doodledee

Libby took junior out of town for a couple of days with the idea that I would stay here and get a bunch of stuff done around the house. I did manage to clean the porch and do some light painting, but I also managed to watch the Indy500 and spend an unusual amount of time stumbling around topless and bitching about how hot it was. Lucky for her she wasn't here to witness either of those fine events. Don't worry, though, she came home Sunday night, so she didn't miss all the fun.

Some highlights:

• Seeing an old dude standing out front of the Home Depot outdoor garden center smoking a cigarette. Even though it was 97 degrees out, he found it chilly enough to justify donning a windbreaker and pants. He also had on one of those WWII veteran hat things. After a few minutes, he must have gotten tired of standing or something, because he moved like 10 inches into the store and sat on a stack of potting soil. It took all of 15 seconds for the Home Depot cashier to walk over and politely ask him to take his smoke outside. I'm sure if it was Veteran's Day they would have cut him some slack, but if you didn't actually die while serving the country, I guess you smoke on the sidewalk with the rest of the civies.
• While out for a scoot one evening I was waiting at a stoplight when a dude on a scooter pulled up across the intersection from me. We waved in that dorky way that only scooter riders can wave at each other. Then like 20 seconds later this other lady pulls up on her scooter, too. She waves and throws in a SUPER-dorky scooter thumbs-up, which I found too dorky to echo, but I did wave back. Three scooters at one intersection. We are totally taking over this town, one dork at a time.
• The heat. Ha. Just kidding. That part sucked.
• Spending 14 hours slow-and-low-smoking 15 pounds of pork butt and then spending 20 minutes stuffing my face to the point that I was actually confused as to what had just happened. I guess Libby made a really good asparagus and arugula salad, too. I must have missed it.
• Watching the sunset from the mini-dock by the south beach on Harriet on both Saturday and Sunday evenings. I brought the paper and a drink and settled in for some serious maxin' and relaxin' and it was just about perfect. Then I went home and soaked in my backyard kiddie pool to try and get cool.
• I actually did get most of my list done. Who knew?

Memorial on.

Season 5 ended tonight and now all of America officially knows that a salt-n-pepper haired dude from Alabama is the newest American Idol. I'm sure Molly is happy, I'm pretty sure he was her favorite. I'm not too proud to admit that I had a lot of fun watching him flop around on stage every week, but I never would have picked him to win the whole thing. He's just too goofy and stuff. I would have picked that Paris girl, and not just because she's sorta from Edina, more because she brought down the house on week one with a 'Midnight Train to Georgia' and later classed it up with a 'These Foolish Things' that I thought was pretty good. But whatever, it's over, Ace didn't win, and I get my Wednesday nights back. That's a win-win-win where I come from.

The finale was two hours long. We cranked through it on the faketivo in under 45 minutes. Hammer down, Bode Miller. We did watch the entire Prince performance, though. He's so frickin' cool it's almost hard to look directly at him. Like you kind of have to watch TV out of the corner of your eyes, just so Prince won't see that you're staring. I totally was, though.

Well, Team Jucy finally made it over to Matt's for a formal review of The Other Original Jucy Lucy in Minneapolis. What did we find? Read on and find out.

(Those of you detail oriented readers will note that we actually made the visit like 8 months ago. For the record, I wrote the text part immediately, while details were still fresh in my mind, most likely that same night. It's just taken me 8 months to get the pictures resized and uploaded. Did I miss winter?)

In other Jucy news, feel free to keep sending in ideas for where we should go next, we're almost out of places. And to all you Nook fans out there who keep writing to me: we went, it sucked (two words: raw and salty. and yuck.) In the interest of fairness to their persistent fan base, we're voiding the visit and plan on going back for a do-over. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

The Search for the Best Jucy Lucy - Matt's Bar [doodledee]
The Search for the Best Jucy Lucy [doodledee]

Libby is out of town for a few days and I'm here with junior all by myself. I travel for work occasionally - so this would be nothing new to her - but this is the first time she's left the two of us here alone to fend for ourselves. I'll admit that she seemed remarkably confident when I dropped her off this morning, so I must be doing something right. Right?

Needless to say, our house has already been turned into a bachelor pad dreamland full of spicy indian food, jam bands, soccer, and either beer or 2% milk, whichever you prefer. If that's not your scene, I suggest you avoid the area.

Hi honey!

Was I the only one who was a little surprised by the public outrage over last week's phonebasegate saga? In case you missed it, I'm talking about the stuff where the government is working with a bunch of the major telcos to build a giant database of every phone call that is placed anywhere in the universe, presumably so they can serve you better. I mean sure, there are obvious civil liberties and privacy issues, but here's the part I don't get:

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HUGE PHONE COMPANIES HERE PEOPLE. THEY ARE MOST LIKELY KEEPING TRACK OF EVERY CALL YOU MAKE ALREADY. THAT IS THE TYPE OF STUFF THEY DO. THEY DO THIS SO THEY CAN SERVE AND/OR BILL AND/OR EXPLOIT YOU BETTER.

So in the 'real' world, you've got a bunch of phone companies who could have – and probably did – built a huge database to store call information. They most likely mine it for customer behavior, which they then use to strategize new 'service offerings', which is phone company speak for '$5 user fees'. They also probably sell a bunch of data to a select group of "strategic partners". Or maybe if you're lucky they just keep it around forever, "just in case". (Just in case they get bought out, that is, because that data is naturally worth a lot of smackers.)

It's kind of like how credit cards keep track of every purchase you make. Probably in something called a "database". And they mine that information all the time. Because that's what they do. To serve you better. And to send you statements. And to build a giant profile of your buying habits. Because that's an asset. And companies like assets.

Or better yet, look at the internet. Amazon tracks basically every click you make. But instead of freaking out about how it violates their privacy, people LOVE that the site makes suggestions and 'learns' about them. And honestly, who combs through their privacy policy to know what they keep to themselves and what they resell to their own strategic partners? Certainly not me, and I tend to skew to the paranoid side of the dial about all this stuff.

It's interesting that when huge corporations do this type of stuff, people just play along, but as soon as the government gets involved, people get a little testy. That said, I haven't followed this story closely enough to know, but I'm assuming the government phone database thing was immediately halted when word got out about its existence. You won't catch me complaining about that.

She'll be here late Septemberish.