doodledee

We ran out of candy tonight for the first time I can remember. Though to be fair we weren't actually giving out candy, we were giving out little 'goodie bags' stuffed with bead necklaces, monster teeth, whistles and whatever else looked fun in the Oriental Trading Company catalog back when we placed the annual Halloween order. But anyway.

I could see it was going to happen. Started with like 100. Now down to 5 little bags. Then 2. And of course the next group is a 3. Two girls and a boy. Probably 6-8 years old. And how does it shake out? The boy mans-up and says "girls first". I know! The 30-pound pillowcase of candy he was carrying probably helped grease the skids of his chivalry, but still, so not what I expected. I said "nice work, kid" then I hustled back inside and turned off the lights and ran to the back of the house. Problem solved.

All that's left to do now is sit back and wait for the local punks to smash my pumpkins. On the street. Where the city will come by and sweep them up with a big street sweeper machine. Um, thanks?

Also: best worst costume has to go to the kid who showed up in white t-shirt with "wii" written on the front in black magic marker. I think he was supposed to be a wii. Great stuff.

A few weeks back I picked up one of those network storage drives at the local computer megastore. I went with the Buffalo LinkStation but I didn't do any real research so maybe that's the wrong one to get. Don't do what doodle does just because doodle does it.

What it is: 500 gigabytes of network ready web-browsable media servin' ass kickin' network storage. And it worked as soon as I turned it on. Bam. Right on the network. A little light set-up - via the web-based admin console - and it's like I've never been with out it. A couple of hours later I've got all our photos and music and stuff up there and I couldn't pat myself on the back hard enough. Genius. Seriously. I was so pumped. I'd [d]evolved our house into a dumb terminal world. We basically use the web for everything now - mail, calendar, documents and spreadsheets, whatever else google is offering yes I'm a tool so save it - and once I offloaded our 'media' to the NAS, the client we use became basically irrelevant. I know!

What it's not: friendly with iTunes. At all. And yes, I noticed that it immediately showed up in iTunes as a 'shared' playlist or whatever, but of course you can't sync your player to that, because then you'd be stealing. Even though you own the music. And the drive it's on. But whatever. Result: I 'add folder' from the NAS to my iTunes and it imports everything. Which takes like a week. Also: iTunes doesn't 'watch' a directory like, say, Picasa does, so you have to add all your new tunes via iTunes instead of just dragging to the NAS. Which is a super bitch when you're so proud of how you built your whole network into a dumb terminal zone and now one [literally] stupid app is ruining it and chaining you to a specific box. Gross.

And yes, I've already d/l'd several iTunes alternatives and will be going with one of them. Thanks for asking.

On a related note: my Deadhead buddies have finally started doing the massive HD trades I've been dreaming about since the early 90's. I just knew this day would come. And I'm a little choked up by it all. Um, does anyone know anyone who wants like 1500 cassettes? Please?

Attention punk kids who think it'd be worthwhile to break into my jeep: it's not. Here comes the inventory:

• AM/FM factory stereo
• 3 bags of baby clothes that need to get to the goodwill
• 1 roll of duct tape - used to tape rear window closed
• 1 set of jumper cables
• 4 bungee cords
• beach towel for when I leave windows down and it rains
• less than a dollar in change

Jackpot, I know. The guys at work never say it out loud, but whenever I drive to lunch I can tell that they're jealous. I'm sure it's mostly the bungee cords.

I bring this up because the neighbor girl stopped by the other day to let me know that her brother had been up watching tv late at night and had seen a group of kids - her words - "trying to break into your jeep". Her brother called the cops and the cops came and I think they may have even caught the kids but she wasn't sure. I'll maybe call down to the station tomorrow just to see if they wrote anything down.

My favorite part is the "trying to break into" part. For one, it's always unlocked. For two, the back window is duct taped closed. So I really hope it was more "succeeding" than "trying". You never know with this generation, though. They probably had to stop halfway thru peeling the duct tape off to txt some updates to their myspace pages. Then sit around in a circle and wait for someone to tell them how good of a job they were doing. As a team.

Honestly, a 10-year-old starting-to-rust jeep with duct tape holding the windows closed? That's a target? So weak.

(Full Disclosure: this happens to me every 6 months or so, though it's been a few years since it's happened at the house. Huh.)

If you're one of those people who isn't necessarily comfortable watching a stage full of braced-faced teenagers butcher your fondest Saturday morning childhood memories, be thankful you didn't make it over to Hopkins for the Stages Theater's fall production of 'Schoolhouse Rock' because wow was that community theater in its most raw and enthusiastic form. But I'm totally comfortable with that. At least I thought I would be. Turns out it was maybe a little more unsettling than I was prepared for, but what can you do, the killer 2nd row seats are paid for, the lights are out, the kids are dancing, just roll with it.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it - because I did, on many levels, and duh, it's a kids theater where kids put on shows for other kids, so it's not like I went in expecting greatness or anything - but that doesn't mean I didn't notice the subtle scent of tragedy wafting thru the air. Because rest assured it was there. And every other child of the late-70's in the audience was sniffing it right along with me. Because when you feed a song as immensely awesome as '3 is a Magic Number' through the meat grinder that is community theater, the results aren't always going to, um, maintain the immense awesomeness of the original. And maybe you're ok with that, and maybe you're kinda like "stop! you're hurting my childhood!"

But the kids really seemed to be trying their best and having fun and jumping around and stuff, so that was cool. And the line for autographs was like a bajillion fans long, so it was obviously working for the tikes in the crowd (junior included). Also, it's not like I know anything [at all] about musical theater so I should probably just shut the hell up.

I just made a piece of toast. Best part: I got to open a brand new jar of peanut butter. Second best part: I finished off the jar of jam. I mean seriously, how crazy coincidental is that? It's like the intersection of two kitchen waves. What's the term for that again? Hmm, maybe just 'intersection' now that I think about it, but whatever, it's still felt like I was snacking in some weird multidimensional toast universe while rolling snake eyes 4 times in a row. I know, spooky.

To state the obvious: yes, now that I write it down it seems much less crazy, but trust me, if you would have been there watching me make that piece of toast, you would have been loving it just as much as I was. And yes, this was way too random navel gazey, I know. I'll make it up to you later.

Or maybe now? Because I've been working on trying to find a good time to use this analogy I came up with the other day. At the time I was over at that Party Card Outlet store at Knollwood picking up some balloons. I parked the Jeep, opened the door, looked down, and noticed a dirty condom on the ground next to my parking space. As I carefully stepped around it I thought "Huh, finding a condom in the Knollwood parking lot... that's gonna make a great analogy someday." But now it's been a few days and I haven't had the chance to work it in and I'm starting to worry I'll forget about it. So instead of writing it down in my Big Book of Analogies - in which it would be the first and only entry, obvs - I'll just write it down here and then when I finally do work it in you all can smile and nod knowingly and say "good for him, he finally got to use it." It'll probably go something like "blah blah blah is like finding a condom in the Knollwood Mall parking lot: sure you're a little disgusted, but are you really that surprised?" I know, it's genius. Simmons would have used it 14 times by now. Maybe I just need to work on being disgusted more often. Lucky for me Hoffmaldo called earlier requesting a Taco Bell lunch tomorrow. My wait may finally be over.

That toast story ruled. You know I'm right.

The Qwest boys have been heavy up in the neighborhood since Friday. And when I say 'heavy', I mean heavy. Like 30+ trucks at one point. I guess the rain we had last week soaked into some big cable and ruined it. It carried 2700 pair of wires. Served a bunch of houses and one of the local hospitals or clinics or something. Ouch. The new one they put in has 3000 pair of wires in it. They have to individually hook up each wire. It takes forever. They've been working round the clock on it. I talked with one dude who was on his 36 straight hour. (Yes, that's well into double time, in case you were wondering.) I've offered them coffee a couple of times, but they always say no. Even after explaining that me giving them coffee should in no way mean that they should bump my DSL speed while they were down in the hole. Because my coffee is no strings. Though if they wanted to I wouldn't complain. Because it is good coffee. I mean, I grind it myself. So yeah, that should be worth something.

A quick down-and-back to Rochester over the weekend. Mostly to attend a party in honor of the man shown above with the big smile on his face. Why is he smiling you ask? Sure, that giant beer in his hand probably has something to do with it, but it's mostly because after 39 years of slavin' for The Man, my old man is officially done working. And yes, those are people years, not dog years. 39 of them. I know, wow. All for the Same Man. I know, WOW. Do people even do that anymore? I would bet not, and I can think of 401 reasons why. And they all start with 'k'. That's a 401k joke in case you missed it. I'm thinking I shouldn't have gone with it now that I had to spell it out, but whatever, I laughed.

So yeah, he's done. And now he's spending his days doing whatever it is you do when you don't have to work anymore. And honestly who cares what that is, I don't even want to know, I don't want the surprised ruined, because when I get there - the day before I turn 45 - it's going to be awesome. I just hope it includes go-karts.

Two other notables from the down and back:

• The Elk Farm in Pine Island had a new[er] sign up that mentioned that in addition to 'meat products', they now also sell antlers. "Oh sweet!" I say, "We should get some antlers!" "No," she says. "We could use them as a coat rack!" "No," she says. "To hang keys?" "No." "I got it, we..." "No." "One pair?" "No" "A smal..." "No." She wins. Again. Boo.
• We stopped along the way home and did the pumpkin thing. It was a hardcore working farm this time. Like "over there are 1000 cows and over there are a couple truckloads of pumpkins we arranged into a 'patch'... have at it." Lemme just say you could smell the Halloween everywhere. But it was still the usual blast. The yard of the farmhouse had been decorated with like 200 crazy ghosts and zombies and stuff. Total Griswold style. So that was cool. And then when we were done the nice farmer dude wheeled our wagon load of pumpkins over to our eurotrash sedan and helped me load them up, all the while making odd pseudo-political conversation in what seemed to be an attempt to get me to take a stand on the Iraq war. What this guy didn't realize is that if it would have saved me a couple bucks on pumpkins, I would have taken whatever side he wanted. Duh.

Meet Monica. Monica lives here in the neighborhood with her family. We hang out at the park and have playdates and the occasional chaotic family dinner party and/or bonfire type thing. She's a riot. She's married to a guy in marketing. He's also a riot. He's a lot like me, just better than I am at everything sports related. I call him Dave+1. Oh, you play soccer? He was all state. Hockey? Team captain and MVP. You ski? Yeah, he heli'd in Alaska for a couple of seasons. With a grizzly bear on his back. Did I mention he's a riot? It's not all one sided, though, I'm better at some stuff - like yard work and math - and one time he had a bat in his house and he came whimpering to my door to ask for help and that was totally sissy, so it's not like he's superman. I also think I'm taller. But who's measuring.

Anyway, a while back D+1 needed some website work done so he naturally turned to me because he knew my job has something to do with computers and we all look alike to him. So I helped him out and it wasn't that much work and he broke out the "if there's anything I can do for you" routine and I made a note and we shook hands and that was that.

Did I mention my wardrobe is a mess? Because it is. And even though that's a whiplash tangent, it's still relevant. Because I have no clue how to buy clothes. Never have, never will. But guess who does? That's right: Monica. She's a "stylist". She knows about things like "cuffs" and "fabrication" and "socks". She bought clothes for Leann Chin (!!) and styled for Macy's and did tons of work that relies on color matching skills that I simply don't have.

So here's the part where I tell you about how I parlayed my geek skills into a personal styling/shopping experience. It started tonight when she came over for a baseline meeting. A "what do I have to work with purge-a-thon spectacular" if you will. We talked and gawked for a while and she laughed and I tried to defend myself and she kept laughing and at one point she said something like "oh, these are 90% polyester!!" though that may not be an exact quote because it was hard for me to understand her what with her talking and throwing up in her mouth at the same time. I think it went well.

So now she's got her shopping list and her idea book and all I have to do is sit here and wait for her to knock on my door with The Pants and The Shirts. It could happen anytime. It's all very exciting. Maybe a little too exciting, even. It is just pants, after all. But still, they could show up *anytime*. Pants! At your door!

Also, I'm a little concerned she's overly invested [emotionally] in this whole thing and that she's going to be upset when I refuse to wear some killer stylish orange quilted puffy blazer thing she got for me. I asked her about it and she swears she's just having fun and that she won't be offended either way. I'm not sure if that means I can be offended or not, but as long as she's cool with it.

Off we go.

Just who is that handsome man holding up the 'number 1' sign while sitting in an Italian made go kart capable of going 0-40 in 3 seconds? Um, doy, that's me, right after I put an old fashioned kart style beat down on the rest of my co-workers. How big of a beat down, you ask? Well, I'm holding up the #1, aren't I? And you know what the #1 means, don't you? Um, yeah, of course you do. So I guess there's no need to explain it, then. But still, what if this means that I'm supposed to quit my job and be a professional Italian go kart driver? Looks like I have some big decisions to make.

This all went down in Saint Louis over the weekend. The rest of the time was spent in work meetings. Except for the part on Friday night where a belligerent Hoffmaldo pushed me into a fountain at the office complex we were staying at. To be fair to Maldo, though, I was kind of asking for it. And by "kind of asking for it" I mean "stumbling a bit and maybe kind of an easy target". That's what friends are for.

Another great show. The opener was outrageous-concert-highlight-not-to-be-forgotten-for-a-lifetime material. It was mostly solid from there on out, but I'll admit it never got back there for me. Spiders and Handshake got close, though. Everything sounded good. Except 'Hate it Here', with its awful lyrics that prevent me from enjoying the music.

Crowd was good. Active and involved and standing up for the most part. Starting to skew older now. Way more iPhones than weed these days. Parents with their teenaged kids. Date nights. A fun scene.

Here we go. I'm at scoreboard. ESPN can't keep the feed. No sound, but at least we get Wham on the speakers.

13:31 - KG gets the ball off the tip. New era officially beginning.

13:32 - Violet Palmer in London for the occasion. It's a playoff atmosphere here in Minnetonka. Fan-tastic.

13:35 - Juwan looking spry and young tearing down a rebound off a missed FT.

13:38 - KG touches at 4 minute mark: 0

13:39 - And there it is. KG to line. Gomes fouled out.

13:39 - Welcome to the NBA THEO RATLIFF MONSTER JAM PUT DOWN IN YOUR FACE. Gotta look sharp in that final contract year my man.

13:40 - Hoffman ordering wings. Buffalo. Not atomic. Didn't you have lunch? Of course you did. "But this is an event."

13:40 - KG missing first free throw as NKOTB's 'Step by Step' rocks the sound system.

13:41 - KG beatdown of Theo under the rim. Violet hot and bothered. Can we get a male ref in here to sort this out, please?

13:41 - Buckets for 3 from baseline. Hoffman calls division champs. Book it.

13:43 - Drive and dish to Brewer who bounces it off the side of the backboard. WELCOME TO THE NBA MISTER BREWER.

13:44 - Finally first commercial. Now I can drink my diet and catch my breath. And duck out for a quick cry.

13:47 - And we're back, though now they're rolling the NBAtv (non-HDTV) feed. The green is less green, but it doesn't hurt any less.

13:48 - KG update: still not involved in offense. Must be Buckets tough D slowing him down.

13:49 - An antique Gary Payton showing us he's only maybe borderline irrelevant.

13:50 - Buckets a one man show at this point. Passing to himself.

13:51 - Whittman looking concerned pacing sidelines. I'm not sure he knew about the whole "KG trade" situation.

13:52 - There's only 14 people in the stands, but I still haven't seen McHale. You wouldn't think that sweater would be hard to find, but so far no luck. He obviously made the trip, right?

13:53 - Brewer offensive foul while dribbling. "Worse than this music" -- Baker

13:54 - Anonymous thug checks in for the wolves.

13:57 - Another 3 from buckets. Putting them on his back. Bring it home. Using it up in the first preseason game.

13:57 - Anonymous Thug has ball. Dribbles off foot. WELCOME TO THE NBA ANONYMOUS THUG.

13:59 - 1Q over. Buckets ends with 16 points, which is a 64/game pace. I'm telling you, this is his year. Start lining up on Nicollet Mall.

14:00 - Wings gone. "I was super hungry".

14:00 - Marko's line: 0 touches, 0 minutes played.

14:02 - 2Q go. I'm stopping at half, tho it's rumored starters will play whole game. For the fans. In England.

14:02 - Turns out Anonymous Thug is actually Gerald Green. The most athletic player to wear the tree trim since Mark Davis.

14:03 - Mad Dog on bench. Made the trip. Still looking for McHale.

14:04 - Wolves take first lead. A slimmed down Craig Smith learns the hard way that you can't double dribble in Europe either.

14:05 - Celtics with two white guys on the floor. Integrity of game on the line.

14:06 - Al Jefferson drives baseline and throws down. I have seen The Future. WELCOME TO THE NBA MISTER JEFFERSON.

14:07 - Uptempo and ugly would be my adjectives at this time. And that's just the music in this place.

14:11 - McHale's kid shooting freethrows for BOS.

14:12 - Buckets' "not a team player" reputation remaining safe. For now. *clang*

14:13 - Foye update: struggling. Takes seat on bench between two anonymous thugs.

14:14 - KG unseen in Q2.

14;15 - BOS ties game. Marko in. Choosing not to play defense as McHale Junior drives down the lane for a jam. 'Brike House' is on. The atmosphere is really starting to pick up in here. Can i get another diet?

14:15 - Gerald Green touches the ceiling and pulls down a board. The Future shuffles 19 times and tosses one in. The Future gets the space he needs. Especially in Europe.

14:19 - Chris Richard update - 0 touches; 0 minutes. Still more defensive contributions than Marko.

14:20 - KG still on bench. Laughing, loving life. Planning title party. It hurts because it's true.

14:20 - Turns out that's Tony Allen not Ray and the wolves starters are basically playing the celtic scrubs.

14:22 - KG back in for final 5 of half. Other BOS heavies, too.

14:23 - Um, yeah, the 'dynamic' has changed already.

14:25 - Marko tries to dribble against The Glove. Goes about like you'd expect.

14:26 - KG drops one in from top of the key. Clearly had no trouble getting that move thru customs.

14:26 - Our whole backcourt looks rotten.

14:27 - KG presses baseline on an inbounds. He's heated up. I wonder if some trash talk maybe went on. Just maybe. Marko has to call time. We look like idiots. I'm as shocked as you are.

14:32 - Interior passing by BOS making us look like idiots. I'm as shocked as you are.

14:33 - Marko a total disaster. Multiple turnovers back to back to back. I'm as shocked as you are.

14:35 - Circus passing around the perimeter. BOS actually trying now. It's gonna be a long season. But hey, Gomes looks good in that Spree jersey.

14:37 - Final play of the half. Oddly set up to Marko fading away from 3. Brutal. Buckets 0 points in Q2, dropping his average to 32/game.

14:40 - Back to work. It's been an emotional half. I just hope I can hold it together long enough to finish whatever it is that I do.

A guy I work with caught me in one of those situations where he asked me to do something "sometime" and I said "sure, that'd really be fun" when what I was actually thinking was "sure, that'd probably be fun, but there's also a chance that he'll forget about this whole thing right after he walks away and if that's the case I'm totally cool with that, too." I'm sure you've been there, we all have.

But of course he didn't forget and every week or two he'd bring it up again and I'd have to pull out my book of excuses (soccer, out of town, kickboxing, whatever) and reply with my regrets. To be fair to me, though, the 'excuses' were always legitimate conflicts, never just made up stories to avoid getting together. But he stayed with it - not without some encouragement from me, mind you - and eventually we found a mutually agreeable date and time.

Now here's the part where I tell you that last Monday night me and this guy from work got together down at the Saint Louis Park skate park for a late night ramp and flats throwdown straight outta 1988.

I'll give you a minute. Ok, let's continue.

And here's the part where I tell you that sure, I still push my [now vintage] board(s) around the neighborhood on occasion. It's perfect for when you need to run down to the park to meet the family and you don't want to walk your bike home, duh. So I'm still comfortable and confident enough on flat ground that I don't feel like I'm going to hurt myself or those around me. But WOW has it been a long time since I rode any type of ramp. Or attempted anything other than an ollie. Or done a 180 for that matter. I'm thinking it's been over 15 years. WOW again, I say, WOW.

I'm going to break the rest of this story down into two parts. The first part will be the park, which is actually a nice little park. When I think about how we used strap our boards on our backs and ride our bikes down to the Country Kitchen to grind the same curb over and over - because that was the only game in town - it just doesn't seem 'normal' to have all these little ramp parks all over the place. At least they seem to be getting used.

Anyway, I hit it up for maybe 20 or 30 minutes and found my grove pretty fast. I didn't drop in or anything crazy, but I got up and down and got my turns on and they've got some rails and funboxes and stuff and I tried - and failed miserably - to hit those a few times. All in all not too bad. Better than I expected, even.

Now the second part, or, what I like to call the "More Advil? Yes, please" part. Because WOW did I pull some stomach muscles. Who knew I even had stomach muscles? And who knew that if you pull your stomach muscles it hurts to breathe and walk and laugh and eat? All things I do often. It was brutal. But I didn't go to the doctor. Because I know he just would have said "take a ton of Advil" so that's what I did and I think it's finally better. Only a week. I'd say it was worth it.

I'd go back.

A few weeks back my 50f1.4 lens got jacked-up and the autofocus stopped working. Ouch. We were down at a neighborhood block party thing when I first noticed it was broken. It was a beautiful night and there was tons of good food and drink and even a really mint looking jumpy castle that I know I could have snuck into, but rather than getting my bounce on, I chose to spend the better part of the evening staring down at my camera, turning it off an on, cursing softly, and taking random test pictures. "Nope." *fumble fumbe* *click* "wtf!" *fumble fumble* *beer* *click* "Nope." As if it were just going to magically heal itself. Ugh.

I assumed it was a brick, but I googled up my options just to be safe. Oh look, you can get them repaired by the official service center. Witness: you go to canon's website, you fill out some silly "request a quote" form, you prepay a flat repair fee, you print out a form, you send it in with your broken lens, they fix it, they send it back. Genius! I mailed mine early last week and as of today I've got it back in my grubby little paws. I think they had it a total of 2 days. And it wasn't crazy outrageous expensive, either. Yeah, I know, that's kind of how it supposed to work, but come on, who in this day and age expects that type of service? Certainly not me, and I shop at Lund's.

A pleasant surprise.