Category: Journal

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Does the rule apply to blogs, too?

Last week, I went to Caribou Coffee with Marie and Michael “Porter” Porter. No one I know calls him Michael, just “Porter”. In my phone’s contact list, he’s listed as “Porter Porter”. But I digress. We got our orders (White chocolate hot cocoa rules!), sat down at a table and then Marie turned and saw the chalkboard. In big letters in the middle of the board, it presents customers an opportunity to share some random worldly knowledge:

Caribou Coffee's chalkboard

There were some interesting factoids written on there, though we’re still not sure how “50% of federal gvt debt being paid down with more debt” works. Paying for debt with more debt isn’t paying down anything, it’s just moving debt from one source to another. And adding some extra debt from the new source along the way. But I digress again.

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No more free meals, squirrels!

Well, I shouldn’t have to worry about any more wildlife encounters like this one. Our initial solution for the hole in the garbage can lid was duct tape, but it’s been peeling away over time and we needed to find an alternative soon.

As it turned out, that alternative was offered by the garbage company. We sent in a request and now our old brown plastic can has been replaced by a giant pink garbage container. It’s pink because we paid a little extra to support breast cancer research; it’s also pink because it’s awesome. I wish I could see the looks on people’s faces as they drive down the street seeing green and blue and boring garbage and recycling bins and then BAM! Pink.

Just to help you all appreciate how awesome this change is, here are the two garbage containers sitting next to each other:

Blah vs. PINK!!!

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Seeing with your eyes, not with your screen

For those who hadn’t heard, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower swept over the Northern Hemisphere in the wee hours of this morning. According to the local weather forecast, the peak viewing hours were around 1:30am, but we needed to wait until moonfall for the sky to be dark enough to see anything. Consequently, I bundled up and headed outside at 3:00am. (Even though Mom and Dad had talked about sleeping through it—that’s what happens when you’re not a night owl—they joined me about five minutes later.)

Part of me thought, “Hey, I could use my phone to get a video of this since there are supposed to be 60-100 meteors per hour!” Another part of me said not to, which turned out to be the better decision. For one thing, I spent close to 45 minutes outside and only saw two meteors, most likely because we’re only about a mile away from an interstate highway, so the sky never got really dark.

But perhaps the biggest reason for my not bothering with the phone is because I don’t like the sense of separation. Instead of sitting there and enjoying the moment, watching what’s going on, I end up thinking about what I’m doing with the camera. I had the same problem during my older brother’s wedding years ago—I agreed to use the video camera to tape everything for them, but because I attached it to a tripod that wasn’t sitting evenly, I had to hold it at a certain angle to make sure that it was recording everything (mostly) vertically. I spent more time being pissed at the tripod than I did enjoying such a happy moment in my brother’s life. (If there’s a bright side to that, at least I didn’t need to worry about crying in front of everyone.)

So no, no recording. And thus no long video of stars with a lack of white streaks flying across it. But I did get to check out a few more meteors thanks to NASA. They set up a live feed from a camera down on their base in Huntsville, Alabama—once it got dark enough down there, I saw three more on my computer screen. Yay for technology! (Okay, admittedly, that’s not seeing meteors with my own eyes, but at least I was staring at the screen instead of through a tiny pinhole and thus didn’t need to feel guilty if I missed recording an awesome one flashing across the sky. Yay for no guilt!)

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The first snow of the season in Minnesota

Like I said yesterday, I could have tried getting home sooner, but it wasn’t a good day to drive fast. Hell, it wasn’t a good day to drive, period, but I had places to go, so I was going to be careful. I was going to take my time and make sure I got home in one piece. (One smashed-up car per year, that’s my limit.)

The day got started when I went up to Minneapolis for an IOGT meeting. If nothing else, we needed to do an audit for the fiscal year that ended on August 31st. Since I’m the treasurer, my presence was kinda necessary. It was starting to snow when we left, but things weren’t too bad heading north to the city. Once the meeting was over, though, things were no longer “weren’t too bad”. It was pretty nasty outside.

I was heading to a friend’s house for an Xbox party—he bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a couple weeks ago and invited a handful of people over so we could kill each other over and over and over. (Yeah, that’s basically the point of the game: blow up everyone else.) Normally, it would take me maybe half an hour to get there. Yesterday’s drive lasted a little over an hour.

What’s worse, I was tired. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this at some point before, but it may have been a few years ago: my eyes don’t focus in the same place, so when I start getting really tired, I get double vision. That was happening for about the last third of the trip. I cranked up the radio, turned off the heat, drove slowly, focused on the road and I managed pretty well.

Such was not the case with everyone out there. For some ungodly reason, people in Minnesota forget how to drive in snow over the summer, so when the first one of the winter hits… over the course of five miles or so on a major highway, one van had spun out and hit the barrier so it was on the left side of the highway facing traffic. Another car went right instead, so it headed down the slope of a hill. Not very steep, but not flat by any means, so I imagine the driver had lots of fun spinning around in circles, bouncing around in his seat thinking “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…” He didn’t hit anything except the ground, but I didn’t want to be either of those guys, so slow and steady seemed like the better option.

I got to my friend’s place, played Xbox with the others for a while, then demonstrated just how tired I was. He’s got a setup down in his basement that’s really good for watching movies: a projector on the ceiling that turns the wall into a giant screen, awesome stereo sound system… it’s pretty sweet. When there’s lots of gunfire, exploding grenades and people yelling at each other into their headsets because they keep killing each other… pretty loud. And I fell asleep. Then I woke up because I was cold. After my friend gave me a blanket, I fell asleep again.

Thankfully, all that rest made it a lot easier to get home. (So did the fact that it was a little after 11:00pm and it had stopped snowing, but the sleep helped, too.) I got back on the road and drove home, but I still wanted to be careful because of my one-vehicle limit. Thus, by taking my time, I got home with just a couple minutes left, talked to my mom for a bit, then got to my laptop and cranked this baby up right about midnight. I probably would have been fine driving home a little faster, but I’m still okay with my decision. Because I’m okay. Had I driven faster and ended up not okay, backdating last night’s entry by five minutes would be the least of my worries.

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Today. Was. Awesome.

Admittedly, I could do without the sunburn, but once I learn to put on suntan lotion (and not assume that I’ll be fine without it), I’ll be golden. Which is better than bright red.

Things got started yesterday when I told Matthew Feeney that I could join him and three others for a boat ride in Prior Lake the next morning. He said that was cool, gave me the address to meet everyone and said to be there around 9:15. Matthew showed up closer to 9:30, but he had stopped to get ice for the cooler so we’d have cold Coke to drink out on the lake.

We got some good news when he got there. We needed to bring the boat back around noon so it could get cleaned up and prepped for the next group of people who had it reserved for the afternoon (thus, the boat needed to be ready by 1:00). Turns out they called in and said they’d get to the docks around 4:00, so we had a couple extra hours to use the boat.

When we headed out onto the water, it was awesome. The temperature was warm, but not hot, the sun was shining, there were no clouds in the sky, a slight breeze… gorgeous conditions to spend hours on a pontoon boat in the middle of a lake. We spent the first part of it cruising around for a bit, then decided to drop anchor and fish for a while.

Technically, I guess the others fished while I was hanging out in the boat, but it was all good. They tried using lures, bobbers with… well, I’m not sure what they had on the hooks initially, but they got the most nibbles with the bait that Matthew brought along: raw bacon. Unfortunately, no one caught any fish, but they enjoyed fishing nonetheless.

Of course, we did more than fishing in the lake. Matthew and one of the kids had been on the lake earlier and knew about a couple of abandoned houses and a trail that led to another small lake, so we ended up on the shore to do a little exploring. The houses were pretty busted up with glass all over the place, one had shit in the attic (and when I say “shit”, I’m talking about human poop), and there was an easy chair up in a tree. Why it got put up there, I haven’t the slightest idea, but it was wedged between some branches at an awkward angle, so the lightest kid in the group (about 115 pounds) climbed up and got his picture taken while sitting in the chair.

The “small lake” was pretty much just a pond covered with algae, but Matthew wanted to try fishing in it anyway. He got off to a rough start when his first cast went up and over a power line, but after that… no fish. However, there were geese there. They were afraid of us.

We could tell because when we first got there, they all swam to the far side of the pond. Later on, one of the guys snuck around to the other side and scared them all away. Well, all but one. I’m not sure if it was injured or what, but instead of flying away, this goose ducked its head down to almost water (algae) level and started swimming away from him. And then we steered it in the other direction by throwing rocks into the water towards it. Bizarre.

Eventually, we decided to head back to the boat and went cruising around for a while. But we needed to do more than just cruise and fish. We were on a boat in the middle of a lake on a beautiful day: we needed to go swimming. One person didn’t want to and was resisting all efforts at peer pressure, so what did I do? A cannonball. Right next to the boat. And the water splashed up, over the seat of the pontoon boat and got him wet. Word.

Another was willing to go swimming, but didn’t have a suit. The best alternative to jumping in fully clothed? Jumping in au natural, of course. I don’t think there were any other boats around to see him, but even if there had been, I don’t think he would have cared. There was just one problem: he got on top of the seats to do a backflip into the water. He landed feet first, which was good, but it also meant there was nothing to protect his nuts from slapping directly onto the water. Ow.

But that last kid finally caved, so we were all in the water and some more of them were doing flips off the boat. One kid had never tried a backflip off the top of the seats before, so we explained that you didn’t need to worry about tucking too much, just jump and throw your arms back to help you rotate. Well, he didn’t throw his arms back. His arms made it about halfway up, then he grabbed his nose to plug it when he jumped. Consequently, he smacked his face onto the surface of the water. Ow again.

Later on, we were moving along at a decent pace and saw another pontoon boat coming toward us. It turned out to be a group of girls (vs. our boat of all guys). As we passed, one of them said, “Hi, boys.” On cue, one of the guys who was sitting on top of his seat turned to wave and turned himself right over the edge of the boat and into the lake. It was really funny (except for the bong on the side of the metal pontoon—thankfully, it was his elbow instead of his head). Then to top it off, as we stopped, one of the guys yelled, “HE CAN’T SWIM!” and dove off the back of the boat toward him. (They both swam up to the boat, but I can only imagine what the girls were thinking after all that happened.)

But even with all the minor mishaps and injuries, it was still an awesome day. But not golden. Nope, it’ll take a bunch of cold showers and a few days with my body covered in aloe before all the redness goes away.

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Always be prepared… dammit…

I’m heading up to the Boundary Waters with some friends tomorrow and I was being very diligent while packing my gear. I grabbed a couple pairs of underwear and socks, rain jacket, water bottle and made sure to always know where my towel is. I think I did a good job with my pack, but there’s a problem: I neglected to do the same thing with my travel bag.

Consequently, for the five hour drive to the cabin where we’re staying tomorrow night, I have nothing to keep myself entertained. No book so I have something to read, no mp3 player so I can listen to music, no laptop so I can look at porn… nada.

Still, it’s going to be a fun trip and it’s going to keep me away from the blog for a few more days. I’m sure you’ll all find a way to manage and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories to share when I get back. However, if I have a repeat performance of what happened during the Beauty and the Geek outdoor challenge, you’ll probably read a lot more about how bored I was on the drive up.