doodledee

The long holiday weekend is over and even though something like three and a half feet of rain fell, it still worked out just fine. Some good family time, some good Schaub housewarming time, some good Roos brunch time, some good McMillan get-together time, and - go figure - some good pumping out the sailboat time.

I also attempted to watch the Indy 500. I say 'attempted' because it started and stopped and started and seemed to stretch across like 10 hours of the day on Saturday and I doubt anybody really saw the whole thing. The green flag was scheduled to drop at 11, and right off the bat rain forced like an hour delay. Even without the delay that felt like a late start. 11 am? I remember back in college that I used to have to SET MY ALARM in order to wake up on time. This year I was up like 6 hours early.

Holy crap I'm an old man.

In case you missed the other big race that day, the winner of the Milhouse 500 was Milhouse.

Last Sunday Grossie sent me a note letting me know that Amazon was running some crazy sale on this one Weber grill that's pretty mint if you're into that kind of thing. I went to the Amazon Grill Store and checked it out and confirmed that yes, a very nice grill was available at a very, very nice price. Such a good price that it was almost too good to be true, even. "It must be mistake," I remember saying at the time.

But seeing as I'm somewhat of a "purchase pussy", I naturally couldn't just order it right then and there, so instead I paced around the house for a couple of hours, sweating and agonizing over when/if I should pull the trigger. And by "couple of hours" I mean like "12". And by "agonizing" I mean "watching the Timberwolves and reading the paper and I think maybe having some ice cream". I have a pretty simple life, really.

In the end, it was an easy choice, even for me. The price was just too good to pass up. So at 11:30 or so that night, bathed in the comforting glow from my laptop screen, I logged in to end the multi-year madness that has been my Hunt For a New Grill.

AND HOLY BALLS THE PRICE HAS GONE BACK UP I'M SUCH AND IDIOT I SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT BACK AT 2:30 WHEN IT WAS CHEAP AND I THINK I'M GONNA GO OUT BACK AND KICK MY OWN ASS

There's a life lesson in there somewhere.

So Monday rolls around and I stumble into work still pretty much in a daze over missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Taking advantage of some of free cycles I've got, I decide I'm not ready to quit just yet. I download the Amazon webservice developer kit and crank out a little program that will ping their product catalog every 30 minutes and email me if the price of the grill goes back down. Behold the power of geek in all its splendor and glory and idle time.

I also noticed - while reloading the grill's page 100 times an hour before my program was done - that Amazon was showing the wrong product image on the info page. The picture they were showing actually of a much more expensive model. I scrolled down to the 'suggestion box' and sent them a note saying that they had the wrong image and that - oops! - they also forgot to leave the grill on sale long enough for me to buy it. ("Maybe you didn't know I was shopping for a grill?" I asked.)

Completely unexpectedly, waiting in my inbox this morning was a reply from Amazon customer service. In a short but sweet note, they offered me the 'sale' price even though the sale is over. Long story almost over, after 20 minutes of staring at the 'click to order' button, I currently have a bitchin new grill on it's way to my house.

Everyone who read this far is invited over to my house to grill and shower in my awesome pressure shower. Please call ahead.

Hot off the wire:

We don't want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act...we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.

Man, that sucks. Not sucks in a "Jerry's dead" kind of way or anything, but it definitely sucks.

I can't say I'm really all that surprised, though. There was really no spring tour other than Vegas, summer tour is super short, blah blah blah. My hunch is that after the hiatus it didn't feel the same or whatever, so rather than flame-out they decided to hang it up. Well that and I think Trey is havin' a lot of fun with his side project(s) and with being treated like a god all the time. Oh, and I'm sure his Michael Moore caliber ego also was a factor.

I'm also pretty sure this makes Dave Matthews the new Yoko Ono.

An Announcement From Trey [phish]
Phish Breaks Up With New Album Approaching [myway]

I dragged Libby to see the 'Super Size Me' movie on Saturday night. It's the one where the one wacko dude switches to a diet consisting only of McDonald's food for 30 days so he can prove that... well... uhh... okay, I'm not really sure what he's trying to prove, but I was pretty sure the movie would have a bunch of good McDonald's rips in it, and in my book, that justifies the $8 ticket and the trouble of finding someone to watch the kid.

The show was good. Nothing revolutionary or anything, but neat to see. The dude gained a bunch of weight and drove around to a bunch of different McDonald's in different parts of the country, all the while giving lessons on what's going on with The American Diet and how The Man is making us all fat and stupid. He also met some guy who has eaten 19000 Big Macs. That's a lot of frickin' Mac.

I dug the marketing/brainwashing side of the story the most. Mostly because it's the angle I rage against personally, but also because it's usually the funniest. And by 'funniest' I mean 'creepiest'. And by 'creepiest' I mean 'saddest'. I only hope I'll be able to thought-control my kid that well some day.

On the less-good side, one thing that bugged me was how after the 'experiment', the dude's girlfriend put him on an "all organic detox diet" to nurture his body back to health. There was this "lecture" quality to it, like we're supposed to wake up and go vegan or something. Maybe in NYC can you switch to all that organic stuff and still expect to a) find reasonably fresh, quality ingredients to work with and b) not pay four times as much, but good luck doing that in Minnesota in January or February or any of the other 8 months of the year when local stuff isn't available at the Farmers' market. Maybe I'll make my own movie where I try and live on organic produce for 30 days on the same budget that I could eat at McDonald's for. I'll call it: Super Rip Me Effing Off: The Story of Hella Overpriced Crappy Organic Produce in Minnesota. (A Yuppie Dirtball joint, natch.)

But whatever. It's just a movie. And the audience sees and hears what it wants to see and hear in a picture like that. It's almost kind of gross. Not gross like it's gross to listen to guy eat a double quarter pounder with cheese in blistering dolby digital surround sound - though that is WICKED gross - more like gross in a "don't forget to tell me what to think" kind of way. I wrestle with that conundrum quite a bit.

When the movie ended, everyone spilled out on the sidewalk in front of the theater. Across Hennepin is a McDonald's. I had tried to mentally prepare myself for the onslaught of ironic comments from the hipster crowd, but I still felt myself starting to lose it as I waddled through the swarm of dorks trying to impress their dates with their razor sharp observational wit. "You wanna get a Big Mac? huh huh. huh huh." Well crafted, Beavis, well crafted.

Favorite overheard conversation while waiting in line: "Like, I am *so* not going to go to, like, a college where, like, Republicans go."

We went home and I had a bowl of Special K Red Berries for a snack. Yum.

Super Size Me - Official Site [supersizeme]
Media Statement: McDonald's Response to "Super Size Me" Movie [mcdonalds]

Went to the massive annual Hopkins neighborhood garage sale this morning. Pushed N up and down the streets and driveways with KC and J9 and Z. I was mainly shopping for boys' shorts (9-12mo), a beat-up old lamp for the porch (floorstanding if possible), and any good 25-cent paperbacks or CDs I stumbled across. As would be expected I managed to be tempted by lots of other cool stuff, too. My favorite was what I think was a old school coin-op Nintendo PlayChoice 5 machine. It was already marked sold, so I don't know what it went for, but I will GUARANTEE that I could have flipped it on ebay for some serious fun and profit. Stupid early risers beating me to all the good stuff... they think they're so great. Well enjoy your vintage arcade equipment, you no-snooze-alarm jerks!

A couple of houses were selling some snack type stuff. Coffee, donuts, cookies, hot dogs, brats, whatever. It's like a Phish lot scene, only for some reason the cops in Hopkins appear to be TOTALLY COOL about vending. WTF is that?! Anyway, most of the snack shacks had big signs up to reassure you that any money they made would be donated to a charitable organization of some sort. It's nice that it's for a good cause and all, but that doesn't mean it's okay for people to eat a bratwurst at 9:30 in the morning. Seriously. It's called lunch. And it's 3 hours away. Look into it.

It sprinkled some. My hands stayed warm. I ate a cookie. I talked to a bunch of people. I almost got a bitchin' softball bat for $10. I ended up taking home 3 pairs of shorts. Total cost: $1.75. Not bad.

You ever have that thing happen where you're talking on the phone and a bunch of other people are hanging around and out of nowhere - BAM! - the person you're talking to hangs-up before you were ready to end the conversation and you're left standing there holding the phone like an idiot? I hate that.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean the other person actually "hung-up" on you - though that very well may have been the case - it most likely means they just thought the call was over, and they gave you the old goodbyeclick routine. Too fast, too furious.

I never know what to do in that situation. On one hand you could just put the phone down and be all "WTF?" and maybe joke about it or something. If you really look bad I suppose you could even call the person back and when they answer you could yell "GOODBYE, ASS!" into the phone and then hang-up on them. The idea being that Tables.turn() promotes Face.save() in certain circumstances. I don't really buy it, but hey, maybe for some people.

Optionally, you could do what I usually do: keep talking into the dead phone and 'fake' wrap-up the call. Sure, you feel like a moron, but that's just on the inside. And I always say that it's better to look good than to feel good.

John Kerry marketing image circa 2004	Team Yep softball logo circa 2002

After we won the championship one season, he threw our trophy onto the steps of the league office. Or maybe it was someone else's trophy, I forget.

Stock images rule.

Swing the bat for Kerry [johnkerry]

Another thing that has kinda surprised me about having a kid is how other parents in the neighborhood suddenly want to stop and talk with you about what's going on in your life. It's not that they didn't before, it's just that now you're suddenly way more interesting than you were pre-conception.

Here's a hypothetical situation:

I'm outside washing my Jeep. I've got my bucket of hot sudsy water and my garden hose and I'm just scrubbing away and minding my own business. Out of nowhere, a bunch of my friends from the sorority drive-up and offer to help. The presoak is just about finished when some goofball decides it'd be hilarious to start throwing soapy sponges at everyone. Naturally a huge water fight breaks out and t-shirts get soaked and it gets kinda frisky and a bunch of sudsy chicks end up wrestling in my front yard and Libby comes out with a beer and a lawn chair for me and IT IS TOTALLY AWESOME!

Happens all the time.

Now in past years, if some mom and dad walked by pushing a stroller and saw me washing my Jeep, they'd probably have smiled and said hi and made some comment about the weather or the wrestling or something and then quickly moved on. They'd be pleasant and polite, but they'd remain cautiously withdrawn and totally disinterested. The name of their kid would never come up

Now, however, it's a totally different scene. As soon as they see Nick playing adorably in his exersaucer™, they throw it in park and fire-up the conversation. And it's crazy what they'll tell you. And not just about their kids, either, about their whole lives. People will tell you all about their financial situation and how they're juggling the whole work/life balance thing and what they like to do for fun and their social security numbers and where they hide their 'secret' house key and all kinds of crazy crap. They tell you this because we apparently share some sort of sleepless bond with them. And amazingly, yes, they're still Minnesotan.

And don't get me wrong, I really like meeting all these people. (I am a people person, after all.) I'm just a little surprised at how much less socially appealing a shirtless dude washing his Jeep is compared to a shirtless *dad* washing his Jeep. Membership really does have its privileges.

Or maybe it's just me. Hey, I'd believe that.

Congratulations! You have just purchased tickets for the following Phish show(s):

Jun 25 2004 Alpine Valley Music Theatre East Troy, WI

LAWN x 3

Jun 26 2004 Alpine Valley Music Theatre East Troy, WI

Section - 203/Row - BB/Seat - 88
Section - 203/Row - BB/Seat - 90
Section - 203/Row - BB/Seat - 92

Under the roof for the second night means plenty of time in the lot before the show which means plenty of lounging and bs'ing and selling grilled cheese. I figure we only need to sell like 800 or so to break even after tickets and gas and all that. And that's at $8.50/sandwich, of course. Stupid convenience fees.

I think we're staying at Hotel Huna's Parents one night. That or we're just gonna go set-up camp on the broad sandy beaches of Lake Geneva.

Note that Libby may or may not be aware of all of these 'details'.

I caught maybe two-thirds of yesterday's MPR Midmorning show. (I missed the rest because I was driving around at the time and I had to get out of my car and go into a building. Curse you stupid job.) The topic was How Blogs are Changing All The Rules or something crazy like that. The featured guest was big-shot-professor-and-quasi-famous-political-blogger Jay Rosen. I say quasi-famous because I'd never heard of him but apparently a lot of other people had. ('Quasi' is Latin for "known only to journalism nerds".)

The conversation started kind of highbrow and politically focused. Things like "should bloggers be given equal journalistic access during the campaign?" and "should they be held to the same standards and print journalists?", etc, etc. Arguably a neat topic, I guess. Unfortunately, it quickly melted down into a Blogs Rule! fan club meeting. People would call in and talk about how awesome blogs are and talk about their own blogs and the blogs of their friends and how they *totally* don't care about factual accuracy and how Michael Moore is being censored and Bush sucks and newspapers are for chumps because they're old and slow.

Yesterday I wrote about the best way to eat Pringles.

Take that, New York Times.

Listen to the show on Real Audio [mpr] [57 minutes]

• I've decided that the best way to eat chips like Pringles or Stax or whatever is to eat them two at a time. And I don't mean like a duckbill, I mean piggybacked. It's like double crispy or something. Take note and enjoy.
• The Jeep is acting up. Its been starting really hard for the last week or two. I think the battery might be going or something. I'm gonna have to run some tests, attempt a little DIY, and maybe even take it in. It's primo topless season and I just can't afford to be sidelined.
• Target has updated their corporate dress code: starting this fall, business casual is out and BUSINESS EFFING FORMAL is in. That means IT dorks like Grossie and Juettner will have to wear a suit and tie while sitting in their cubes debugging perl scripts. That is capital b brutal for them and capital h hilarious for me. It's amazing Target didn't mention the dress code in the giant 'IT Geeks Wanted' ad they ran in the sports section of the Strib last weekend. Accidental oversight? Methinks not.

Well, the first official Mother's Day has come and gone in our house. We actually spent a lot of it in Rochester, but all indications were that it was a success in both locations. Then again, I ate so much at the bottomless brunch buffet we went to that I might have missed some subtle scowling or something, who knows.

On the way home, we drove headlong into a wicked afternoon thunderstorm. It was full on shock and awe. I seriously think I saw a light rail train fly by. Seeing as there was no bed to crawl under and hide, I decided instead to slow down to 20 mph, tune in 830 to get some comfort from the other weather wackos, and calmly slurp down the blue raspberry slushie I had picked-up back at the Pump-n-Munch. 15 minutes later we were safely in the garage and I was climbing ladders and unclogging gutters and all was right with the world.

Big shouts to WCCO for not interrupting the 2-hour Survivor finale with eastern Wisconsin weather updates.

A couple of weeks back I got this mystery bill from AT&T saying that I owed them like $40 for long distance service. And by 'long distance service' I really mean 'long distance fees not associated with making any actual calls'. I say that because when we signed up for phone service here at the house, we chose not to sign-up with a long distance carrier figuring it's way cheaper to use the cell or - worst case - one of those prepaid 3-cent per minute cards from Target or whatever. Enforced fiscal discipline is the best kind.

Given all that, it obviously came as somewhat of a surprise when I found out that a) we actually do have long distance and b) it's super frickin' expensive considering we don't even use it.

One toll-free call (with 10-minute hold time) later, the charges were reversed. The dude on the phone said that it was some sort of computer error. Ok, whatever, I've heard of those.

Another toll-free call (with 10-minute hold time) later I had everything kosher with Qwest, too. All that was left to do at that point was sit back and bask in the long distance reality I thought I had been living in for years.

Ahhhhh.

Then BLAMO! last week I get ANOTHER STUPID BILL FROM AT&T! Another call and - brace yourself - the problem is related to COMPUTER ERRORS. I get another refund, but now I'm starting to get a little bit suspicious and little bit paranoid.

Now I'm clearly no expert, but at my job I do occasionally come in contact with computers. From time to time I may even try to "program" a computer. And sure, sometimes my programs have mistakes in them. Yet somehow, in all my weeks of trying to "program", I've never screwed-up so bad that a bunch of random people were accidentally charged a bunch of money for something they never signed-up for in the first place. I think that means I rule and AT&T programmers are total doofs. Wait... is that right?

Or maybe it means that AT&T programmers are being used as a pawn in a cutthroat game of Screw the Consumer. Somebody should look into that.

Oh wait... Somebody just did.

Does this mean we're supposed to ignore his cop-beating daughters now?

Minnesota files suit against AT&T [strib]
AT&T accused of false billing [tc]

Unless you've been hiding in a cave with Osama bin Laden, isolated from communication with the outside world and surviving on water, grubs, and maybe the occasional domino's cheesy dot, I'm guessing that you're probably just as jaded and cynical as I am about the media's carpet-bombing campaign in support of tonight's final episode of Friends. Or maybe you're not, who knows.

Sure, it probably represents the end of some sort of "era", though exactly which era that is seems to be somewhat debatable. Maybe the Era of Lazily Written Jokes About Doin' It? Or maybe the Era of $500 Casual Sweaters On a Sitcom? Or the Era of Really Old Characters Named Phoebe Trying to Act Young and Hip But Instead Just Looking Kind of Sad?

Lordy, let's hope so, because all that stuff got old 5 seasons ago when they ran out of real story ideas. So much of it is cheap and easy and shallow and gross and how it manages such widespread critical and fan appeal totally escapes me.

But whatever. I'll be watching. Just like I do every week for reasons that I'll never understand. And pretty much all the people I know will be watching, too. I suppose that's how Friends stays #1 in the ratings all the time, eh?

There was an interesting story over the weekend somewhere that talked about how goofy it was that in an era where reality shows dominate so much of what people watch, a show like Friends, so far removed from reality, is the hottest thing going. I thought that was a neat point. Then again, I think they did the 'real' Friends type deal on Real World 1 and it totally sucked. So there.

'Friends' Says Farewell on NBC Tonight [y!]
Friends Finale Exclusive Features and Downloads - I finally found my new wallpaper! [nbc]
E!'s Friends Mega Tribute [e!]
'Friends' Writers Lewd Talk About Aniston, Cox [smokinggun]

I skipped my 1pm meeting this afternoon and ran over to the Target Center to watch KG collect his MVP trophy. Being a lowly commoner, I had to watch through the glass with the rest of the cattle, but it wasn't all that bad because the crowd was unusually short so I could see ok and the arena was playing the audio through the PA system so you could hear fine. I guess the only downside would be that I had to look at the butts of the various TV cameramen for like 30 minutes. Ew.

The inside-the-glass audience was loaded with a full cadre of local sports reporters. Sid, Little Sid, Rosen, Reusse, Sanny, you name it. I saw Mike Max on my way out so I said hi. I told him to tell Sid to stop using the shut-ins as a pawn in his Victory Sports Channel argument. He laughed and said he would, but I don't really think he understood what I said. It was less of a "witty observation noted" kind of a laugh and more of a "yeah yeah, stop talking to me you freak" one.

Near the end, I tried to sneak into the 'press only' area by claiming I worked for the Minnesota Daily. I had employed this same 'technique' to great success at the big KG press conference last fall when he announced he was going to re-sign with the Wolves. It didn't work this time. Stupid Daily.

• Sipping mint juleps and watching the Kentucky Derby with the KC and J9 and ZackMan on Saturday, I'm thinking we weren't the only ones having a few yucks when rich old man / horse owner Roy Chapman jumped from his wheelchair to celebrate when his horse brought home the roses. I'm also thinking we weren't the only ones who felt a teensy bit guilty when - 5 seconds later - the dude almost collapsed and they had to call in a medical team to check him out.
• I jacked my foot up the other day and it's been hurting a bit so I've been trying to wear some more supportive shoes when I have to walk around. The other day, for example, I wore tennis shoes to work. I also wore jeans. My fashionista boss said that was a serious no-no. She says tennis shoes should only be worn with cargo pants. This I did not know. I also didn't know that people still wore cargo pants.
• This morning I realized that the ping-pong balls from the little ping-pong ball basketball game I have on my desk fit perfectly inside the little plastic slinky I also have on my desk. Trust me, it's awesome.

The word of the day is maximilk.

max·i·milk (max·ee·milk)
v. max·i·milk·ing max·i·milked

1. The telling of a joke or anecdote to a group of individuals one at a time rather than telling the entire group at once. This allows the joke teller to maximize - or milk - the longevity of the story. Huna is going around maximilking his latest tractor shopping story.