good guess" Then held up a penny and five dollar bill from the cash register to show me the correct answer was Lincoln. Very dramatic.

I am the horse's asshole when it comes to all forms of competition, and I was about to prove this. I said, "Do you happen to have a two dollar bill and a nickel in there?"






I was half-joking, and was going to leave it at that. But he went ahead and told me that Thomas Jefferson's presence on the two dollar bill doesn't count because it's not in circulation anymore. I was satisfied with that answer even though I had no idea if that was true or not. But then his co-worker said, "Actually the two dollar bill is back in circulation but the book was written before that happened."





Now I have no idea what The Book is. I assume it's either The Bible (which I'm pretty sure was written before the two dollar bill was re-circulated by the US Treasury) or Caribou publishes a book of possible trivia questions for employees to use.

Either way, I'm back in this conversation, trying to get my dime back. "So Thomas Jefferson is also correct!" I say.

"Well we have to go with what the answer in The Book says," she answered, pointing vaguely to some object under the cash register, which I assume is either Gideon's Bible or Caribou Coffee Inc. Official Daily Trivia Manual. And the conviction with which she said this made me think maybe it was The Bible afterall. She clearly was not going to go against the authority of the answer in The Book, no matter how illogical it was.

Either way I got screwed. Open letter to Caribou Coffee: I want my freaking dime back.






So back to my origninal point, for want of a dime, the bus fare was lost, for want of a bus fare... Well you can connect these dots all the way to me losing wife, dog, house, job, and friends if you please.

In working with adults and teens who stutter I have found that those who feel they are victims and were let down by God have the absolute worse prognosis. I would say the degree to which a person plays The Victim is the number one factor in how much he can improve his or her own life. This is true in all realms of life. Not just stuttering.

However, I am here to say, that if my life goes to the shitter over the next, oh, 50 years, I blame Caribou.

It's A Boy!

Emily's sister gave birth to a boy this morning. Like me, he has been born without a pre-determined name. Unlike me, I am sure his parents will name him before he leaves the hospital.

This is the fourth kid whom I will be an uncle to, but the first on Emily's side. It is very bittersweet for me. It is so awesome and exciting to be living in the same city that this kid was born and to be around while he grows up. But it also makes me wish I could live in the same city that my sisters' kids live in.

But mostly I am very excited for the Emily's sister and her husband. I cannot wait to meet their new kid tomorrow night and see the new parents. Pictures will likely follow.

Check Me Out

I really to read in other people's blogs what books they are reading, a list of ten random songs on their iPod, or what movie they just saw. I don't know why. It's like you get to read their personal mail or rummage through their underwear drawer. Not that I do those things. Or want to.

Seriously. I really don't. Those of you that know me can still invite me over without feeling like you have to put your utility bills and tighty whities in a safe.

I think Netflix should have a feature where you get to show your queue to the world. Our queue is now 250 movies long. It's almost like a status or pissing contest. Who can have the longest queue? A friend of mine has a kickass underwear collection, oops, I mean Netflix queue. He has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue. Something to aspire to.

Right now we have Spanglish, Maria Full of Grace, and (here comes the dirty underwear) Pilates for Dummies. My wife chose it. It's for her. I swear. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I did take a pilates class last spring. The instructor congratulated me for being the first male graduate. I still am not sure if I should be proud of this.

I will say this, the same guy who has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue, took yoga and dropped out. I'm not sure what that means. I think we're still both a couple of sissies, with or without a diploma from an exercise class populated mostly with women, or an endless Netflx queue.

I also wanted to list the other pop culture goings ons in our household.

The three most recent CDs I bought were: Liz Phair (Somebody's Miracle), Dwight Yoakum (Blame the Vain), and The Hopefuls (The Fuses Refuse to Burn).

The Hopefuls CD, I already have. I bought the second copy for my sister, whose birthday was over seven weeks ago. We'll see if I actually mail it before 2006. Anyway, it's a great CD. Guitar pop good and trivial enough to make you feel young again. Incidentally, Emily and I saw them play Wednesday night with this sexy baglady. They were awesome, as was hanging out with her yoga school dropout of a husband.

I am reading Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country.

There you have it. I'll let you know how I like that pilates video.

Son-In-Law

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Today I am taking the day off and enjoying the fact that I am still wearing my pajamas, while it snows outside, and Emily reads the paper.

Pancho is watching us wondering when the hell he gets to do what he wants to do. I keep telling him to lick his balls. He usually seems to enjoy that, but I guess he's bored with that for now. Fear not, my four-legged friend. We'll go for a nice, long, lazy run soon.

Last night we went to Emily's uncle for Thanksgiving. There were about 20 of us there and I enjoyed talking to everyone, but no one is as entertaining as Emily's mom. Here are some highlights:

"I think guys [men] are so retarted. There's no doubt about it."

"Who really trusts experts anymore?"

Emily's mom spends a lot of time lamenting how times have changed and how crazy it is that kids are surrounded by hi-tech toys and electronics. She also spends a lot of time at Value Village, which is like a local Goodwill. But lately, most of her engery is spent getting ready to become a first-time grandma (Emily's sister is expecting a child any day now).

So I asked Emily's mom if she feared this grandchild may be one of those kids "spoiled" by things like iPods and X-Box 360s.

She said, "Oh I don't see this kid getting spoiled by stuff from Value Village."

Little tidbits like this make me laugh.

Ents Rule

I want to make this perfectly clear before I begin this post: I love trees. I love the gigantic maple tree in our back yard, and the ample shade it provides in the summer. I think we have an awesome backyard, to be honest, but it would be a godforsaken patch of dirt and sun, if 80% of it wasn't shaded by the maple tree. So I also love the tree's leaves.

I read and saw The Two Towers, so I know it's a bad idea to piss off the Ents by hatin' on their brethren the maple tree. I'm not about to suggest we tear our maple tree down to clear space for some ogre-making factory like that evil wizard tried to do.

But I will say this, I do hate 50923784023 dead maple leaves in our backyard. We have a tiny city lot and I still managed to get 23 bags full of leaves from the backyard alone.

My childhood home was on a lot twice the size of where I live now, and on a corner. So there was a side yard to rake as well, and at least seven pecan and mesquite trees in our yard. I don't think we ever eclipsed 30 bags of leaves raking all three yards. And I got 23 bags from one freaking tree.

I never thought I could dislike a sports team, based on its logo. And I never thought I'd have any opinion about any hockey team, ever, because I don't get hockey and don't really want to. But now, after two falls of raking, I really don't have a lot of good things to say about Toronto's hockey team, the Maple Leafs. And shouldn't they be the Maple Leaves?

So to summarize:




Treebeard and the Ents: GOOD

Toronto Maple Leafs: BAD




I'd rather offend this hockey fan (or even the ones with slightly more testosterone) than Treebeard. Hell I'd rather offend the entire hockey team than one Ent.

The Thrill of Victory

That would be Paul Tergat, as you see below. The close observer will note the agony of defeat, Hendrick Ramaal, in the background. Lying down on the ground. After losing the New York City Marathon. By less than a second.




What an awesome picture.

What an awesome race.



Images from http://www.photorun.net/.


The race was actually last week, but these pictures are so good, I thought it was worth talking about. A friend of mine has Dish TV and gets the New York station that covers the whole race. So we watched the whole thing live. It was such a great race from to start to finish. Who knew watching skinny guys run for over two hours could be so fun?

Jungo Jemba

Last night Emily and went to a party thrown by a friend of mine. He moved into his house six months ago and just bought furniture so he figured he'd finally throw a party. So he had a "DDR, Giant Jenga Party." Once I promised Emily that DDR is "Dance Dance Revolution" (a dancing game for the PlayStation) and NOT Dungeons and Dragons, she agreed to go.

For anyone who thinks they are the ultimate lover of games, this guy can put you to the test. He and a few of his friends are obsessed with Jenga and he knew there had to be something more. So he came up with Giant Jenga. He went to Home Depot and had them cut 30 4X6 10" pieces of wood. The result: Giant Jenga in his garage. We'd typically get the Jenga tower up to seven or eight feet before it would crash. It was awesome.



Image from http://www.hasbro.com/jenga/


Emily got a little stressed out. But you always had ample warning before the tower was about to fall.

Up next on this guys docket: he wants to design Jumbo Operation. I think they already have that though. It's called First Year Med School Student Gets a Cadaver.

Get Out the Vote

Tomorrow is Election Day. I hope everyone gets a chance to vote.

Our friends have a compelling idea. It would be interesting to see how much our political landscape would change if this became a law.

Our underlings in Puerto Rico are also onto something.

Why Buy New When Slightly Used Will Do?

Why watch a DVD when it's on TV?

Emily and I are half-watching Pirates of the Carribean on ABC right now. Complete with commercials and the crappy reception we get for ABC.

We have the DVD, which is commercial and fuzzy-reception free.

But that would somehow ruin the movie-watching experience.

As an aside, Emily has an uncanny knack for recognizing supporting actors and connecting them to previous shows and movies. In this case, she recognized the guy playing British commodore in Pirates of the Carribean as the same guy who played the straight man role in the BBC version of Coupling. Nevermind that he's wearing one of those goofy British military uniforms in this movie.

ALRIGHT ASTROS!!!!

Call me a fair-weather fan, but suddenly I feel emotionally attached to the Astros, even though I haven't cheered for them since I was in college. But I have come to realize they still occupy a special place in my heart. I grew up on JR Richard and Nolan Ryan in the early 8os. I brought my Walkman to high school my freshman year so I could follow their series against the Mets.

But my favorite Astros memories are confined to a minimum wage job I had before my senior of high school. I worked the dinner shift at a salad bar, Souper Salads, that year. I don't know what the official title of my job was, but I was basically the guy who made sure all the salad bar and soup bar items were topped off.

My esteemed associate at Souper Salads was Richard, a long-haired, pot smoking dish washer, and a crazed Astros fan. Our conversations all summer were limited to the following eight talking points:

1. Did I have any pot?
2. Last night's Astros' game.
3. The current Astros' game on the radio.
4. Why I didn't smoke pot.
5. The liklihood that I might have some pot to give to Richard, even though I didn't smoke pot.
6. What Richard was doing when he watched last night's game. This story usually ended with him shouting "Alright Astros!!"
7. The merits of smoking pot.
8. How smoking pot with Richard could make me a better runner.

At this point in time I still liked the Astros, but was more of a Rangers fan since that was who Nolan Ryan was pitching for. But I was satisfied with talking points 1-8 with Richard and didn't feel we needed talking point #9, "Why the Astros are better than the Rangers." So I passed as a die-hard Astros fan.

One night I was re-stocking the salad bar with some vegetable or another. The Astros were far from first place but locked in a close game with some random National League opponent. It was near closing time so there were maybe three tables with customers.

All of a sudden the ten of us in the dining area could hear someone shout "ALRIGHT ASTROS!" This was followed by the classic restaurant sound of procelain plates hitting a tile floor. A lot of them. It was the sound of a tall stack of dirty dishes hitting the floor after being knocked over by an animated dish washer.

Then it was very quiet for a few seconds. Awkwardly so.

The silence and tension was broken from the kitchen when we all heard Richard shout "ALRIGHT ASTROS!!" one more time. When I finally made it back to the kitchen he let me know that the Astros had indeed scored a go-ahead run.

And this is one of the many reasons the Astros have a special place in my heart.

I returned to Souper Salads the following summer and Richard was still there. Well at least in body. He had turned his life over to the Lord. He wore t-shirts that said "Property of Jesus Christ." He no longer bullshitted with me. He had given up the argument that pot would make the "fastest fucking runner ever man."

Instead he tried to convince me to go to church with him, and told me "the Bible predicted AIDS man." And the Astros were no longer on the radio. Instead I was treated to Christian rock every time I went back to the kitchen.

Souper Salads was never the same again. And since that time I have been a Red Sox fan, Cardinals fan, and now have settled down as a die-hard Twins fan. But when I think back to that meaningless $3.35/hr job I had at Souper Salads, before the Lord crushed Richard's soul, I am a born-again Astros fan.

Debbie Downer

A woman was raped at 9 a.m. last Monday in or near the Minnehaha dog park, about three miles from our house. It goes without saying that this pisses me off. I am posting an e-mail from a friend of mine who I go running with. I am including all the information just to alert those of you who use the trails near our house to be extra carfeful.

I just received this information about the incident. Since so many of us run in that area, perhaps we can be on the lookout for this individual.

Facts:
Minneapolis police are investigating the attack of a woman Monday morning, Oct. 17, who was riding her bike in the Minnehaha Falls off-leash dog park. The suspect approached the victim with a gun and sexually assaulted her.

Suspect information:

The suspect is described as a white male, 35-40 years old, six feet tall and 35 to 40 years of age. He has a heavy/muscular build, shaggy dark hair, and no facial hair. His eyes are described as closetogether, and he has heavy jowls and a thick neck. He was wearing a dark blue, zippered, jogging-style jacket, white tennis shoes and dark cloth pants. The suspect may have used a bike that possibly was red and silver.

If you have information about the incident, please contact Sgt. Nancy Dunlap, 612- 673-3782, or the MPD Sex Crimes Office, 612-673-3657.

Some obvious things jump out at me when I think about what happened. First of all is how angry this makes me. Secondly, we should all be extra careful. Even though I probably don't have too much to worry about, this incident has made me stop wearing headphones when I run. We should all do this because it does not only make things more safe for ourselves, but also so wee can hear if someone else is yelling for help.

These are obvious points to everyone, and for some reason my final point isn't. What strikes is that this woman was on her bike. Until this happened I always assumed a woman is not vulnerable if she is on a bike. She can bike away from all danger, right? Not when the asshole has a gun. I would love to hear from some NRA types and know how they can justify conceal and carry over strict gun control laws. Using their logic, the solution to the current problem is for all women to go running and biking with guns. Here's a better idea, with or without gun control laws: it is time for the park police to increase their presence along the parks that abut the Mississippi River.

Yet Another Sports Post

I will add this post to the burgeoning canon of on-line opinions about the nutty ending to last night's White Sox/Angels game. Aside from the fact that I think the Angels got robbed on that one call, I have some other thoughts.

1. The Angels were affected by the umpires, but they lost that game on their own. The umpires put a runner on first with two outs, but that is it. Sure it meant Angels' pitcher Melvim Escobar had to pitch four outs that inning, but it was Escobar who continued to pitch from the stretch with a man on first. And it was Escobar who left that 0-2 pitch over the plate for Crede to hit.

Holding the umpires responisble for a blown call is fair game, but to pin this loss on them is not too far removed from blaming the Cubbies' demise a few years back on that fan who tried to catch a foul ball.

2. I am so glad I am not a fan of either team. I'd be so very pissed if I were an Angels fan and feeling pretty sheepish as White Sox fans.

3. Last year it was David Ortiz. This year it's A.J. Pierzynski. It is hard as a Twins fans to watch these ex-Twinkies play huge roles in their teams' playoff success. A.J. is having a great playoff run, with or without the umps blown call.

Of the remaining four teams, I'd love to see the Astros or Cards win. GO NL!!!

San Diego Steelers

Did anyone watch tonight's (Monday) Steelers vs. Chargers football game. Why were there so many die hard, vocal Steelers fans watching?

It reminds me of when the Spurs sucked back in the 80s and it would seem like there were just as many fair-weather Laker fans cheering as loyal Spurs fans. I wonder if those jackasses who cheered for the Lakers over the hometeam are still doing the same these days.

Who Wants To Be An MVP?

A Rod just hit into a double-play with a runner on, in an elimination game, in the top of the ninth, with his team down by two runs. He has done nothing the entire post-season. I'm not ripping on the guy. He'd get my vote for MVP. It just goes to show how meaningless the MVP award is.

I have never understood why the regular season MVP gets so much attention. The only other MVP candidate, ex-Twin David Ortiz, playss for a team that was eliminated from the playofffs last week.

The Red Sox and Yankees can have their MVPs. I'm pretty sure the White Sox and Angels will gladly pass up that award for a World Series ring.

The Pride of Urbana, IL...

...was born 34 years ago today.

Ever since I was a little kid, I was always rowdy and loud.
Now here I am, thirty-four, still runnin' 'round with the wrong crowd.

-Ray Wylie Hubbard

I spent my 34th birthday cleaning the garage with Emily and mowing the lawn with my dog Pancho watching. Not exactly running with the wrong crowd. But that's okay. I have 364 more days to find a few bad eggs to get rowdy and loud with.

Morons Know Best

If you live in Minnesota and half an interest in sports, it is impossible to ignore the Vikings. For the past five years, people have been calling in to sports talk radio shows complaining about Dante Culpepper. And for five years the talk show hosts would smugly dismiss these complaints, just stopping short of labeling these callers as idiots. The talk show hosts would say these callers had no idea what they were taling about and how Culpepper was a great quarterback, end of story.

I wonder what the radio talks show hosts will be saying Monday. It looks like all the idiot callers were right: Randy Moss is the primary reason for Dante's success. The offensive line has been terrible for the Vikings, but that doesn't excuse Culpepper's performance this year. Until he shows otherwise, it is clear Randy Moss, despite his awful behavior, has been the reason for the Vikings' success over the past five years. I can't believe I'm typing this, but the Vikings miss Moss more than I ever imagined they would.

Happy Thanksgiving

Some friends of ours from college, Jason and Meg, were in town this week. They are touring the country from San Francisco to DC introducing their two-month old son Keenan to the world. They're also going to DC to protest the war. Friday night Emily stayed home from work and she and Jason made Thanksgiving dinner because it is damn good food and there really is no reason why we have to have Thanksgiving dinner only once a year.

The dinner was awesome but as we started eating we had a few complaints about politics, crappy movies, and things like that. So we decided we were having Notsgiving. Clearly Notsgiving is alive and well, as Jason decided decide to leave a Notsgiving comment on my previous post.

Thank you Jason.

Check out Jason and Meg's blog of their trip. It does not suck.

Red Letter Day

I have been waiting for this weekend for a long time. Not because it's the opening weekend for pro football, but because James McMurtry's latest album, Childish Things is finally available.

I've heard one of the album's songs on his website, and he sang it at his show when he passed through the Twin Cities last spring. The song,"We Can't Make It Here," as far as I can tell is the first overtly political song of his. I've heard snippets of the other songs on iTunes and they don't disappoint.

But don't take my word for it. Click here for a review.

And better yet, click here for one of the better features I've read about the man.

For the likes of Steve Earle and the select few elitist Minneapolitans who openly rip the state of Texas just because George Bush gets his mail there, I'd like to give them a copy of this interview and James McMurtry's latest album and quote Ray Wylie Hubbard.

"Screw you. We're from Texas."

Funny Stuff

Due to lack of blogging it is unfortunate that my first (and so far only) post about Katrina is steeped in levity. There is no way I can express the sickness I have been feeling the past week. It has hit me harder than 9/11. Public restrooms are hard for me to use because all I can think of is the Superdome. But here goes...

Via dailykos.com:



Link

Figthing the War on Terror

Emily and I bought new commuter bikes this week. They look like this:


Image from www.bayareabikes.com


I had a ten year-old mountain bike that was big and clunky. But I love my new bike. I think Emily lovs hers too, but I can't speak for her.

So now I'll be biking to work regularly.

Take that Haliburton and the House of Saud.

Canyon Lake

This weekend Emily and I went up north to the Brainerd area, to a friend's cabin on the Whitefish chain of lakes, in northern Minnesota.




The lay of the land is so very glaicial. But this is hard to imagine when it's in the mid-90s two hours north of Minneapolis. Sadly I forgot my fishing license and our friends couldn't find theirs. But we still had fun tooling around in the boat and going swimming. It was weird though, because it really felt like we were on Canyon Lake in south Texas. I had to keep reminding myself we were up north.

Our friends have a three year-old daughter who recently cut her own hair. The result was a mullet. So whenever the boat got up to a decent speed, I'd encourage her to shout "ROCK AND ROLL!!" She was more than happy to oblige which really complimented her haircut.

Grinnell College Cross Country RULES!!!

One more link update.

I can give no shouts out to Carleton College, as they were one of our Central Region rivals, and they consistently out-recruited us during the four years I was at Grinnell.

One of the jackasses that picked Carleton over Grinnell was Gaio Lakin, despite the fact that we had plans to name a set of relays after him, due to the kickass nature of his name. A teammate of mine (we'll call him the Klassmaster) came up the Gaio Lakin Relays, a party to be held out at the track, then night after our home track meet. We even had the innagural Gaio Lakin relays my freshman (or was it sophomore?) year, and it was a smashing success. But then the jackass decided to go to Carelton and we changed the name of the event to the Horse's Asshole Relays (I made that last part up).

I've run into Gaio a few times since living in the Twin Cities (literally, while running and at a few parties) and then he came over to my house last summer, drank all my beer, ran home, and I haven't seen him since. So the dude stands up our team after we name a party after him and ten years later shows up to drink all my beer and then disappears like Kaiser Soze from The Usual Suspects. So it speaks to the kickassedness of this Gaio charachter that I've added a link to his site, after he broke my heart twice.

You may want to wait awhile before visiting his site. He says he needs to update it. I agree. But I remember he had some photo on his site that was getting tons of hits. Something about how he took a picture of his bent leg and looked like a hairy butt, so he named the picture "hairy butt" and a whole bunch of people who wanted pictures of real hairy butts ended up looking at a picture of Gaio's bent leg.

So all you hairy butt fans out there, don't be disappointed by Gaio's site.

And I am hereby requesting Gaio start up the hendecathalon again. Unless he's afraid Grinnell Cross Country will fuck his shit up!!!!

By the way, good luck with the triathalon Gaio. xoxoxo

Alamo Heights Football RULES!!!

Shouts out to my alma mater. I still need to update the links at the side of my blog. But I have added the link to Gabriel Mann's band 's website. A quick Google search will show you that there are two Gabriel Manns. Apparently one of them was in Bourne Supremacy. But the other Gabriel Mann is the one I am concerned about.

Check out his website. Listen to his songs. The dude's got golden pipes. Buy a few CDs. I also went to high school and junior high with him. Off the top of my head I can remember going to some poorly attended Spurs games with him, back in their mid-80s suckiness. Jon Sunvold. Cadillac Anderson. Walter "The Truth" Barry. Ed Nealy. Albert King. Damn I loved the Spurs even at the depths of the shittiness.

And I remember walking next to Gabriel at lunchtime when two guys had the following conversation in front of us (both were poorly dressed for the cold front that had moved in somtime between 8 a.m. and noon).

Guy 1: "Dude this is bullshit! Someone get me a heater!"

Guy 2: "I know right!?!"

I'm not sure how to punctuate the phrase "I know right," but it was damn ubiquitous back in the day. And I don't know why that specific conversation is burned in my mind, but it is a good one. But I doubt Gabriel turned it into a song.

All-Star Game Thoughts

I watched most of baseball's All-Star Game last night while doing some wild and crazy shit like folding and ironing clothes. And I came away with the following thoughts:

1. How in the hell do the Florida Marlins have four All-Stars on their roster and are barely above .500? Who's their manager, John Lucas? Bob Hill? Only die-hard Spurs fans will get those references.

2. The only All-Star game I'll watch, let alone look to see who won, is baseball. I really don't know why I still watch it, but I still enjoy it.

3. The frustration I get with Bud Selig never dulls with time. I still cannot get over how incredibly stupid it is that the World Series home field advantage is decided by the All-Star Game.

4. Wasn't Christian Guzman once an All-Star?

5. The Twins acquisition of Brett Boone is meaningless if Brad Radke and Johan Santana aren't dominant the second half of the season. I love the Twins. But the way the AL West teams are coming on, and with the awakening of the BoSox and Yanks, I don't see the Twins making the playoffs this year. No one wants me to be wrong about this more than I do.

How Can You Heartbreak A Stranger?

Those of you who know me well, know how much I love to find random photos, ATM receipts, notes, grocery lists... So you'll be happy to know my cell phone struck gold for me over the weekend.

If there is a moral to the story you're about to read, it's don't drink and text message. Especially when the message you plan to send is pathetic, groveling, and bares your soul as a stained, hole infested pair of tighty-whities.

At 3 a.m. on Friday night (Saturday morning actually), I got a message on my cell phone. It was a text message. When I read it at 3 a.m. this was all I read:

The pain you cause me is really unfair and unnecessary.

Then when I looked at it again the next day, I found a bonus. There was more! I just hadn't scrolled down.

The pain you cause me is really unfair and unnecessary. Why do I tolerate you? I know... I know... Because I love you. But this is ridiculous. Good night.

An FBI profiler I ain't, but I judge the messenger to be a 23 year old white male who assumed his recipient was a 22 year old white female. Little did he know his message was actually sent to a 33 year-old white male. If I was a bolder person I would have called the phantom text messenger back, but I'm not going to do that. So I guess he/she will have to wonder why his/her boy/girlfriend never replied to his/her pathetic 3 a.m. text message.

My cell phone: a modern day dead letter office.

Throw the Bums Out

I figure if I get this out on a blog, Emily won't be have to hear my rants about the freaking state shutdown caused by the Minnesota legislature. Two quick points and then it will be off my chest.

1. I actually voted for the Green Party candidate, Ken Pentel, in the 2002 gubenatorial election. In the months that followed I wished I had supported Tim Penny more and voted for him. I could not ever imagine voting for Roger Moe, the Democrats' nominee. He seemed like an old deal maker and power broker more than anything else. He was uninspiring to say the least. But I wish I knew then what I know now.

I think we really could use Roger Moe either as governor or to take the place of that nitwit Dean Johnson. Moe would have brokered a deal long ago. I dislike Dean Johnson for the same reason I distrust Joe Lieberman. Both those guys were bought and sold by special interest years ago, but they are too self-righteous to admit it. At least with Moe, you knew what he was up to. He was going to put the heat on his fellow DFLers to vote a certain way by brokering deals with them or by flexing his muscles. We could use that now.

2. I am sick of all the blaming. Sure the GOP, DFL, and governor should all be pointing the fingers at themselves instead of at each other. But I also think we should stop blaming them and start blaming ourselves. Why the hell is it that the legislature was able to broker a last-minute bill to keep the state parks open during the shut down, but couldn't compromise on weightier issues? One reasons might be because the backlash of closing the parks the day before the July 4th weekend would have been 30 times what they are suffering right now.

"Sure it sucks that some state employees don't have jobs right now and that business of poor folks losing MinnCare stinks, but there will be hell to pay if you guys ruin my July 4th plans." I'll be honest, this is about how I feel. The rest areas being closed is the only thing that I can see affecting me by the shut down. And that's my point. Jackass voters like me don't raise hell unless the government's screw ups happen in my back yard. And I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

And this why we only have ourselves to blame. I have told Emily I am voting all Green and Independent party in the 2006 elections, at the state level. We'll see if my memory of this shutdown can last that long.

There Goes Our Neighborhood

Everyday I find a new reason to feel so very fortunate to live in the neighborhood we do. The latest business to crop up is Sea Salt, which is right by Minnehaha Falls in the concession and picnic shelter. They have fresh sea food for absurdly cheap prices. Click here to see for yourself.

Then go check it out.

Twin Cities Rocks

The Taste of Minnesota seems a little over-the-hill, but Emily and I went to see the Olympic Hopefuls followed by Bob Mould on Sunday night.

Damn, the Olympic Hopefuls are so very good. Very solid power pop rock. Anyone who gets a chance needs to check them out. But apparently that applies only to those of us who live in the Twin Cities, according to their tour calendar.

Bob Mould was a little disappointing. His show was billed as a solo acoustic act. But he left his acoustic guitar and brought an electric guitar instead. I have never been to a solo electric guitar show, but it was hard to hear any melody. We left after about five songs. I'll give Bob Mould credit, he is always experimenting and trying new things, and this was one more example.