Category: PerBloWriMo

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It’s only the first day?!

How I celebrated the Winter Solstice of 2010:

1) Silently wished my older brother and his wife, Brent and Gail, a happy 7th anniversary.

2) Shoveled another 5″ of snow off the front steps and driveway that came down yesterday.

2a) Got hot and sweaty doing it due to temperatures in the 20s.

2b) Became sad when realizing that “in the 20s” is a warm first day of winter here in MN.

3) Took a looooooong, hot shower to help melt away the aches and pains of shoveling… and rinse away the sweat, too.

4) Napped off and on for several hours due to exertion and lack of sleep last night.

5) Learned that this is the 2nd snowiest December on record.

5a) Did not curse upon learning this fact.

6) Received a copy of EA Sports Active 2 for the Wii that I ordered from Amazon.com to help combat some of the lingering after-effects of my trip to Norway: “Have seconds!” “Go back for another serving!” “Time for delectable desserts!” “I TOLD YOU TO EAT MORE, DAMMIT!”

7) Wrote this blog entry of the day and felt a great deal of self-satisfaction having done so. Yay me.

So that’s a summary of today’s events. Given how crazy things got, I can only imagine what the second day of winter will bring.

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Skol, Vikings, let’s snow!

Dear Zygi Wilf,

I want the Vikings to stay in Minnesota. I have a lot of fun cheering for them (too loudly, according to my dad). If they move to some other part of the country, you might as well stick a shiv in the fans’ backs, then bastardize the team by not changing the name (see: L.A. Lakers, Dallas Stars).

However, if you require a new stadium to remain here, make it a dome. I don’t care how historic tonight was, the Vikings are a crappy team when playing in cold weather. (I think the TV commentators said the last outdoor game the Vikes won in conditions like these was back in 2005.) We get a lot of cold weather here in Minnesota during November and December and things would only get worse if the team plays less crappy and makes the playoffs.

The funding for the stadium is an issue I don’t want to dwell on right now, I just want you to accept the cold reality (pun intended) of the situation: it doesn’t matter what you want—the Vikings need a domed stadium. Thanks for understanding.

Best wishes,
Shawn

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Cleanliness is right next to smooth softiness

I was in the hospital today and needed to pee, so I walked to the family/guest restroom, locked the door, sat down on the toilet and saw a laminated sheet of paper on the towel dispenser. I know hospitals need things to be sanitary for the sake of the patients, but the instructions on that sheet of paper stepped beyond the realm of hygiene and into cosmetology:

Six Steps to Proper Hand Washing
1. Wet hands with water.
2. Apply hand wash.
3. Lather and wash for at least 15 seconds.
4. Rinse both sides of hands with water.
5. Dry hands and shut off faucet with hand towel.
6. Apply hand lotion to keep skin smooth and soft.

There was no hand lotion in the restroom that I could see and hospitals aren’t known for having well-stocked cosmetics departments, so if you wanted to “wash properly” according to their standards (as opposed to the 4 1/2 steps I followed), you needed to take matters… into your own hands.

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Drugs are bad for you

IOGT is an organization that promotes peace, brotherhood and temperance (which should be interpreted as “peace, brother-and-sisterhood and no-drugs-or-alcohol-but-other-passions-shouldn’t-be-moderated“). I’m a fourth-generation member of IOGT, but that’s not the only reason why I choose not to drink or use drugs; the video below should provide you with some other really good reasons to stay away from that kind of stuff.

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Deadlines? What are deadlines?

As a general rule, there’s almost always time to ramble about whatever crosses my mind on here, but when I’ve only got half an hour to do it before hitting the deadline of the end of the day… at this rate, all I can say is I’m glad I skipped out on NaNoWriMo. Trying to write, what, a couple thousand words in the course of maybe two hours assuming I remember early enough? Rumor has it that novels are supposed to have a plot. If I’m doing it during crunch time, not so much.

In a way, this is kinda strange. Given how many papers I wrote during the last few hours back in college, you’d think I’d be comfortable with something as simple as “I have to pound out a couple paragraphs in 30 minutes.” Maybe it’s because I could always rely on all-nighters. Yes, I pulled those once in a while. Hell, I did that for my application essays for Augsburg, but in that case, I already had some idea of what I wanted to write, I just needed to put it down on paper. And then edit it. And then rewrite it because it sucked. Hmmm… maybe not that much different than college after all. Maybe I’m just getting mentally prepared to be back in school again.

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Time to celebrate!

This is a short entry, but I’m not sure how late I’ll be out tonight and I didn’t want to break my streak of blog entries. I’m heading out because I completed my application for Augsburg’s MBA program! Technically, I finished it yesterday, but how did I celebrate? I stayed at home… ’cause that’s how I roll. But tonight I’m heading out to enjoy myself and I hope you all do, too. Enjoy yourselves, that is—there’s only so much Shawn to go around.