My Blog Is Not For You

Taking the Training Wheels Off

2009-07-24T11:24:00.001-05:00

From Vern

As a child and young adult, new emotions are hitting you left and right. Remember puberty? But once you reach a certain age, new emotions are few and far between. I may not be as elderly as say, my sister Nancy, but I have seen a couple of years and a lot of experiences that have guided me to where I am. It seems that all of my experiences have led to and prepared me for the last couple of days.

As most of you blogger types know, Nancy has very recently undergone surgery to remove an ovarian tumor. It came on very suddenly and forced all of us to emotionally deal with it quickly. In some ways, I felt my denial was still present when she went into surgery. The whole thing seemed more like a play, unfolding before my eyes. I never questioned that she would be around for a long time, even as they cut her open to find God knows what. So when the surgeon came to the waiting room with the good news that not only had the cancer not spread, but that it might not be cancer at all, you would think that all I would feel would be relief. There was relief, to say the least, but there was also something else. It was like the totality of it all came over me, and I had to hold back tears, tears that had been waiting to spill over when reality hit. This was one of the most intense emotions I had ever felt in my life. The realness of it all hit me like a ton of bricks, while the relief spread over me like a happy blanket. I was experiencing the fear of my sister dying while relief flooded my body. Weird, huh? I looked around at my family and wondered if they felt the same. It was hard to know, and I wondered what emotion was read on my face by my loved ones. I also asked myself, “Have I ever felt like this before? Like my heart was breaking and leaping out of my chest with joy, all at the same time?” I have been blissful, elated, heartbroken, scared and slaphappy before, but not all at once! Did I invent a new emotion, at least in the world of Vern? I think I did!

The next day, I was excited to see Nancy at the hospital. When I arrived at 7 am, she was happy, alert, talkative and pain-free. She took catnaps and we reviewed all of the information that she had heard the night before, but couldn’t really remember. Her surgeon came in and discussed how well she was doing and we were all happy. Unfortunately, by afternoon the tide had turned. Nancy was experiencing pain that, over a period of 3 hours, went from moderate to quite severe. She felt the epidural wasn’t working, and by 3 pm, she was feeling everything. For her privacy I won’t go into details, but I have never seen my sister, the strongest person I know, seem to be in so much agony. The nurses were doing everything they could, but the anesthesiologist just wasn’t responding. They were paging her every two minutes (I was listening to their phone conversations!), but they couldn’t administer anything without her. I felt such compassion for Nancy, anger at the anesthesiologist and frustration at the helplessness of the situation. On the advice of my twin, I finally told the nurse that if the anesthesiologist “didn’t get her shit together and help my sister” that we were leaving the hospital. That worked and within 10 minutes, her pain had subsided and she was comfortable.

I, unfortunately, was not. Sweat was pouring off of my body and I could feel my whole being shaking, like Starbucks had taken the place of blood in my veins. The drama was over, but I could’ve battled the entire American medical system if I had to. Less than 24 hours after Nancy’s surgery I was again feeling something I had never experienced before, emotions so strong that my entire body was physically reacting. It was massive adrenaline mixed with powerlessness and a dash of relief. What was I going to name this new emotion?

After I left the hospital a couple of hours later (Nancy was sleeping like a baby), I couldn’t shake those feelings. My hands shook for hours and my brain was clouded. I couldn’t believe all the emotions I had felt in the last day, especially since many of them were new to me. I felt like a child just taking the training wheels off; excited that I had conquered something, but also preoccupied by the sting of a skinned knee. Hearing the news out of surgery was one of the happiest days of my life, but the hours where I watched Nancy suffer were definitely my worst.

I am so thrilled that Nancy is recovering and doing better every hour, but also very sad that she has to go through this challenge. I know that my life is better, not only because I have my sister, but also because I have developed emotionally as a person. Nancy, as the intelligent sister, will rest assured that she continues to teach me things that I could never have learned without her. But look out (Nancy and everybody else), because you never know when new emotions will pop up in your life and change you forever.

Life Update

2009-07-20T22:41:00.002-05:00

Shit hit the fan. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer this morning after spending the past few days in the hospital. Surgery to remove well, everything, is tomorrow evening. I started up a Caringbridge site for my family to keep people up to date. This blog will take a small hiatus until I am feeling up to posting again.

See you again on the other side.

Oh, the Glamorous Life of a Blogger

2009-07-11T16:51:00.001-05:00

aka Whoo! Free Tickets!

So last week I got an email from Cirque Du Soleil asking if I would like a pair of tickets to their Kooza show because I am a blogger. My initial response was “uh, have you seen my blog?” but I quickly realized I needed to take full of advantage of this mistake on their part, and returned their email with a highly excited “Yes, please!”

I have been to a couple of shows in the past and have really enjoyed them and this was no different. I expected to have seats in a back corner, behind a pole, but no. My friend Barb and I got there and the tickets were center stage, ten rows back. Sweet! Besides the tickets being perfect, the show was really good. All the standards you would expect from Cirque and nicely tied together with a little story. I did buy the CD while I was there (I love Circque music) to help support the show.

My favorite act? Of course, The Wheel of Death! (cue scary music)

I actually had my hand up to my mouth the entire time they were performing. I really, really want to try it. Just once.

Kooza is in Lowertown in St. Paul, MN until August 9th and you can follow this special link to get tickets for as low as $42.

I want to have your babies.

A Year Ago I was Tromping Around Europe and the Middle East

2009-06-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

Hard to believe it’s been a year since I was on my last big trip, and I just realized I hadn’t ever went back and posted my favorites pictures from each country. So, now it’s finally time.

First up, Greece. You can re-read my posts from Mykonos, Rhodes and Athens if you would like. The following picture is of one of the windmills of Mykonos. The windmills were built starting sometime in the 16th century. While they are non-functional, there are a total of 16 windmills left standing today and they do make for a pretty skyline.

And what do you think happens when you mix a relatively demure Aunt with a handful of birdseed and a million starving pigeons in the center of Athens?

Next up is Turkey. This picture is from the Temple of Apollo at Didyma. There was a natural spring here where the beautiful Leto is supposed to have spent an hour of love with Zeus. She then gave birth to the twins Artemis and Apollo. I’m not sure what it is about this picture, but I love it.

Cyprus was probably the biggest surprise of the entire trip. I had absolutely no expectations and ended up taking my favorite photo of the entire trip. This picture is from the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Omodos. It was a very pretty monastery way up in the mountains and I caught this in just the right light.

Egypt was so incredible I needed to do two posts, here and here. Oddly, I didn’t get any shots that I *loved*, I think it was because there was just so much to take photos of. This one is of the pyramids and that haze behind them is Cairo.

This is a view of the Khan El Khalili market which has been around since 1382. I love this because it really starts to capture the controlled chaos that is Cairo.

Capri, Sorrento and Pompeii. Well, you can’t get away without showing the absolutely stunning view from the island of Capri. Why can’t I just be independently wealthy so I can live there?

Rome. I have a ton of photos I love of Rome, so you’d think I could come up with something less clichéd than the Coliseum, but no.

So where should I go next?

Yes, I’m on an Illusion Kick

2009-05-28T06:52:00.001-05:00

Each year, the Neural Correlation Society selects its favorite visual illusions. I absolutely love the top three illusions that were selected for 2009.

#3 So, the first one consists of two of the the same picture, the only difference being the contrast level. One our brains decides one is female, the other male. The picture was created with a mix of male and female features, creating an androgynous face. Creepy, huh? (Russell)

#2 Focus on the dot in the middle of the dove. Let it run a couple of cycles…..the background disappears, sort of. (Barkan & Spitzer)

#1 I love, love, love this last one. The break of the curveball….focus your eyes on the dropping ball and it drops straight down. Shift your focus to the blue dot on the right and the ball falls at a 20 degree angle. Shifting your focus back and forth changes the it in midair. (Shapiro, Lu, Knight, Ennis)

The Power of Place

2009-05-20T18:53:00.001-05:00

I get very attached to places. It’s something I’ve always known, but didn’t understand fully until this past month. This goes way back. When I was eight, we were building a new house because my parents had just had the twins. I remember sitting in this tiny room, on my bed, with this horrible orange and green flowered comforter and being completely incapable of imagining a new bedroom, no matter how much bigger and better people kept telling me it would be. I was terribly depressed at just the thought of it. All I wanted was to keep my comfortable little nest. Oddly, I don’t remember the move itself, but that moment of realization at my impending loss of place is an extremely vivid memory.

There is one place that has been consistent my entire life. And only one. My grandparent’s farm. It was this magical place with no rules and endless amounts of “stuff”. Want to use a tipped-on its side truck-body as a spaceship? Sure! Want to practice your sweet sling-shot skills busting out all the windows of the rusty old Dodge? No problem! Want to attach a parachute to a barn cat and toss it out of the hayloft window? Absolutely! (well, until Grandpa found out… and as a side-note, the cat was perfectly ok, and there was no way it was going to let me do that twice anyway). The picture in the upper-right hand corner of the blog is of me at about 3 “helping” in the barn. I used that here, long before I understood its relevance, because it is my favorite picture of me as a kid.

It’s gone now. The barn, the milk shed, the house; even the giant trees that were all gnarly, yet iconic….all gone, taken down in the last month. I imagine I will hardly recognize it. I haven’t been able to make myself go back and look. Just the thought of that empty landscape brings tears to my eyes. Intellectually, yes, I understand that things change, but this isn’t about the head. It’s about how a place holds meaning. It’s about how the rope swing fit my butt just right. It’s about grandparents that understood that all kids really needed was freedom and their own imaginations. It’s about how the heart intermingles love and place when that time and those people can’t be there anymore.

Maybe it’s because I’m about to turn 40 and feeling all nostalgic. Maybe it’s just because it was really the last thing left from my childhood. I’m not sure, but I’m finding it very difficult to let it go.

More Reasons to Not Believe What You See - Illusions

2009-05-18T22:59:00.001-05:00

Ok, these three illusions freaked me out. Squares A and B are the exact same shade. I’m not kidding. The exact same shade. I sat and stared at it for a good five minutes and was all, “nah….” Until I printed it out, cut out each square and placed them right next to each other. And then my brain exploded. Go to the original site and try it. Oh, and they have the explanation there too.

This one is freaky too. Stare at the black cross in the center and very quickly you begin to see a green dot that goes around and around. Keep staring and eventually all of the purple dots disappear. Cool!

This last one actually gives me a bit of a headache. If you can’t see the motion here, go to the original site, pop a couple of Advil and wait for the magic to happen. They also have a ton more, but these were ones I loved.

This Just Needs to be Said

2009-05-13T19:39:00.001-05:00

Miss California,

I know I’m not an expert here, but I just have this feeling that a God that prohibits gay marriage can’t be real thrilled with the breast augmentation you are sporting there.

Just sayin’.

Boobies for God

You know it’s true….Aporkalypse 2009

2009-05-01T21:58:00.001-05:00

What happens every morning at 6 am…..

2009-04-29T19:07:00.001-05:00

Dashed Childhood Dreams

2009-04-09T18:49:00.001-05:00

As a youngster, I held a lot of interesting beliefs. I had an intense desire to “understand” everything around me and came up with rather elaborate explanations based on a combination of old World Book Encyclopedias and half-truths or out-and-out lies people told me, no doubt in an attempt to stem my constant barrage of “But, why?”. One by one they have fallen away (luckily, most before I was 10), but I recently realized I was still holding onto one last one, and I’m a bit sad to see it go.

When I was about 5, I started to believe I had a twin out in the Universe somewhere, and from hearing about the Cold War, I was also convinced she lived in Russia. I was sure she was just like me, but lived in a castle, had a pony and got all the candy she wanted. Believing she was in Russia didn’t actually stop me from looking for her everywhere though. Kept me busy for years. Apparently, this believe isn’t all that far-fetched. Francois Brunelle, a photographer, has actually created a body of work around this…..finding unrelated people that could pass as twins.

Around that same time, I was also convinced that if people saw me singing to the radio while I was in the backseat of my parent’s car, they would think that *I* was the actual artist. This was before seat belts were a big thing and I spent every car trip, no matter how short, glued to the window attempting to make eye contact and lip synching to random strangers. I was *that* kid. Never occurred to me that other people could memorize songs too….. I expect it looked a bit like this, only Cat Stevens instead of “Jukebox Hero".

Now, I love the Internet, but sometimes it offers up things that scream “WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN!” This is usually reserved for shocking images, which I won’t get into, but sometimes it is also for dashing little girl dreams. Antipode Map is one such site. I was so enamored with the idea of digging to China that I dug holes. Lots and lots of holes. It got so bad I was digging covert holes behind the garage. Convinced I could get myself to China. I had about the same attention span though, and only a plastic shovel, so no hole was more than about a foot deep. Good thing, because if I had gotten past the hot magma I would have ended up in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The only people that were getting to China were a few lucky kids in South America. Drats!

This sort of disappointment screams for sparkly rainbow unicorns. Click it. It’ll make you feel better. Click it twice.

Things I Learned When my House almost Burnt Down

2009-04-01T21:00:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, my dryer caught on fire a little over a week and a half ago. Luckily I hadn't went off to Sweeney's as a friend had encouraged and was able to get the fire out using two (yes 2!) fire extinguishers. The whole house would have went if I hadn't been here. I had a lot of time to think as I was cleaning up the damage and getting everything replaced, and these are the things I have learned (and what I have done about them). (Photo by dawn m. armfield used under Creative Commons license)

1. Smoke Alarms - Yes, the basics. The first floor smoke alarm didn't go off until I was in the midst of the second fire extinguisher and the basement alarm never went off at all. Check them and check them often. It also made me realize that if it was the middle of the night and the basement alarm did actually go off, I would never hear it enough to wake up way up on the second floor.

Solution: Kidde 0919-9999/ RF-SM-DC Battery-Operated Smoke Alarm, Wirelessly InterconnectableMy house is almost 125 years old and a total bitch to try to wire anything new into, so these battery fire alarms that wirelessly hook together are perfect. If one goes off, they all do. (Yes, Julio they do exist!)

2. Fire Extinguishers. Have more than one and know where they are. Luckily, I remembered where the two I owned were stashed. The morning after, I realized I owned a third....strapped to the wall next to the basement steps. Ran past it three times during all the commotion....never realized it was there. Know where your fire extinguishers are.

Solution: Purchased two new fire extinguishers and I can tell you, within about 2 inches, their location.

3. My stuff. I realized there were some things in my life that if they disappeared, say in a fire, I would be lost. The very first category that popped into my head were my photos. Lots and lots of digital photos. All that are backed up.....on an external hard drive that is stored about 50 feet away from my laptop. Not good.

Solution: Crashplan. These guys rock. Seriously. For $5 bucks a month I can have my 40 GB (yes, 40 GB) of photos automatically backed up over the internet and hosted at their site. Worth every penny. The initial backup took the entire weekend, but now it will just backup changes automatically in the background. If you are looking for a free solution and have a friend with some hard drive space you can also use their software to backup to that friend’s computer over the Internet….and yes, totally free! Genius!

4. My other stuff.....physical stuff. This is a little trickier and is going to take a while. I have a bunch of old photos and documents that I do not want to lose. There is of course, other physical things I wouldn’t want to lose, but there just aren’t solutions (at least not any I can come up with) for sentimental physical things (like my favorite childhood book, my grandma’s china, etc.) If you can come up with anything, let me know.

Partial Solution: Make every thing I can electronic. The next rainy weekend I’m going to spend some quality time with my scanner and convert them to electronic format which will then be auto-magically backed up with Crashplan.

Pricey lessons to learn, but not nearly as pricey as losing those few things that mean so much to me.

TED: The best thing on the Internet

2009-03-22T12:22:00.001-05:00

TED is a treasure trove of short talks about every imaginable subject by some of the best speakers in the world. TED consists of a few annual events, with the major one being a conference hosted in Monterey, California. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the events bring together some of the world’s most interesting people who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). I recently added “attend TED” to my “things to do before I die” list.

I haven’t even come close to watching all of the videos at TED, but these are a sampling of a few that amused or touched me in some way. All of these are shorter than a sitcom and infinitely more entertaining. Enjoy!

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight – Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who studied her own stroke as it happened. An amazing story. Which side of the brain would you choose?

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Adam Savage. I think he would make the best weekend hangout buddy ever. Adam Savage: My quest for the dodo bird, and other obsessions

For those that love me, this is what I want for my birthday.

Aimee Mullins: How my legs give me super-powers. Aimee Mullins was a record-breaking runner and long-jumper at the Paralympic Games in 1996 and has a very interesting relationship with her prosthetic legs. It actually makes me want some too.

A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically. Yep, as difficult as you would imagine. He takes the bible absolutely literally and attempts to follow all of it’s rules for a year.

Mike Rowe: Celebrating work -- all kinds of work – Ok, I’ve never watched “Dirty Jobs” before, but if Mike Rowe is this amusing there I am going to have to watch. Warning….this is a little cringe-worthy….especially for you boys.

So, I have 20 years of education spread over about 33 years. I’ve been very well trained to think a particular way and that way does not at all involve being creative. Sir Ken Robinson has it spot on. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Joshua Klein: The amazing intelligence of crows. Joshua built them a vending machine that returns peanuts, and they figured it out! Maybe not a way to get rich quick, but still…..

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man. Just watch. It’ll change your ideas about how “superior” we are.

And for my fellow geeks, Ze Frank: What's so funny about the Web? This is a little dated, but funny, funny stuff.

Party like it’s 1929!

2009-02-26T17:38:00.001-06:00

The economy is in the tank and people keep referring back to 1929 and the Great Depression, so I thought it would be a good time to toss up some money-saving tips and give people a little bit of perspective.

Let’s start with Clara. She was born in 1915, which makes her 93. She grew up through the depression and now has her own online cooking show, Depression Cooking with Clara. It was created by her grandson, Christopher Cannucciari and you can see the official blog here. I watched the first episode and was hooked. I watched the rest in that same sitting. They are short (5-8 minutes), but have a nice mix of how to make good food cheap and “oh, it could be so much worse”, and Clara is infinitely cute. Check it out and help Clara get her 15 minutes. It looks like he’s been uploading for the past 2 years. Hopefully there are still more to come. I’ll embed the first episode to get you started:

It’s never a bad idea to live frugally, and right now is a perfect time to start if you haven’t already. WikiHow has a nice article on How to Apply Lessons Learned from the Great Depression. There are a number frugal living sites. BetterBudgeting has a long list of money-saving tips. Wisebread has a good frugal living section. FrugalVillage has entire website devoted to the subject.

I followed this blog part of last year. A Year of CrockPotting was created through 2008 when Stephanie, the author, decided to create one crockpot meal each day through 2008. This is a great source for cheap meal ideas. Of course it doesn’t get cheaper than Ramen. I lived off this when I was horribly poor in college and beyond. I love this idea of an entire website of Ramen-based recipes, but I’ve gotta draw a line at Batter Fried Ramen.

Mindless Entertainment.....

2009-02-21T16:54:00.001-06:00

While I would love to delude myself thinking that I fill my free time doing noble, educational and meaningful activities like the classes and lectures I talked about in my previous post, I so totally don't. When my brain is full I like nothing better than finding total time-wasters to give my brain a much needed rest.

You've seen the commercials, now go let your brain get soft like a ripe banana. Hulu.com…....May I suggest catching up on LOST or watch a co-worker on Solitary. Week five and he’s still in! Rewatch classic movies like The Karate Kid or Robot Holocaust (I’m truly shocked you can watch this for free….). I’m so afraid, but they have many, many episodes of ALF. It’s worse than I remember.

For some reason I find this endlessly entertaining. The BennyHillifier. Improve any youtube video by putting it to the music from Benny Hill. Running Lizards? Fun!

A fun little free game I found is Dyson. It’s simple, beautiful and totally addicting. My favorite free flash game website is Kongregate. These should keep you occupied for a while! Enjoy!

And I Paid How Much for a Graduate Degree?

2009-02-10T18:16:00.001-06:00

So, it's February. The holidays are done, football is over, the weather is still crap and you don't know what to do with yourself. With the job market the way it is, you know it might be a good idea to take some classes...upgrade those job skills or explore entirely new areas. But, the economy is in the tank, so you don't want to outlay any cash. Well, good news, you don't have to!

Free Lectures/Classes from Big-Buck Schools

If you'd like to listen to lectures from the car or at the gym and have an iPod, you can find a number of lectures from Stanford on Itunes. Even without an iPod you can use iTunes to listen to them on your computer. Ok…seriously, I had never checked this out before. Even if you don’t have an iPod, it is worth the iTunes download to get to all of this free content. There are lectures from Georgia State University, Yale, University of Otago (New Zealand) and a host of others…..and everything I saw was free. Once you are in ITunes, got to “iTunes U”.

MIT has an amazing offering of free classes. Nearly all of their undergraduate and graduate classes have course materials available on their website. While some only offer course notes and exams, many offer video content too.

Free Lecture Aggregators

There are a couple of free lecture aggregators available.

LectureFox includes dups from the MIT offerings above, but also from Yale, UC-San Diego, Vanderbilt and many others. Their easy search shows which lectures have video, audio or notes.

World Lecture Hall doesn't seem quite as accurate (I found a couple of dead links), but it does have different courses listed than LectureFox, so definitely worth a look.

Although not quite as easy to navigate, OpenCulture has different educational content then I have seen on other sites....and all free!

Video Lectures

AcademicEarth is a brand-spanking new site that is actually still in beta. It has a decent collection of video lectures already with an interesting concept of a "playlist"...groupings of lectures that revolve around a central theme. So, if you'd like to have a better understanding of the financial crisis, they have 6 pre-selected lectures for you. How about experiencing the first day of your freshman year? You can do that with their collection of 5 lectures. Very cool.

WGBH Boston - for those of us who were addicted to PBS as a kid . An amazingly diverse set of lectures. A quick browse brought back lectures on "Remembering Julia Child ", "Bill 'Spaceman' Lee on the Art and Science of Pitching" and "Shark Repellent Technologies” . Something for everyone! I do believe I will be spending some quality time here.

I've linked to TED videos in the past and am absolutely addicted to their content. I'll be doing an entire post on my favorite TED lectures in the future.

Paying for It

And if you are the type that just *have* to pay for your classes, you can find some low cost offerings from The Teaching Company. They have a long list of classes, some on audio, some on DVD, and all with course guidebooks.

While none of these will get you a degree, it is a great way to expand your horizons by only using your time. I may just disappear into these sites until spring.

Quit yer bitchin’, it’s not Antarctica

2009-01-31T08:49:00.001-06:00

Of course I found this the day after my last post on ice. This is a gorgeous time-lapse video of Antarctica. It was created by Anthony Powell, a photographer and Satellite Communications Tech who has spent many years in Antarctica. You can see a higher quality version at AntarcticImages. Check out Anthony’s Antarctic-based blog Frostbytes too.

"Time-lapse video filmed in Antarctica, in and around McMurdo Station and Scott Base.

Each year the sun is below the horizon for 4 months in the middle of winter, and above the horizon for 4 months in summer. During the couple of months in between we have more-or-less normal days.

Includes shots of auroras and the very rare polar stratospheric nacreous clouds, which form when ozone depleting gases crystallize in the upper atmosphere in the intense cold.

Summer population is about 1200 people, winter about 130.
This is a demo clip I put together a few years ago to show the potential for time-lapse photography in Antarctica which has been an ongoing project of mine for over 7 years now. I have taken over 1,000,000 individual photos and worn out a number of cameras in the process." Anthony Powell

Gorgeous stuff.

Ice!

2009-01-29T20:51:00.001-06:00

Two weekends ago I was up at my place at Larsmont after a week of –20 temps. That type of extreme cold does some amazing things to Lake Superior. I have never seen the lake frozen that far out. It was an arctic wasteland. It also had created these giant amazing blue shards of ice that were piled up at different spots along the shore.

I know that it looks like these must be edited photos, but that blue is the actual color of the ice at this time of year. I’ve only seen that effect one other time and that was in Alaska --- glacier ice is often that same blue color. I was actually hoping for some romantic reason the ice is blue, but the gods at Google report back that it is the same reason water look blue; it absorbs most of the red and yellow spectrum and reflects back the mostly blue. I personally choose to believe it is the ice fairies at work.

And then last weekend I braved the bitter cold (and got a touch of frostbite for my trouble) and went down to the St. Paul Winter Carnival to check out the ice sculptures.

Alice in Wonderland

Wishful Thinking

Standard Minnesota

I really, really need to go to Mexico.

Roasting Coffee in Jamaica

2009-01-23T17:27:00.001-06:00

From Julio……

The road from Negril, Jamaica to Big Roy’s house is a broken-up cement track straight up the mountains. We feared for our lives on this twisting one lane road, constantly on the lookout for oncoming cars, and watching over the edge to make sure the van didn’t just tip straight over. The road was lined with half-built houses that the locals are in the process of completing, but completion takes years and years. Big Roy and his wife Selina own Selina’s Coffee Bar and Eatery in Negril. Sunday mornings at 10:00 am CST they have a live webcast on their website (generally….I mean it is Jamaica). Well worth a check! Big Roy is also one of the best coffee roasters in Jamaica. He roasts all his coffee by hand and in very small batches.

Big Roy has a special coffee grown just for his coffee shop. It is sold at his shop, at another small coffee shop in Ohio when they come down and get it, and at the The Daily Grind in Stillwater, MN and this was the trip to go fetch more.
	Big Roy Hauling in the Coffee
	At arrival, Big Roy built a wood fire on the roasting platform. The roasting barrel has hundreds of small holes drilled in it. Fifty pounds of raw coffee are poured into the barrel and the barrel is suspended over the fire.
Raw Coffee Beans Loading into the Barrel
The barrel is then constantly turned, the speed of which is determined by years of experience in judging the heat of the fire…..not fast enough and the coffee will burn. They also continually play with the wood in the fire, getting rid of hot spots. It is almost continual activity for an hour or more as the coffee roasts away. They tell done-ness mostly by smell and the quantity of smoke.
	Big Roy Roasting
	Once they are happy with the roast, the coffee beans are spread out over a metal plate and they use a trowel to keep moving the beans around to help cool them off. The beans make the most interesting popping noise, like Rice Krispies as the beans cool and contract. And the smell is amazing!
Cooling the Beans
As you can see from this picture, the raw coffee beans are about the size of a sunflower seed (the inside seed) and when the roasting is complete they darken and expand to normal coffee bean size.

The finished coffee beans cool overnight so the oils inside of the bean can come to the surface. The next morning the beans were super shiny from the oil. Waiting for this step enhances the flavor of the coffee.

We did two batches, one a dark roast and one a light. The two roasts were mixed together when we bagged them to make the final product.

If you’d like to try this coffee it is available at The Daily Grind. It’s available as coffee drinks on Saturday and Sunday, but available to purchase as beans any day of the week. Just ask for the Jamaican Coffee. It isn’t like most coffees; the first sip doesn’t taste very good, but once you get a good mouth coat, the second sip is absolutely amazing.

Willfully Sliding Down the Slippery Slope…..

2009-01-17T11:46:00.001-06:00

My love-affair with coffee started when I was 18 and drinking really bad dorm-coffee as a survival technique. It quickly escalated to slightly better, but still appalling Senate-staffer coffee. Sleep became secondary in my mid-20s since I would just drink coffee from 7am – 10pm. Cold turkey ended up being the only solution for me. A solution I’ve repeated twice. I’ve been clean for about 10 years now and I’m done with it. I want my fix.

Millions of people have an entire life-history with coffee, enough to illustrate it with coffee and napkins. Brilliant! The New York Times dedicates an entire section to coffee. People at NASA have spent time figuring out how to drink coffee out of an actual cup without having deadly drops of scalding hot coffee floating around. Your tax dollars at work :)

So why all the build up? Well, on my trip I made the mistake of drinking both some Turkish coffee and some Italian espresso. And the memories have haunted me. It finally got the best of me and I went out and bought an Italian Brikka stove top espresso maker. It’s cheap and it makes amazing espresso shots with a nice layer of crema on top. Heaven…….and I am lost. So far I’ve been able to limit myself to having one just on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but I feel myself sliding. You have to watch this thing in action. In theory it makes 2 shots of espresso, but I always drink them both. And yes, it’s a tiny as it looks.

We will be having a a guest blogger in the next post or two. My sister Julio (Julie) just got back from Jamaica. You would think that someone from Wisconsin going to Jamaica would be going to escape the arctic weather. Which she did, but the main reason was for coffee. I won’t ruin the surprise, but even I’m looking forward to these posts.

And as a bonus, maybe the most sexist coffee ad in existence. I cringed. I would not have done well in the 60s.

2008 Roundup

2009-01-04T17:46:00.001-06:00

I thought I’d do a quick review of 2008 before charging off into 2009. I started this blog just back in May, for what I thought was just for my trip, never really expected I would keep it up, but here we all are. I managed to pull off 62 posts in just over six months, not that size matters mind you, but impressive as far as I’m concerned. (photo courtesy of NeoWy via Creative Commons)

So I started my blogging experience for my trip, and you can find the first posting for that here. Just keep clicking “Newer Posts” to move through the days. My favorite post of the trip is probably the first post for Egypt, (I am still absolutely enamored by that country) but the most popular post is Athens…..strictly because I mentioned Snuffleupagus. The things people search for on Google…geez!

After I got back I struggled which what to post and basically went with my standard time-proven random-method. My birthday post was popular, as was the optical illusion post. And I did a few of the North Shore, here (my yearly swim in Lake Superior), here and here (the pantless voyageur proved to be a major hit).

And then they held the Republican National Convention here in St. Paul. I took full advantage. My adventures started totally innocently and ended with with me at the wrong end of a gun (again, keep hitting “Newer Posts”).

You all helped me name my new kitten, Vladimir FuzzyNuts and I’ve had a couple of people tell me they’ve tried geocaching after they read my post on it. So whoo!….merging of blogging and real life. Who’da thunk it?

So what will 2009 bring? Hard to tell. I do believe I will have a guest blogger or two (no, I’m not telling), I’m considering doing restaurant reviews, or just reviews of local goings-on and I’ll keep up with the random-whatever-catches-my-eyes posts of the past.

So thanks for sticking it out with me and I’m excited to get 2009 going.

Can somebody hand my sister a Lipitor?

2009-01-02T17:40:00.001-06:00

Well, she did it. I didn’t think she would, but she did. Julio talked Tim at The Daily Grind in Stillwater, MN into making the “Lady’s Brunch Burger” from my previous post. They had one substitution….they used a sausage patty instead of a burger, but otherwise it was the same.

She said it was delicious.

In fact, she had an improvement. On the final bite she added strawberry jelly. She said, and I quote, “it brought out the sweetness of the doughnut.” Apparently, that’s a good thing.

Tim will make this delicious concoction for you too, but you need to bring your own doughnut. I’m secretly hoping they add it to the menu. I may actually have to stop in to have one because Julio does look like she’s enjoying herself.

Xmas Morning Recipes….ok…just kidding…

2008-12-14T16:13:00.001-06:00

My sister Julio, the paramedic, was explaining her favorite “I just worked all night and now need the greasiest breakfast possible” food. Apparently there is some small restaurant in Stillwater that offers “The Lumberjack”. It’s not on the menu, and only those that know of it can get it. It is bacon, sausage, ham, fried egg and cheese, smothered in raspberry jam…..all on a toasted croissant. So, after my coughing fit, it got me thinking…..what can I find that could be worse (or better, depending on perspective) than that. So, Lakeview Paramedics…..this is for you.

Any recipe that begins with “Step 1. Weave Bacon” must count. Julio, I want you to try this and report back. All, I can say is ick. (photo www.holytaco.com)

I’m sure we can find one closer, but the Southern Smothered Breakfast offered by a Huddle House in Florida is really more than I can take. Biscuits, hash browns, sausage, southern gravy and cheese. Heart attack on a plate.

So, In thinking about breakfast food that might kill us, I did a quick google search with the keywords “Paul Deen breakfast die” (seriously, I just did it for my own amusement…..I didn’t think I would get anything) But leave it to Paula Deen to give us The Lady’s Brunch Burger. Hamburger topped with bacon and a fried egg, and to finish it up, it uses a donut instead of a bun. I’m feeling my arteries clog just writing about it. (photo www.foodnetwork.com)

I would love if someone would do a taste-taste on any of these. Take some pics and you can guest blog the results. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

After all that, I thought you could use a bit of a palate cleanser (and I am still fruitlessly searching for holiday spirit), so I give you a nice non-food Christmas chaser. Setup to look like a room from the 70s, this site plays old clips from Christmas specials, holiday TV shows and commercials from 20 years ago. Change the channel and adjust the rabbit ears. It’s been perfect to have going on this rainy, uh, sleety, uh, snowy, below-zero day. Seriously, what is up with the weather?

Bah Humbug!

2008-12-03T22:31:00.001-06:00

I have zero holiday spirit. I have no interest in decorating, shopping or celebrating. I'm not sure if it is the general state of the world, the economy, my current single status or if maybe it's just because I'm getting old. Grrrr…. So, in an attempt to boost my own spirits, I give you some amusing holiday tidbits.

I started with nostalgia and found the Sears Christmas Wishbook from 1975. I would have been 6, and I am pretty sure I paged longingly through this in the months before Christmas. Yep, as soon as I saw this page I knew for sure. I absolutely pined after that kitchen set. But, this is the Sears catalog, so boys, this is for you. It doesn’t get sexier than that.

Ok, this is kinda fun. Make a Snowflake is actually pretty addictive. I keep wanting to make them more and more lacey.

I’ve talked about Pandora Radio on a previous post, but you can use it now to create your own Christmas radio station, or just link to mine.

Finally….In one last desperate attempt, I elfed myself.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Ok, I’ll admit that de-Scrooged me a bit. You can do yourself at Elf Yourself. It only took me about 5 minutes….and I’m still laughing. Oh, and FYI…you can totally do your friends, family or co-workers……hehe…. have fun!

I will admit, this did help a bit. I also signed up for for an “adopt-a-family” today…..the charity has a bunch of Somali immigrant individuals new to the country that need sponsors. It basically means buying gifts for them (which this being Minnesota would be winter clothes and boots and other little gifts) and dropping them off next Thursday. If you are interested shoot me an email and I’ll get you set up. I’m going to shop this weekend for it, and maybe that will get me into the mood.

If you have any other amusing holiday links send them my way and I swear I’ll be all Christmas-y and post them.

Yes, You Can Have Too Many Books (aka An Opportunity to Clean Off Your Bookshelves for a Good Cause)

2008-11-28T15:15:00.001-06:00

So besides spending the day watching the Mork & Mindy marathon, I’m also sorting through about four big bookshelves worth of books. I’ve been a book-addict forever, but I have found myself with a ton of books from grad school that are half-read or just skimmed through that I will never look at again. So, next weekend I’ll be making a trip to Books for Africa to drop off a couple hundred pounds of books. Amazingly, this is not an overstatement. So, as I’m going through my books I thought I’d list out a few that I’ve read over and over. This is in no way a list of “good” books by critics standards, but just the ones that have somehow caught my imagination at different points of my life. Mock as you will :)

House of Leaves – I’ve read this book twice now…both times on vacations and both with total immersion and addiction. It is officially in the “horror” genre, but it is of the “crawl into your head and meet you in your dreams” sort of horror. It is also what I would call “experimental” fiction. With pages of the book that need to be held in a mirror to read, small word puzzles and a portion of the book that is mostly footnotes. So, not exactly a quick read, but one unlike anything you’ve experienced. When I finish books on vacation I generally either give it to a travel mate or leave it wherever I am to save space and weight. This book is a monster and I’ve hauled it back both times.

The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Trilogy), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless (yes, that is five). I’ve read through the entire series a couple of times, and probably read the first three five or six. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is my go-to book when I need a pick-me-up.

Songs of Earth And Power – I’m not hugely into science fiction (although that might be hard to see from this list), but I discovered this book as a teenager and just tossed it back onto my “to read” pile. I think it has something to do with the idea that music and poetry has the power to open other realms and change people that intrigues me.

Suds in Your Eye – I think I was around 10 or 11 when I stole this off my Grandma’s bookshelf. I was a bit of a book thief (see next entry). I read it over and over during my early teen years. I pulled it off my shelf again while searching for a name for Vladdy. I ended up reading it again. Good thing Vlad is male, otherwise he may have ended up being named “Mrs. Feeley”.

And finally, one I just finished that I know I’ll read again. The Book Thief is an absolutely gorgeous book. The narrator of the story is Death, which makes for an interesting viewpoint, and it follows a young girl (the book thief) through her life in Germany during World War II. Truly, the best book I’ve read in a long while.

Oh, and if you’d like to join me on my little book giving adventure, I’ll be going on Saturday, December 6th. Feel free to either join me or to drop books off into my pile. You can see the donation guidelines here.

If Geocaching is Nerdy, I Don’t Want to be Cool

2008-11-18T22:15:00.001-06:00

Well, that might be a little bit of an overstatement, but we really did have a good time with it this weekend. I am back up at Larsmont, MN for a long weekend at my “other place” and my cousins, aunt and I spent most of Sunday traipsing around looking for hidden boxes in the wilderness.

For the uninitiated, geocaching is an internet-enabled version of "letterboxing”, an outdoor “treasure-hunting” game. In geocaching, people use a global positioning system (GPS) to hide and seek caches, which are generally smallish waterproof containers that contain a logbook and other small treasures. Over 800,000 geocaches are currently logged on different internet sites and are located in over 100 countries. So, anywhere you go, geocaching is an option. We have been using geocaching.com as our cache search and logging site, and a quick search of that reveals 82 caches close to Larsmont. They even give you a handy link to Google Maps to help you plan your day of searching.

So this mixes a number of my loves……geeky electronic gadgets, the internet and semi-randomly hiking around the forest. For this weekend we needed to carefully select our caches because we are in the middle of deer hunting. So we stuck to caches that were either close to a town or to a rest stop.

And much like life, geocaching is more about the journey than the actual destination. And attention deer hunters! While you were freezing your butts off sitting in your deer stands NOT seeing any deer, we were geocaching IN TOWN and saw seven! You’ve gotta love northern Minnesota.

Apparently the “town deer” in Two Harbors are a wee bit tame. Lisa kept trying to sneak (although I say chase) up on them. It just made them slightly disgruntled.

So we hit six caches and found five, which actually isn’t that bad. Some of them were quite well hidden too. It’s actually amazing that you find them at all, considering the GPSs only get you within 20 feet or so (especially in the forest), and there are a lot of hidey spots.

These are a couple examples of how the caches are hidden. The one on the left under the tree was actually a bit father back into the woods than we were comfortable with. We were looking a bit too much like deer for our liking.

This one on the right was a really fun find. It was on the shoreline of Lake Superior and could have been under one of a million different rocks. This picture was taken by holding the camera down on the ground. We found it by basically having our heads on the ground so we could see under the rocks….and even then it was a bit of a miracle. You can just see it peeking out from under there.

So, I think I’m going to give in and actually buy a GPS. We used Emily’s which works great, but it would be nice to have my own. Let me know if you’d like to give it a try. It would be fun to do it around the cities too.

All men are created equal…. //Easter Bunny, Santa Clause

2008-11-12T00:13:00.001-06:00

Those of you with delicate sensibilities may want to skip this post, because I am wound up and the filter is gone. I have been pondering this since election night, deciding how to broach this subject. I will apologize up front for the use of “coarse” language, but ultimately that is what this is about.

It hasn’t always been like it is today.

It wasn’t until 1920 that people with vaginas were allowed to vote and that was after an approximately 70 year battle. Being too brown didn’t fully stop mattering until 1965 with the passing of the Voting Rights Act. Although important, voting is just one discriminatory example. Throughout United States history, women and non-whites have been discriminated against, but yet 70% of blacks and 52% of women voted last week to take rights away from gays. We apparently have the collective memory of a goldfish.

I’m not sure when we are going to stop restricting rights for people based on their genitals or their skin color. California did it again this election. So, while our country was electing the first non-white president, California was quietly taking away the right of gays to marry. Proposition 8 nullified approximately 18,000 unions in the state of California. One step forward, one step back. Can you imagine waking up one morning and finding out that other people just decided that you aren’t married anymore?

The official ballot title for Proposition 8 was "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry." For future reference California, any law that starts with “Eliminates Rights…” deserves an immediate and uncertain NO. We are America, damnit.

I’m tempted to move my argument into the love and sex arena. That seems to be the basis for a good portion of the justification around not bestowing the rights the rest of us have, but this isn’t about that. I get to choose who I fall in love with, the type of sex I have, and because I am straight I also get to choose to protect myself legally by marriage. That marriage gives me tax breaks and more importantly the legal right to make decisions on my partner’s behalf. This isn’t about love, this isn’t about sex, this is entirely about giving everyone equal protection under the law. Why should some family unit receive benefits and others shouldn’t?

Californians who voted for Prop 8 and those that support them: What in the hell are you so threatened by?

Whoo Hoo!

2008-11-05T00:11:00.001-06:00

That is all.

MB, This Post is for You – Political Humor at it’s Finest

2008-10-25T13:46:00.001-05:00

My friend MB and I have been having “spirited” discussions about the elections. Minnesota is well known for it’s “out there” electing…..remember, we are the state that elected Jesse “The Body” as our Governor. We also have the bat-shiat crazy Michelle Bachmann who is apparently a step or two away from rounding up those of us she deems “anti-American.” Sixth district, please don’t let us down.

Anyway, MB and I were debating about why most negative news coverage and comedy were pointed at the Republicans. I was firmly in the “you just can’t make this stuff up” court, believing that the Republicans were giving us too much ridiculous fodder for mocking to ignore. MB was more in the “liberal media” side of the house. So, I have rounded up some political humor created by non-comedy-professional “Joe The Plumber” types (sorry…I couldn’t resist).

First up, some equal opportunity humor: the McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off. This should be a part of every election. Props to the video editors on this one, they did a freakishly good job. And sorry, but McCain made me laugh much more than Obama….something about those facial expressions. Made me think of Austin Powers.

Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

US political humor isn’t just for Americans anymore. Russians are getting into it too (particularly since Gov Palin can see Russia from her house) *again, sorry MB*. Presenting “Song for Sarah”. Doggone it, you betcha!

Now for some Obama comedy. And I’m sorry…it’s true, there is hardly any comedy out there about Obama. The best I found is McCain roasting Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner. If this whole Presidential thing doesn’t work for McCain, he really should consider a career in comedy. The man created some comedy gold here. The last 60 seconds actually made me like him more.

So, while I didn’t disprove MB’s theory, I at least pulled together some humor for the weekend. Whatever your political affiliation, enjoy!

TuneUp is so worth the $20….

2008-10-17T21:36:00.001-05:00

A couple more tips from my ITunes cleanup.

1. Sort your library by album and run it through TuneUp that way. I hadn’t really thought that through until I was about half way done. But it would go faster since it only has to grab the album info once. I went alphabetically by song, which meant it had to grab each album like 12 times….Not so smart.

2. Check for duplicates again after running TuneUp. I found about 50 more once all the song names were standardized.

So, if you are like me had had a horribly messy ITunes library, try TuneUp.

Things to do while watching the debate…..

2008-10-15T21:15:00.001-05:00

Clean up my IPod and ITunes. I decided that it was time to clean up my ITunes library and here are a couple of things I’ve learned.

Getting rid of duplicates. I realized I had a ton of dupes either from all the laptop switching I’ve been doing, or just from not keeping track of my stuff. The newer version of ITunes has a little helper. View > Show Duplicates. You still have to go through them one at a time, but using CTRL – select makes it go quickly. Delete, delete, delete. Of course….be careful that they really are dupes first.
Updating and standardizing song names, artists, albums, and tags. So, considering I have about 5000 songs in my library I decided it was worth the $20 to download TuneUp. It automatically cleans up all that information, but also attaches the correct cover art. I’m running it now. It seems to work best when you just drag over a couple hundred at a time, so I’m going alphabetically. I’m up the G’s and I’ve stopped analyzing it. It’s not the quickest thing in the world, but it seems to actually work great and I’m going to finally have an organized IPod.

Look up that music I keep hearing….You know when you are watching a movie or something on TV and a song comes on that you just love, but can’t place and it bugs you for weeks and weeks? Ok, maybe that is just me, but there is a solution. Adtunes.com. Go to the forum section, search for the name of the TV show, movie or commercial and odds are good it is being talked about. I kept seeing this commercial for DoubleTree and didn’t know the song. I plunked in DoubleTree and turns out it is “Relax Max” by Dinah Washington. My music collection is extremely eclectic because of stuff like this.

The coolest pictures of the sun you’ll see today.

I know you secretly want to microwave stuff. Ever wonder what happens if you microwave jello cups, christmas lights or whole eggs? Bad things….bad, bad things. I dare you to watch just one.

It’s cold, it’s rainy, and I had an afternoon to kill….

2008-10-05T20:55:00.001-05:00

Be prepared to lose a number of hours of your day with Fantastic Contraption. I gave up engineering because I’m not very spatial, and this is a great reminder of how bad I am…but damn, it’s addicting.

This continues to crack me up….I put it up on my wall at work and may use it to get through my next meeting. Granted, it’s only funny if you watched the debate.

My Google-fu is strong. Getting through a Masters degree basically qualifies you as a research librarian. So here is one of my secrets…..you don’t have to be smart, you just have to be good at Google. Here’s a little helper: GoogleGuide. Master a couple of these little tricks and dazzle your friends with your brilliance. :)

Oh, and you can google from your phone too. Text 466453 (Google) and in the text of the message you can enter any number of different easy queries about the weather, directions, flight info and a ton of other stuff and they will text the answer back. For a complete list see here. Fun way to kill time while getting your oil changed (yes, I discovered this yesterday doing just that).

Fun Things I’ve Found Lately

2008-09-28T18:27:00.001-05:00

Haven’t done this in a while….Here is a list of things that either made me smile or pay better attention:

Those of you that know me well understand my thoughts on this matter and it shouldn’t be a surprising that I found the Sarah Palin Disney Trailer video to be completely hilarious.

How many people share your surname? I knew Reed was popular, but in the US for every million people there are over 1000 Reeds. That seems like a lot. So that made me think about my first name. Looks like I peaked in the 40s. Currently it is the 363rd most popular girl name. I’m suddenly feeling very lonely. It’s fun to put in friends name to see their trend. Probably also good for picking baby names.

I swear I am not going to become crazy cat lady, but how can you not laugh at Ninja Cat who can stalk you without actually moving?

And just because the world is all screwed up it doesn’t mean that small moments of goodness aren’t important…..and from a cab driver no less.

Introducing Vladimir FuzzyNuts

2008-09-21T23:11:00.001-05:00

Yes, yes, I know……somehow that one didn’t actually make the voting. Yeah, well, shoot me.

So Vladimir means “rules the world”, which is totally appropriate. He is lord of the house already. And of course there is Vlad the Impaler, which is actually Dracula, and the kitten is a biter. Thank you Jordan for the suggestion. And FuzzyNuts because well, his nuts are fuzzy…..and it sort of softens the formality of “Vladimir”. And thank you Vern for that suggest. So, I’ve been calling him Vladdy and he seems to be taking to it.

It’s hard to pull off “tough” when your favorite spot in the world is on a Curious George blanket. We’ll see if he can pull off “Vlad” or if he ends up just being called FuzzyNuts.

Identity Theft 101

2008-09-20T15:44:00.001-05:00

You know how when you do something like break your leg, suddenly you notice people with broken legs EVERYWHERE? It’s been like that with this whole identity theft thing…..people have been crawling out of the woodwork to trade stories and make sure they did everything they needed to. So, I’m not saying I’m an expert, but this is what I have learned over the past week or so while going though this.

If you lose a credit card, check, social security card or fear someone has hacked into your personal information here are the steps you should take.

STEP 1: Either call or hit the web site of one of the following credit bureaus. Request a copy of your credit report (if you do it though the web, it is instantly browsable). Also, place an initial fraud alert on your record. This fraud alert will be active for 90 days and it will alert you to any changes on your report. Whichever company you contact, will contact the other two. I used Experian and they were great.

Equifax Information Service, LLC.
1-800-525-6285
www.equifax.com
Experian
1-888-397-3742
www.experian.com
TransUnion
1-800-680-7289
www.transunion.com

STEP 2: Review your credit report for any inquiries from companies you haven’t contacted, accounts you didn’t open and debts on your accounts that you can’t explain. oh, and FYI……apparently credit card companies can inquire on your credit before sending you offers for credit cards…..I was really confused as to why Discover was inquiring until I found out about that (I get about 2 Discover offers a week….grrrr). Bonus: putting a fraud alert on your account will stop these offers! Yay!

STEP 3: Close accounts that have been tampered with. Ask the issuer to promptly clear your credit record. You may need to refer them back to your existing fraud alert.

STEP 4: Call your local police department and file a police report. Request a copy of the report. You may need this for your creditors and you will need this to place a longer-term fraud alert with the credit bureaus.

STEP 5: File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission either by clicking on that link or at 1-877-ID-THEFT (438-4338).

STEP 6: Periodically check your credit report and repeat steps as needed.

I think that about does it. Not fun, but not entirely undoable. Even if you haven’t had anything happen, I would encourage you to go to AnnualCreditReport.com and request your yearly free credit report. I had never looked at mine and couldn’t believe all the items on it…..I can easily see how something could be wrong and mess up your credit, not to mention how easy it could be for someone to open accounts under your name and you’d never know about it.

The More You Know.

Hello to all the new Nancy Reeds out there and help me name my kitty!

2008-09-14T13:47:00.001-05:00

So, interesting week….First off, I received a “Security Alert” letter from my mortgage company – I wasn’t going to name names, but I’m annoyed, so it’s Countrywide. Apparently one of their ex-employees had been copying down loan application information for about 20,000 people each week and selling it to other parties. He had been doing this for 2 YEARS! (quick math: 2 million people) My first response was “F*CK!”. I mean, what could be better than a mortgage application for gathering information about a person? It has everything! The letter did not give a lot of detail, but I eventually felt better once I found a few articles. Seems like he wasn’t a very good criminal and was only selling the info to other mortgage companies…..in theory. I will be taking them up on their offer of two years of credit monitoring and I will be putting a fraud alert on all of the credit bureaus and my credit cards, bank accounts, etc. This will mean that I can’t ever get credit without an extra phone call, but that probably isn’t such a bad thing and I wonder if that isn’t the future of credit anyway with how much identity theft is going on.

Some goodness to offset the badness. So, I mostly accidentally got a kitten. I’m actually allergic to cats, but a friend of mine pointed out the fact that there are some breeds that most people aren’t allergic to….and no, they aren’t hairless. They create less of the protein FEL D1, which is what is in the cats saliva and excreted through their skin and what most people are allergic to. I spent a couple minutes Googling and found a breeder of Siberian cats here in the city. Of course they had a waiting list for the waiting list so I assumed it would be next year some time before I’d have to think about it (much like the never-ending waiting list for the Prius….grrrr). But long-story-short, fate has a mind of it’s own and I got an email on Tuesday and picked up my kitten on Friday.

This is a brief moment of awake and basically calm. Kitty has two settings….passed out and playing hard (with a general ratio of 2:1). He has adjusted really well and we are getting along great…..and no sneezing (well, I’ve sneezed twice…but that is nothing)! There is only one problem, I keep referring to him as “Kitty”. This must stop. I keep waiting for the name to just come to me, and it just hasn’t happened. So…I’m going to open it up for a vote to see if that helps. So go ahead and in the upper right hand side vote for your favorite. If you hate them all, or if you have that perfect name shoot me an email. I’ll leave it open for a week, and hopefully I’ll have a decision by next weekend. I’m afraid he’s going to get a complex if I don’t get him a name soon.

RNC: A Little Bit of Humor and a Few Last Thoughts

2008-09-06T19:10:00.001-05:00

On Thursday night while I was watching the John Ireland bridge standoff, I spotted my favorite bit of RNC humor. I’m not sure who put this up, but the placement was perfect.

I have to assume it was originally slated for the MSP airport, but somehow this seems better.

Now about Thursday night….

I know that my little drama was extremely minor in the scheme of things, but it has been bothering me since it happened. While I was standing in my own city, on a public sidewalk being threatened with teargas, McCain was inside the Xcel speaking about freedom. Only blocks away, I was watching the exact opposite being played out in front of me. The actions (and in this case the POTENTIAL actions) of a few were curtailing the rights and freedom of all. I remember this type of thinking in grade school. If someone was acting up, just punish the whole class with the theory being that peer pressure will make the wise-ass settle down. It didn’t really work then, and it definitely doesn’t work at a societal level.

I don’t know if this show of force was needed. I do know that that show escalated the event into something it didn’t need to be. I just kept wondering who was being protected….was it government officials, Republican delegates, the public? Who was I such a threat to? According to the Star Tribune, there were 3,700 police working St. Paul each day. I’m not sure if this was an all-inclusive number, because I saw police, FBI, ATF, Blackwater, Army, the Guardian Angels and a number of other unmarked groups in and about St. Paul. Witnessing St. Paul turning into a police state has rattled my ideas about my own government. It became personal in a way I was not expecting and I’m questioning what we are choosing to become. Because it is a choice.

In an attempt to keep things a little lighter, I’ll link you off to a Daily Show clip from the final night of the RNC. “Mace: When someone is standing in front of you, and you want them to move.” I love Jon Stewart.

Tomorrow I’m going to go back downtown and just walk around. I feel like I need to reclaim my own city. I want to see it without the cages and tense authority figures in black. I’m not sure it will ever be quite the same to me, but I want it to be St. Paul again.

I’ve never had an authority figure point a gun at me until tonight…..

2008-09-04T22:09:00.001-05:00

I wanted to see the protest at the Republican National Convention. It isn’t that I necessarily agree with the more radical methods of a small percentage of the protestors, but I appreciate the peaceful protestors right to gather and express their opinion. I decided to walk down to the Capital after work and actually got there a bit late…..they had all roads to the Capital already blocked off and the protestors were in the midst of a standoff with the police on the John Ireland Boulevard bridge. I took this picture from up towards the Cathedral, so it is a good 1/2 mile away from the action.

It took about a hour and eventually that line of police on horses, that you can see in the front of the mob, drove the crowd back toward the capital. At that point I headed back, grabbed my car and went downtown (there was no way to walk to downtown because of the roads blocked for the protest and the giant cage around the Xcel).

Downtown I headed toward the Cedar Avenue bridge which is the prescribed protest route that has been used all week. That bridge was also blocked off with the protestors basically pinned in at the Capital grounds. I took this picture from the downtown side – shooting across Hwy 94. Tough to see, I know….but all the dark area under the trees…..people.

After another hour or so it became apparent that the protestors were not getting into the city. The Cedar Avenue bridge was not the only bridge that was blocked off by police. All bridges into the city were blocked. As I was getting reading to head back downtown, things began to heat up as hordes of SWAT teams began heading across the St. Peter street bridge. Of course the small group (around 100) of us that had been hanging around waiting for something to happen headed down there to see what was going on. I’m going to show a couple photos to give you a feel for what it was like.

And then things got weird. The St. Peter Street bridge was suddenly a war zone, and for no apparent reason. The group of people standing around was basically made of up gawking middle-aged St. Paulites with a few groups of younger kids that weren’t really causing any issue. But for whatever reason suddenly there was a line of SWAT members in front of us with one SWAT guy not just pointing a gun at our small crowd, but actively moving his aim from one person to another as we milled about. This brought a lot more people over to this area….everyone basically taking pictures of this absolutely incredible turn of events.

This show of force brought quite a few more people over to see what was going on, and soon a few were yelling out “This is what a police state looks like”. This prompted an announcement that we would be tear-gassed if we didn’t disperse. I got the hell out.

It was a nightmare getting out of the city because they had all roads in and out of the city blocked except for one, which of course only got you on the highways going in the absolutely wrong direction, so I had to go out of the city, turn-around and come back in. Between what I saw downtown, and driving back in and seeing all the police cars blocking every entrance into St. Paul….I honestly can’t believe this is my city……actually I can’t believe this is America.

It is going to take me a little while to digest everything I witnessed tonight. Once I have it all straight in my head I’ll try to explain, but I know this…..tonight it wasn’t the protestors I was afraid of.

Damn you 4 am Bar Time…..

2008-09-04T07:58:00.001-05:00

So how much trouble can a couple of normal Minnesotans get into at the Republican National Convention? Plenty.

I will admit my friend Erik and I started the evening by checking out the Capital in search of protest groups. No luck last night, relatively sure they were all in Minneapolis at the Rage Against The Machine concert. So, we headed downtown in search of more subdued fun. There wasn’t all that much going on that hadn’t been there last night so we went into the St. Paul Grill to have a few martinis and watch Palin’s speech. I would imagine this will get me on some sort of government watch-list, but we ended up spending the evening with part of the staff of the Aljazeera Network, including Riz Khan from CNN International and who is now bringing us the English version of Aljazeera. The conversation went from issues in the Middle East (yes, I was actually able to be cool for once and talk about Turkey and Egypt) to Riz’s 2 1/2 year old.

Our new friends were smart and left us at about 2 am and we immediately made some new friends in some MN delegates who happen to live in our neighborhood. We’ll see what happens, but as of 3 am they were going to hook us up with tickets for tonight.

Beyond that, a very rumpled-looking Tom Brokaw, a dapper David Gregory and an extremely elated Sarah Palin and entourage wandered past our table at one point or another.

Must run, I have a 9 am meeting. And yes, I’m gonna do this again tonight. I can sleep when I’m dead.

RNC – Locked up Tighter Than a Drum

2008-09-02T21:46:00.001-05:00

As usual, I did no research on my little trip into the RCN festivities. A little preparation would have probably helped. I had an appointment downtown and figured since I’d been through the pain to get myself parked, I might as well check it out. My first interaction was a bit of clue as to what was to come…..they had Mickey’s Diner blocked off….well, you could walk in, but cars were banned even this far from the Xcel.

I like that they had a special “Access to Diner Only” sign made up.

So I followed the crowds and headed into Rice Park at the center of downtown. What I found there was the outdoor studio for MSNBC. David Gregory (right side) was interviewing Amy Klobushar and talking with a bunch of political analysts. Mostly beating to death Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Apparently no one has yet noticed the irony and complete role-reversal of Republicans backing an unwed teen mother and the Democrats attacking for it. So here is my minor brush with fame:

Oh, and if you happened to be watching MSNBC around 5:30 or so, I was totally on. Worked my way to the front of that group and got my free McCain/Palin t-shirt too. Handed it off to a homeless guy on my way out…..he wasn’t exactly thrilled. A weird little side note….I purposely changed out of my work clothes and into Minnesota-standard t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. I wanted to look like a non-threatening local. Apparently the TV news crews were all about that demographic. I was asked four separate times to answer some questions into the camera….I declined them all. So, if you want your 15 seconds of fame, head on down and look vaguely interested, but detached.

Here is a shot of the huge demilitarized zone. My house is behind the cathedral up there….absolutely no way to get there from here.

I thought it would be cool to try to follow the fence all the way around. Little did I know it was nearly impossible, they have blockades everywhere to make that very difficult. Here is a view of what is blocked off in St. Paul at the moment. Basically that whole area outlined in either blue or red is off limits to cars and and good portion of it is off limits to pedestrians. As you can see, if you are down toward Rice Park, there is absolutely no good way to get over to W 7th….you have to walk all the way around….so plan accordingly.

And finally, the Xcel itself. First, a shot of the people waiting in the security line to get into the convention. They are actually bringing them in through the back side, through RiverCenter.

The front of the Xcel. I am sure I have never seen it like this. This is the area that is usually teeming with people……even when there isn’t an event. They have it totally blocked off and it is eerily silent. Even the contingent of homeless that live in the park here were gone. What did they do with them?

All in all, pretty uneventful….although I didn’t head toward the protest march. Apparently there was a little brouhaha with that. Maybe I’ll tackle that tomorrow night.

Quick Apology and It Might Be a Long Week

2008-09-01T12:17:00.001-05:00

First, a friend just pointed out that I hadn’t returned his email, which led us to figure out that the “Email the author” link at the end of each post wasn’t working. No idea why, so I’ve removed it for the moment until I can find out what’s happening. So, I apologize, if you have emailed me through there…..I never received it. Free free to email me again at reed.nancy@gmail.com and I’ll get right back to you. I also added it to my profile description in the upper right side of my blog….so find it there until I figure out what’s going wrong.

And I woke this morning to the sound of helicopters….lots and lots of helicopter. Yes, it’s the start of the Republican National Convention and it sounds a bit like I’m living in a war zone. I went downtown earlier this weekend to figure out how to get around and was amazed by the security. All roads in and out of the Xcel are closed, which makes it amazingly difficult to get to my house from downtown. I’ll be down there tomorrow afternoon for an appointment so I think I’ll hang out a while and see what’s going on. I’ll bring my camera and assuming it isn’t confiscated (god, it’s sad I have to think about that), I’ll post pics. Although I did resist buying the “Go Home” t-shirts that were for sale at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, so maybe I’ll have a better shot. :)

Pant-less Voyageurs and Hidden Gems….Well, Hidden From Me

2008-08-23T21:33:00.002-05:00

So, I’ve had this place on the North Shore for a couple of years now which means I have driven through Two Harbors probably over 50 times and never, until today, did I notice that the giant fiberglass voyageur (Pierre The Giant) that you see as you come into town is totally and completely pant-less. He appears to be wearing thigh-high boots of some sort, but no pants. Let’s just say that you can walk right under him, look up and verify this fact. Did they just run out of money and couldn’t afford one more color of paint? I know it was probably really hot when voyageurs were doing their voyageur thing, so was this a way for them to stay cool and the painters are staying historically accurate? Were voyageurs all gay? Were the painters? Seriously, why would they make him pant-less? Now that I have discovered this I can’t stop thinking about it. Does anyone know? And now that I look at that picture again, that one hand is extremely suspect too….who thought that this was ok?

I’ve done a decent amount of hiking up at the North Shore. Everything from day trips into Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock, to spending a week walking the Superior Hiking Trail. Granted I did it the weenie-way and had my hotel drop me off in the morning where I left off the night before and then pick me up in the evening to bring me back to the hotel and their very nice hot tub, but still. So, I was feeling like I wanted to hike this morning and basically chose my location by looking at the map and picking the next northern state park which happened to be Tettagouche. It was a good choice because I’ve only been on the trail from Tofte north.

Tettagouche is a nice state park which had decent maps and well-marked trails, which is imperative for me because I’m a bit of a girl when it comes to maps. I have a number of “lost on the trail” stories. I decided to head for a couple of the falls within the park and headed out. For a Saturday the trail wasn’t at all crowded which might have been because the first half mile was straight uphill.

I was shocked at the number of people at the first falls. The High Falls is a 70 foot drop of the Baptism River. It was a great spot. I was pretty hot once I finally got there and I found a cut-out in one of the rocks RIGHT next to one of the falls, about 10 feet from the edge. I could actually semi-lay down, reach out a hand and play with the water right before it went over the edge. And a little nap was had in the sunshine. Oh, and people afraid of heights, yes, I hung out over the edge on my stomach to take this picture.

The next falls were about a mile away and called Two Step Falls. I was kind of excited about the name, because it was about 80 steps down and then back up to get to High Falls and I was thinking that maybe Two Step would be better. Apparently they were counting by hundreds. Yep, 200 steps down and all I could think about was how much the hike back up was going to suck. But when I got to the bottom the sweetness of the falls totally made it worth while.

I had heard very little about Tettagouche….I think it is overshadowed by Gooseberry and Split Rock, but it is a great hiking park. If I get motivated tomorrow, I have my eye on a nine-mile loop.

Ok, This Animation Thing is Getting Kinda Scary, and Useful Web Sites You’ve Never Heard Of

2008-08-19T21:15:00.001-05:00

Emily is not real. Just in case there is any confusion, not real. I know I’m supposed to be excited about technology, but this is moving into creepy territory. Image Metrics created this demo video to show the newest advancements in photo-realistic characters for use in video games. Everything is created using their software up until 1:30 when you briefly see the actress the character is based on. Yep, creeptastic!

Now, onto the non-creepy. I love this web site. Hard to Find 800 Numbers is truth in advertising. It’s my new first stop when I need to call anybodies customer services. Sometimes it nearly impossible to find it on a store’s web site, but listed here for your convenience. Everything from Amazon.com to the White House can be found.

You know I always have to sneak a charity of some sort in. Well, this one isn’t charity exactly, but I love this idea. Kiva allows you to invest money into micro-loans for entrepreneurs around the world. I am currently helping to expand a grocery store in Peru, buying some piglets in Cambodia and supporting a tailoring service in Uganda. The best part is when the loans get paid back you can turn around and re-loan the money back out.

Back into semi-creepy. Want to know what your house is worth and more importantly those of your neighbors, friends and family? Well then Zillow is for you. Plunk in your address and get more info than you could ever imagine. Let your inner-stalker out.

I have a rather nasty commute and I am addicted to audiobooks…..they keep me sane. Unfortunately, they tend to be painfully expensive. LibriVox provides free audiobooks that have been read by LibriVox members. Quality can sometimes be a bit iffy, but most are decent and some are spectacular.

Olympic Fever and Sleep Deprivation

2008-08-13T21:24:00.001-05:00

If you are anything like me, you are losing sleep because of the Olympics. The thirteen hour time difference is kinda nice, but things generally just start getting interesting around 11 pm, so I’ve watched 2 am come and go more than once this week already.

Beijing transformed their city for the Olympics, although a bit of it appears to be smoke and mirrors. Large walls have been erected to hide older, run-down portions of the city. This picture really shows the difference between what is being shown to visitors and what was originally on this site. The previous video is even better.

I would love to be at the Olympics if for nothing else but the food. I’m not sure this is really some of the food options for visitors at the Olympics, but I sort of hope so. I’m pretty sure I would try at least some of it….just to say I did.

But I have to say the best thing about watching the Olympics is the pure emotion.

Michael Phelps and Garret Weber-Gale celebrating after winning the 4x100 relay swimming final (David Gray/Reuters)

Alicia Sacramone waiting for her score after falling off the balance beam and ending the U.S.’s hope for team gold (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Both of these athletes have trained nearly their entire lives for this exact moment and both will never forget it for very different reasons. But, win or lose, they are living their lives to the fullest.

Random Fun!

2008-08-07T20:36:00.001-05:00

Who’s Dead and Who’s Alive? Ok, I was amazed at how many people I still thought were still alive. Not sure what that says about me. This site is a bit addictive because people are grouped by TV show, band, political figures, etc. This site makes for some addictive browsing.

Not sure if I give any credence to a computer generated tarot reading, but it’s kind of fun. It actually nailed a couple things going on in my life. Try it and see.

You know there is nothing on TV, so you might as well check out Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Created by Joss Whedon and starring Neil Patrick Harris, it’s funnier than most things on TV. “The hammer is my penis."

I’ve found myself with a little time on my hands and what’s a better way to spend a weekend than with a road trip! RoadSideAmerica allows you to search for odd little stops anywhere in the US, save them, and it will map them out for you. Brilliant! I myself plan to road trip out to the world’s largest twine ball and maybe the mysterious Minnesota Runestone.

Guess-the-Google. I think I’ll just quote from the site:

After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it's surprisingly addictive.

I’ve been playing it for a 1/2 hour now and I keep scoring 254. Is it a conspiracy?

Relay for LIfe – Thank you!

2008-08-05T21:29:00.001-05:00

Friday night went really, really well. This was the second year that our team ran a lap count contest and we brought in around $700 just from that, which means about 235 people competed to see who could log the most laps. The adult winners (there was a tie) went 110 laps (27.5 miles) and the under-12 winner logged 84 laps (21 miles). The kids were so excited about this that we ended up having to bribe them to stop and drink water. It was so fun!

So here how things ended up (final numbers will be in a couple weeks):

I raised $650
Team raised $4500
Event raised $225,000!

Sort of amazing actually. There is still time to contribute to the cause if you would like. My donation page can be found here.

My nieces Emma and Grace followed their big sister’s lead and had their hair cut off and donated to Locks of Love. They will be talking about this for weeks!

So to all of you that donated, thank you! It was a grand success!

An Opportunity to Make Me Pay & the Joys of Humping Flamingoes

2008-07-28T20:09:00.001-05:00

I can’t believe it is that time of the year again. Where has the summer gone? The Relay for Life is always that thing you do when summer is coming to a close. My family has done the relay for about nine years (ever since my Aunt died suddenly from cancer). I’ve been participating for seven or so. We aren’t the best “ask for donations” team, but we do run a couple of successful fund-raisers at the relay. We run “Midnight Bingo” and give away all sorts of glow in the dark stuff and also a “Lap Contest” where we give away an IPod, Twins tickets, and assorted gift certificates. So, as a team we generally raise a few thousand dollars and of course, our entertainment value to the other relay participants is priceless.

We also have a new tradition that has started with the younger generation. These kids have grown up doing Relay and last year Claire had her coveted pony-tail cut off during Relay and donated to Locks of Love. This year her younger sister Emma is doing the same, and is very excited about it. Getting a haircut is way more fun when you do it in front of 100 people!

Now I am actually going to ask for donations. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular. Even $5.00 helps. The American Cancer Society is a great cause and all donations are tax deductible. This year I will match each donation with one of my own. Ok, make it hurt.

Oh, and to the family members involved in the “one leg or two?” conversation about flamingo sex…..the answer is female: two, male: zero. If you think you can take it, proof can be found here (along with cheesy pink flamingo porn music).

I Want to Live this Well

2008-07-25T18:53:00.001-05:00

"We don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well."

Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch died of pancreatic cancer earlier today. I was introduced to Professor Pausch and his ideas (not personally….I only wish I had the pleasure) in September, a few days after he presented his last lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Although this video and his subsequent book have become relatively mainstream, I’ve thought about blogging about it anyway, because it has had an effect on my approach to life. I don’t want to put a lot of words around it to convince you, but take the time to watch this video. Yes, it is a little over an hour long. Yes, I know your lives are busy, but odds are good you waste this much time time each week commuting back and forth to work. Do yourself a favor and find the time.

The world lost something today.

Messing With Your Senses

2008-07-22T20:41:00.001-05:00

I love the fact that we are so easily tricked. The following illusions are examples of why you can’t necessarily believe what you see and hear. We aren’t nearly as right as we sometimes think we are.

Visual Illusions

I’ll start easy first. Take a look at the following image and note which direction the red stripes appear to be moving. Then focus on the black dot in the center. Suddenly the stripes move the other way. You can switch them back and forth as much as you want. Cool, huh?

Getting a little trickier. Turn a black and white image into color. This works best full-size. Click on the photo below to see this on the original website. With the colors showing, stare at the dot in the middle of the photo for 30 seconds. Then, without moving your eyes, slide your mouse over the photo. Do it again and it will last longer the second time.

This next one works best full screen, but it also works as is. Relax and look at the center point of the video until it tells you otherwise.

I hate this next one mostly because I can’t do it. When you first look at it, the woman will be spinning in a particular direction. For me it is clockwise. In theory (because I so can’t do it), if you look at the shadow below her, you can get her to switch directions. Grrr….

Audio Illusions

Virtual Barber Shop: I’m not kidding…..use headphones with this one, speakers are not going to work. Amazing 3D recording of getting your haircut. Close your eyes. I actually jumped at the end.

The trick with the next one is to play it more than once. Three times was the charm for me.

P.S. In the midst of writing out this blog posting I got her to spin the other way! Lasted about 5 seconds before she switched back. Stubborn wench.

It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood

2008-07-14T19:24:00.001-05:00

There are a lot of things I love about the Internet. The shopping, the videos, the ability to lookup at 2 am why firehouses have circular stairways. As far as I am concerned, the best thing about the Internet is that gives adults a socially acceptable outlet for play. I honestly believe that is part of the reason many people have kids …..so they have a valid reason to buy and play with toys. Now with the Internet, we can all play with a couple clicks of the mouse and others generally think we are working on some sort of important spreadsheet or database. So the following are some of my favorite ways to play….some from childhood and some that only the collective mind of the Internets could create:

Boggle. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent at this and I still suck. But it’s such addicting fun. You can play against strangers or invite your friends in. Let me know if you need someone’s ass to kick….particularly after 10 pm….

An oldie, but a goodie….Subservient Chicken. Your wish is his command. Order him around, but try to keep it clean. Creepy fun!

Mindless tinkering at it’s finest. The Falling Sand Game. I’ve used this for the past couple of years when I have writer’s block. Not sure I would have gotten through grad school without it.

This is my “this movie is sort of bad, but I can’t quit now” diversion site. Magic Pen is such a cool little game. Easy premise….move the red ball to the flag. The trick….you have to draw in the ramps, balls and other objects that will move the ball from here to there. Physics with a marker.

Oh, and I’m number 124 on Maplewood Toyota’s Prius list. Pretty sure I won’t get it before my lease on my other car is up next month. Anybody have a car I can rent for a few months? ….grrr…..I hate it when the plan doesn’t come together.

Leaving Your Mark

2008-07-07T22:04:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the universe just tosses things up to you until you start to pay attention. That has happened the past couple days. Maybe doing this will help me figure out why.

It started yesterday after my friends had left and I was sort of wandering around wondering what to do with myself. I picked up and organized a bit and then grabbed the guest book. I love seeing what renters have written when I'm not here. For some reason I started reading from a ways back and found an entry from last summer when my aunt and uncle brought my grandparents up here.

The middle note is from my Grandpa. He died at the end of January this year and for some reason, although I must have known that note was there, I totally forgot about it and when I rediscovered it, it just suddenly hit me that he is gone. He was actually my first grandparent to die (yes, I am 39 - apparently the genes are hardy) and it hit me hard. Of course, my Grandfather was not your average guy. For all the interesting details you can see here. The following picture should give you an idea.

That look on his face describes his entire personality. While he had his faults, the man showed me how to live and at the end he gave me a lesson on how to die. He embraced life right up until the end, which is amazing once you understand the circumstances. His end was heartbreaking (at least for those that loved him - I secretly wonder if this is maybe what he would have chosen). He found out in December that he had an aneurysm that was growing and would eventually burst. The doctors also said that the risk of surgery probably outweighed the unlikely potential benefits. My grandfather decided not to have the surgery. The doctors couldn't tell him how long he had....could be a week, could be a year, but definitely not longer than a year. So, he went about his business knowing not only generally when he would die, but also exactly how (the doctors gave him a very good description of how it would probably happen). He got his life in order and about a month later I got the phone call at work that it had happened. When I got to the emergency he was peaceful and remarkably cheerful. For the next 30 hours or so he greeted people and said his goodbyes. I don't think I have that sort of courage. Finding this note was an unexpected pleasure, and it will be here as long as this guest book holds out.

On a brighter note, the guest book gave up more treasures with a more recent guest making note of leaving another figurine hidden on the fireplace. This started right after the cottage was built. A renter left a teeny Family Guy figure (Stewie) standing on one of the rocks high up on the fireplace. I have no idea how long it stayed there (it has since disappeared), but others have been added. This has all been quite spontaneous. Every time I am up here some of the figurines have disappeared and others have been added. I've never placed one myself. I'm not sure what drives people to do this, to leave a mark here, but I love it.

A stop back down at the shore gave me something that I see almost every time I am here, but have never really thought about. Rock towers. People love to do this and many of them last for months. You can see them all the way up and down the North Shore. I don't think any of them would hold up to a real Lake Superior storm, but they have a semi-permanence that lasts long after the creator has left.

What my Grandfather did (along with everyone else that has signed that book), what the leavers of small figurines and the creators of rock towers all are doing is leaving their mark on this place...a sort of branding it as their own.

Some people spend a lifetime attempting to leave a large mark, something with staying power....they seem driven to it. Many choose to do this by having children to carry on their name, or at least their genes. Some spend their life collecting wealth, thinking that at some point a library will be named after them. Some attempt for fame through acting, writing (or blogging, *cough* *cough*) or painting.

But others, like my examples above, quietly leave a small piece of themselves behind when they go, just wanting the universe to know they were there. These are the attempts that make me smile and pay attention.

The North Shore - Left to My Own Devices

2008-07-06T20:35:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago I bought a place up on the North Shore. I own a quarter share of a three bedroom condo right on Lake Superior at Larsmont Cottages in Two Harbors, MN. What that means is that I get thirteen weeks a year to either use myself or rent out. It is one of the smarter things I have done and I'm reminded of that every time I get up here. (Yes, that is the sunrise view from my patio.)

I had a group of friends come up with me on Saturday and we golfed at Enger Park Golf Course in Duluth, MN. My golf game is rocky at best, with the standard comment being "good distance....horse-shit aim", but I do enjoy it when I'm able to play.

We then spent a fun night sitting around the campfire and listening to the waves from the lake. We made friends with a number of, um, interesting groups, shot off bottle rockets, were blinded by Mike who loves his headlamp and helped celebrate both a wedding and a 50th anniversary. All-in-all, a good time.

My friends left this morning, which gave me a whole free day to fill as I wanted. I wasn't overly motivated, but decided to drive up to Beaver Bay to buy some things at my favorite country store, Wits' End Country Store and Bakery. Obviously I should have checked the website first because they are only open Tues - Saturday. Gah! I looked around a bit at Beaver Bay, which has a population of 175 people and is known for, well, a quick Google search shows that it actually isn't really known for much. It's a lovely town, but I decided to head back, stopping at one picture taking spot and a guilty-pleasure pie-buying stop, and call it a day.

Split Rock Lighthouse is a busy, busy place on a Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend. Absolutely gorgeous though. I'll actually do a full blog post just on that. What appeared to be an easy walk down to this spot to take this picture was followed by what felt like a forced-march uphill back to the car. Did I mention it is 90 degrees? So hot, but dreaming of strawberry-rhubarb pie, I jumped back into the car.

The North Shore isn't like the Twin Cities. Things are closed on days you wouldn't think they would be, the place seems to shut down at 9:00 (if that) and it's a bit like being in the south....everyone really takes their time. And then there are things like this.....I pull into Betty's Pies, attempting to decide between my standard of strawberry-rhubarb or venturing off into something more exotic like blackberry-peach or bumbleberry crunch. And they are closed! WTF?!? Power-outage. Granted, they probably want to kill someone because this place is packed on any given Sunday during the summer, but particularly on a holiday weekend. So feeling like the afternoon was an epic failure I headed home hot, dirty and pie-less.

Returning home, I sat on the patio, sweated and looked out at the lake. I realized I needed to redeem the day and that it was time for my yearly "swim" in Lake Superior. For those of you that don't know, Lake Superior is cold. That is not an over-statement. The average temperature of the lake is 40 degrees. Granted, it is July, but this lake doesn't freeze over, which means it's lowest temperature is somewhere above 32 degrees. So, at the best, the lake temperature is 50, and I'll tell you right now, it isn't that warm.

So, as I was standing there in my swimsuit and flipflops, tentatively putting a foot in to remind myself of what I was about to endure, a couple came up to me.....a guy in swim trucks and a girl not in swimwear, but holding a towel and looking rather dubious about it all. Dave wanted to know if I was going in. "Yep", I said and sort of winced and looked back out at the water. He looked over at his girlfriend and said "See, told you she was. You can totally swim here." The girlfriend then addressed me. "You've done this before?" That prompted me to think back to my last swim in this lake. It was with my cousin Lisa (same one as the big Europe trip). We decided we weren't just going to jump in and scramble right back out, but actually swim around for as long as we could take it. If you've never swam in water this cold let me explain it for you. When you first step in, your feet loudly announce that it is cold and that you are an idiot. It feels like little pins are being jammed into your toes. The smart move (smart being a relative term here) is to keep walking out deeper so that the pain in your leg muscles makes you not notice your feet so much. Blissful, but troubling numbness soon sets in. This is a critical moment. You have to quickly get into water just below heart level before you lose your nerve. This of course brings on a new shock of pain and your lungs start to get actively involved by not actually allowing you to inhale. It was at this point last time that my brain froze up. A normal person begins to shout run-of-the-mill obscenities, but no, not me. There was only one term that I could still access in my brain and that was what Lisa had called me right before we went into the water (can't actually remember why...I'm sure I said something stupid to her). Unfortunately that was "ass-monkey". So I get myself chest deep and begin flailing around yelling "ass-monkey" to the general universe and the small crowd that had gathered on the shore to see how long we would last. At this point, we became high entertainment to them and they began calling their friends over to watch. Luckily, that phase only lasts a few moments before self-preservation kicks in and you stop talking all together....conserving whatever oxygen and heat you have left for your heart and brain. Because each time you dip your heart under the water, you can actually feel it speed up and pump harder in an attempt to continue to work under such ridiculous conditions. It is a bizarre feeling. I generally dip myself ten or fifteen times just to experience it...well, to be honest, I mostly do it to delay this next part. Actually swimming and putting my head underwater. The moment you go underwater you get the mother of all ice-cream brain-freezing headaches. Right above and between your eyes. I generally can take about three more minutes of swimming and then I am done.

What I said to Dave's girlfriend was "Yeah, quite a few times."

So, I kicked my flipflops off and up onto the shore. I looked back at Dave and said, "You coming?" and began to carefully make my way out. Now, this is not beach by any stretch of the imagination. The bottom of the lake is made up of random medium to large-size rocks covered in some sort of super-slippery lake ooze. So there is the constant danger of just falling in and giving yourself some sort of heart-attack at the shock of it. I could hear Dave struggling behind me, alternating between deep grunts and not-so-manly little squeals as he began to realize what he was in for. And of course, at this point he couldn't back down. The semi-evil bit of glee I was getting at Dave's predicament was distracting me enough that the effects of the cold water didn't seem as bad. I was focused on Dave. I started moving out faster and soon, with a gasp I was underwater and then back up to start back-floating in front of him. I didn't want to miss this. Dave was entering the point of obscenities and he didn't disappoint. A string of filth-laden words flew out of his mouth. He looked over at me and his mouth tried to form words, which I can only imagine were pointed and accusing, but he was entering the unable-to-talk phase. I calmly told him about the heart-dipping trick and he tried it a few times, grinned and said "Holy crap" as his wits came back to him. I asked him if he was going under and he said "Not on your life". He swam around a bit with his head safely high and dry and we headed back for shore.

Dave and his girlfriend then sat on my patio and had a few drinks while the two of us waited to regain feeling in our extremities. The water is at first incredibly invigorating and then your body hits some sort of wall. We all went off to our respective cottages to take a nap and they just now swung by on their way to dinner. I told Dave I was blogging this and he just said, "Please be kind."

The day was totally and completely redeemed.

So as one last bit of torture, does blogging a picture of the view from my laptop while writing this blog post destroy some sort of space-time continuum? I hope not.

Cool, Totally Addictive Sites

2008-06-29T17:29:00.001-05:00

I've been doing quite a lot of bouncing around the web lately. I think I'm a little lost without a specific bit of research to do for the "task-of-the-day" at school. What this means for you is a wacky assortment of discoveries.

Might as well start with the wackiest first. I've looked at this site a couple of times now and I still can't figure out what it is. It is like television on acid. Each time I look at it I walk away feeling slightly off-kilter. You will need a decent broadband connection to check it out. Neave Television is a bizarre collection of video clips that appear to have no rhyme or reason, but I laughed out loud more than once at the random absurdity. Be sure to check out some of their other games too.

This one is for Bridgette, who informed me that my post about Musicovery changed her life :). Pandora is another music site that allows you to put in an artist name or song title and it creates a radio station of that artist's music and other artists that are similar. This is all based on the Music Genome Project that has attempted to place over 400 attributes on each and every song and then uses a complicated algorithm to organize them. I'm glad someone had the patience. Hope this one works through the firewall too Bridgette! Now that I'm playing with it I'm finding it as addicting as Musicovery. Have fun! You should be able to find me there using the search function.

I really wish something like this had existed when I was a kid. Universcale graphically illustrates the size of everything from a neutron all the way up to the universe. Want to visually see the difference in size between the Empire State Building the Mount Fuji? You can here. Lately I've been a little obsessed with perspective or more specifically the lack of it. This site definitely gives you a feel for your place in the universe. Did you know that a single-electron transistor is smaller than a chromosome? Me neither!

One of the places I find my interesting sites is StumbleUpon. It's a giant compilation of websites voted on by users that you can tailor to your preferences. You have the option to add a button to your toolbar to jump from one site to another. Using that I just found Toon Crisis. It made me laugh out loud.

Do a Good Deed This Weekend

2008-06-26T20:43:00.001-05:00

My friend Barb has her own non-profit organization, "Bridge of Hope". She just got home from a week in Honduras, cooking and supporting a group that was building a house. She's only been back a week and she's already holding a fundraiser garage sale to make money for the next trip. Here are the details:

"SO ST PAUL ~ Not your Average Garage Sale ~ Fund Raiser Bridge of Hope New & Slightly used Upscale Baby items AC's Furn Clothes Baskets Exer Equip Sleep Number Bed & Much More Sat June 28 8-3 1 Day Only.Come early 253 Richmond St W"

I've donated a few choice items, so if you are in the Twin Cities this Saturday make a stop and pick up some things and help out a good cause.

Blogging for Beginners

2008-06-26T20:00:00.001-05:00

Well, I started this blog on May 3, so it has been two months since conception. I thought I would share what I have learned about setting up a blog and give you some insight into how things are going.

Obviously, I chose Blogspot to host my blog. It’s free and easy to setup. I started by using their authoring tools, but a fellow blogger (hi Brian! – wish I could link to your blog) quickly turned me on to Live Writer. *Gasp* a Microsoft product. Surprisingly, it actually works. It is simple, but yet has allowed me to do everything I have needed to. Hats off to that Microsoft product group.

I originally set this up with the intention of just blogging about my big trip, and I was interested to see how many people were visiting during that time, so I installed Google Analytics for website tracking. Don’t worry….I don’t know who any of my readers actually are, but it is fun to see where in the world they come from. Of course, Minnesota holds my biggest readership followed by California (Who are you CA people? I’ve been wracking my brain and I have no idea) and then Washington state. I’m a bit disappointed about my Wisconsin readership (Nancy waves to her lone WI reader). You may see some posts about beer and brats in the future to help rectify that. Internationally I have had visits from Canada, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Cyprus, Australia, the UK and a few other random EU countries.

Once I had a month of posts under my belt, I added the ability to search the blog using Google Search (see upper right hand corner). This came with AdSense, so yes, I have some ads also along that right side. So far it’s not a huge money-maker. Luckily, that isn’t why I am doing this.

Just tonight I added the ability to subscribe to my blog in a number of different ways. I chose FeedBurner for this functionality. You can now sign up to receive new blog posts via email, or if you are utilizing a RSS reader, an RSS feed. I also sucked it up and added a profile picture (well, kinda....I think I'm three)....that is at my grandfather's barn which was one of my favorite places to be when I was a kid.

So that's it. Here is the easy list of how to quickly set up a blog:

Sign up on Blogspot.
Download Live Writer.
Blog.
Implement Google Analytics.
Blog, Blog, Blog.
Add some AdSense widgets.
Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog.
Add FeedBurner subscription widgets.
Blog some more.

I hope some of you find this helpful. Blogging does become addicting after a while....it's almost therapeutic. If you want to start, send me an email and I'll help you out.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

The Day Before My Birthday and I need Joy, Fun and Spiritual Enhancement

2008-06-23T19:24:00.001-05:00

And so much amusement there is. Last year at this time I discovered Matt, and in particular Where the Hell is Matt. Matt made video games until he got sick of it, quit his job and basically traveled until his money ran out. In the midst of it, his buddy started taking video of him dancing in each spot. A particularly bad dance at that. But I found so much joy in this video....as did the rest of the Internet. The video went viral and Matt became semi-famous.

2008 brings Matt with his own sponsor (yes, he's now getting his lifestyle paid for) and a new video. I was pleasantly surprised that the new one put a permanent smile on my face. This guy is my hero for throwing away the rat race and just living how he wants.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Ok, so now that the joy is straightened out, onto the fun. This is my favorite new site by a long-shot. I have it playing all the time when I am on my laptop (which is still more than I will admit to). Musicovery is the best idea I have seen in a very long time. Pick your genre, your decade and your mood and it will start playing music to fit you. I am discovering all sorts of great stuff. And if you hate something you can pick something else from their graphical representation of how the songs fit together. Damn, I hope they make enough money to keep this going.

Fun spot number two. I know just enough about programming to know this was not easy. The Neon Bible. It is like an interactive music video and incredibly addictive to play with. Click around and enjoy. I keep playing it and finding new stuff. It's like a treasure hunt!

Onto the soul-saving (and no, the Neon Bible doesn't count...just a happy coincidence). I have long been a devoted follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster....yes, I am a pastafarian. But it is a very demanding religion....a friend introduced me to Dudeism. It seems more my speed. I think I may just need to convert.

Oh, and one last thing that spans the joy, fun and I guess the religion categories.....I test drove a Prius tonight. Yes, I loved it. It's a very cool car to drive. I placed myself on the *cough cough* 6 month waiting list. Not exactly sure how that is going to work, but I want one....so I'll figure something out.

Where is your money going?....and the best headline of the day

2008-06-19T19:48:00.001-05:00

Well, where is about a third of your money going? For the past 4 years, Jess Bachman has created the poster "Death and Taxes" to visually represent where are tax dollars are being spent. The newest poster for 2009 visually depicts the the United States federal budget. The poster is an amazing browse. It contains over 500 programs and departments and shows the percentage change from the previous year. It is both fascinating and depressing. Click and zoom (notice full-screen mode in the upper right corner):

"Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer" I actually thought that was a title from the Onion...but no, and damn, that is priceless. (Actually no need to read....it's just for the title). Although I use Vista, it's mostly because I'm too lazy to rip it off my laptop. I truly do hate it though....it's overly bulky, and a total pain in the ass to use. And if you haven't discovered the Onion yet, please do....a scary amount of their fake headlines end up being true 6 months later. Take a moment to read their Jan 2001 article on Bush's inauguration "Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over'". They definitely have a psychic on staff. I also have a very soft spot in my heart for the Onion...it was started in Madison, WI in 1988....my freshman year of college, so I've carried it around with me for years.

Hot News Anchors and Pretentious Hybrids

2008-06-17T18:48:00.001-05:00

I really hate network news. With that said, I'm not sure why I took the 2 minutes to take the "Anchormatch - Find your perfect news anchor today", but I did. Apparently, the drive to avoid mowing my lawn is strong. The match did make me smile though. I've felt a (entirely intellectual, of course) lust for Mr. Cooper for years :)

Find World Events at allvoices.com

So, I need to buy a car. I currently have a Mazda6, which I love, but the lease is up in August. So those of you that know me understand that this will involve a complete over-analysis from yours truly before any money exchanges hands. Now, for the past two years I've said that I will buy a Toyota Prius. Four dollar gas is one thing, but I've always tried to minimize my carbon footprint. My lawn mower and trimmer are both electric and I'll never go back to messy gas engines. But in the last two years, it seems like Prius owners have gotten just a bit pretentious. Not that I really care, but buying it just because it's a hybrid doesn't quite seem like reason enough. You are going to have to deal with my pondering. So here is my first "how much gas will this save me" assessment.

	Toyota Prius	Honda Civic	Nissan Altima	Mazda6
Gas
MPG*	46	42	34	21
Miles/year	14,000	14,000	14,000	14,000
Gal/year	304.35	333.33	411.76	666.67
$/gallon	$4.00	$4.00	$4.00	$4.00
gas/year	$1,217.39	$1,333.33	$1,647.06	$2,666.67
Total Gas Cost (over 3 years)	$3,652.17	$4,000.00	$4,941.18	$8,000.00
Savings from Mazda6	$4,347.83	$4,000.00	$3,058.82	$0.00

* Revised, combined EPA estimates from fueleconomy.gov

So, I looked at three different hybrids, all sedans. I looked at each car's average gas mileage, my current usage of 14,000 miles/year, assumed an average price of $4/gallon (which is probably low, but I couldn't bring myself to put it any higher) and did the math across three years of ownership. I then compared it to my current Mazda6. Obviously all of the cars save me money from a gas perspective, but it isn't as simple as that....you pay a premium for purchasing a hybrid. Tomorrow's assessment will be to try to quantify how much of a premium and the length of actual payback. Riveting stuff, I know!

Off to finish my lawn with my cute-as-a-button electric mower.

Perspective

2008-06-13T21:20:00.001-05:00

I think that one of the main things I love about travel is how it resets your brain. It takes you out of your normal comfort zone and forces you to deal with the rest of humanity. Living in Minnesota (I will caveat this with yes, this is a stereotype) it can be easy to forget that not everyone in the world is a middle-class, Lutheran, suburbia-living, cabin-having, weekend-boating, person of considerable paleness. Travel startles that right out of you.

(Creative Commons photo by Tracy O)

Broadening of my perspective is why I like to travel. My last blog post was about the City of the Dead. Apparently, I don't have that entirely out of my system yet because this popped back into my head. I found this site quite a while ago and tortured my friends and co-workers with it every time they started bitching about money. The site will show you how rich you are in relation to the rest of the world. (make sure to switch it to US dollars). A couple staggering percentages.....$1000/year puts you in the top 44.1% of richest people in the world. Merely doubling it to $2000/year brings you all the way up to 17.62%. Poof! There goes my brain. Enter your yearly salary at your own risk.

I think I'm going to run off and buy another toilet for India.

City of the Dead

2008-06-10T23:08:00.001-05:00

There is something I didn't get time to blog about Egypt. Five million people live in the cemeteries of Cairo. The cemeteries of Cairo are made up of tombs and mausoleums....small house-like structures built above the graves. Cairo is the sixteenth most populous city in the world and it has not been able to keep with with growth. People have moved into these tombs and created a community. They live there illegally and do without electricity, running water or sewage systems. I hate to say it, but it had to be pointed out to me.....it honestly didn't look all that much poorer than the other areas we were touring, except when we went past in the evening, and most dwellings were dark. I found an older article, but a fun read by Trent Rockwood who describes "Friday's Market", a weekly market held within the City of the Dead. Next time I'm in Egypt I'm definitely going.

City of the Dead

Rome --- Tons of Old Stuff and James Bond Fun

2008-06-06T11:34:00.001-05:00

Rome may just be in competition with Cairo as my favorite stop on this trip. There is just so much going on in this city. We came into the city with no grand plan, but managed to hit all of the major sites by just wandering around.

The only thing I felt we HAD to see was the Colosseum. I know everyone says this, but it is truly amazing. All of these sights in Rome are right in the city center. Thousands of years of building have created this wonderful collage of old and new (although, we kept saying that even their "new" stuff was old to us).

A spot I could have stayed at for hours (and it appeared that others had) was Trevi Fountain. The fountain was completed in 1762 and it absolutely gorgeous.

We really did just ramble about Rome on that first day and ended the day with an absolutely great dinner. It took us forever to find this particular restaurant that was mentioned in Lisa's little guide book. Once we were seated Lisa mentioned to the manager that was why we were there. Suddenly we were famous! Lisa showed him the book, he scrambled off to show it to the owner and we were immediately treated like royalty. Free appetizers, about 4 servers showed up for every course, and lots of attention from the manager (he actually kicked our poor server out and took over). So, we had the best meal, spent a ton of money and finished our first day in Rome totally happy.

Day two opened up with Lisa not feeling so well, so Karen, Linda and I decided to head to the Vatican. This was complicated by the fact that all of the roads surrounded our hotel were closed (I'll explain in a bit). So, we decided to to tackle public transportation. First, let me admit this....for all my supposed "smartness", I have never been able to conquer our own bus system, so I have no idea why I thought I could figure it out when it's all in Italian. Let's just say that we have seen the ENTIRE Route 23. So, we got quite the tour of southern Rome (the Vatican is in northern Rome). So, three buses later we did finally get to Vatican City. We actually had a great time. We were the only tourists on the public buses, so stood out like sore thumbs, but we justified it as everyone assuming we were very savvy tourists who knew how to get around, versus just some dumb Americans lost in the bus system. But, by the end we were Rome bus system experts!

Lisa joined us for the afternoon and we went back to our wanderings. We spent a good amount of the afternoon watching the James Bond-like goings-on. I should explain. Lisa and I had decided we didn't want to get a hotel in the old historic "touristy" area of Rome, so we picked the sweetest little hotel in the Aventina area, which is a ritzy section of Rome just outside of the historic district. Unbeknownst to us, it was also about 2 blocks away from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations which was the site of the U.N. Food Summit that was held Monday - Wednesday this week. So what this meant for us was that all our main roads were closed, we had a helicopter hovering directly over our hotel, our hotel was filled with foreign journalists, and lots of black cars surrounded by police were zipping around with lights and sirens blaring....delivering dignitaries from one spot to another. We actually found this endlessly entertaining. As we walked, suddenly we would notice a ton of police and "undercover" guys blocking off the street, so we would just wait around a couple minutes to watch whatever dignitary come through and just as quickly they would unblock the street and head off to the next location. All very James Bond.

We finished off the day looking at the Pantheon. A building that dates from about 125 AD.....125 AD!....and it is amazingly intact. No one is entirely sure why it was originally built, but since then it as been used as a church, a tomb, and now is a huge tourist site.

The thing that kept hitting me, and I know I've mentioned this before, was just how accessible all of these buildings and ruins are. They aren't held behind glass, there is rarely even areas that are roped off. They have so many old sites, that it isn't that big a deal to them. That became very apparent during our wanderings when we came to an area about the size of a city block that was filled with broken columns and foundations of some building. We were looking around for a sign explaining what it was....and it was a cat sanctuary - the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary to be exact! The place was filled with cats....lounging around on top of pillars and sunning themselves next to thousand-some year-old walls. In the US, they would be charging admission to look at this from a distance, and here it's a spot for stray cats to hang out.

So Rome is awesome. Painfully expensive, but awesome. It was a great way to end the trip.

Back Home

2008-06-04T22:31:00.001-05:00

I have so much more to post about Rome, but I am way too exhausted to think clearly. We had a uh, generally, uneventful trip back (more on that later), and are back on American soil. Things I craved: my bed, Diet Coke in a can (not Coke Light!), my Blackberry (yes, I am a freak) and a shower where I don't have to fear smacking my elbows (damn, European showers are teeny). Simple things. I'll post more tomorrow WITH pics!

Capri, Sorrento and Pompeii

2008-06-01T11:35:00.005-05:00

I hate to say it, but today was another gorgeous day. We have been sooo lucky weather-wise, it's hard to believe. We also took a lot of modes of transportation today. We started early this morning, by boarding a smaller jetfoil boat that took us over to the island of Capri. Georgeous, and makes the prices at Athens look like flea market bargains. I'm going to wait until I'm rich to make a return trip. To get up to the town of Capri (which is up on the cliffs) you get to take the funicular (basically a cable car that goes at about a 70 degree angle up). After exploring Capri, we took the funicular back down and back on the boat over to Sorrento.

We had a really, really good lunch (homemade pasta, chicken, wine and champagne) and again proceeded to get ourselves turned around and had a few moments of panic trying to get back to the bus. We had a tour guide that totally would have left us. From there we headed off to Pompeii.

Pompeii is amazing. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the town under 20 feet of ash and pumice stone, preserving the entire city. What I find really amazing is how accessible these types of ruins are in these countries. In the US, they would be all roped off.....look, but don't touch. Here you can climb over most of them. Good and bad I suppose. Also, Pompeii has a 1/3 of it's area that hasn't been dug yet....and they've been at it since the 1700s. Gives a person some perspective.

This may be my last entry until I get back to the states. We are off to Rome for a few days and then will be heading home. If I find some time and an easily accessible Internet cafe I'll let you know how we are doing in Rome.

Til then...

Athens

2008-05-30T12:17:00.010-05:00

Well, I guess I'm not surprised that today was a little disappointing, well disappointing isn't the right word....maybe just not up to Egypt standards. Egypt really did set the bar quite high. Athens is a perfectly fine city, and city it is. It is an expensive, busy, modern city. We decided not to take a tour today and just got dropped off in the city center and wandered about. We watched the changing of the guard at the Parliament (interesting type of marching they have there.....and the fanciest shoes I've seen on guards - elf shoes with balls at the end).

From there we headed through the National Park and checked out the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the largest Corinthian style temple in Greece, taking over 700 years to build and Hadrian's Arch which separates the old and new sections of Athens.

Then we got lost in the Plaka, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Athens that now houses restaurants and shops. Thank you Julie for the book on Greece, the map in there saved us when we got completely turned around looking for this specific restaurant that we just had to go to. Although the walk got us into a, uh, more bohemian section of Athens filled with the coolest graffiti and kids shooting up in the parks. Culture! We did get some great views of the Acropolis from here though. And after a 60 euro lunch ($120), cough...cough... we did what Aunt Linda referred to as the "Bataan Death March" back to where we were supposed to pick up the bus (we were a little late).

Our disagreement of the day was the spelling and correct pronunciation of "Snuffleupagus" from Sesame Street (yes, I was wrong - my childhood is crushed). Oh, and our daily argument about what day it is. Vacation is the best!

Tomorrow is our final day at sea (last day to really work on that tan...hehe) and then another huge day of sight-seeing with Naples and Capri, and then back to Rome the day after that. Although it seems like I left home forever ago, it also seems like this went way too fast, and I can't believe it is almost over.

Egypt - Part 2

2008-05-29T08:34:00.013-05:00

After the Sphinx, we headed to the Nile. The Nile runs right through Cairo, so the city is still a backdrop to this. We boarded a small boat called a felucca (basically a beat-up big wooden sail boat) that had brightly colored and patterned cushion benches along the outside edges. The boat held about 10 of us and we sat on those benches and there was a table in the middle where a big buffet lunch was laid out. There we lots of vegetable salad type dishes, the best flat bread and hummus, and a few mystery meatball and minced meat dishes. It was all actually very good. I, of course, ordered up an Egyptian beer, a Sakara Gold. It tasted vaguely like Old Milwaukee. We are not exactly in an area known for its breweries. Oh well, but I did drink a beer while cruising down the Nile. For everyone that told me to "have one for them", that was the one.

After lunch we headed to the Mosque of Muhammad Ali (no, not the boxer). Muhammad Ali ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1849. The mosque is gorgeous the it is right in the heart of the city. They have built a series of walls around it though the entirely block out the sounds of the city. It is completely peaceful with the only sound being those of birds that nest there. For the most part the mosque is open, with a large central square in the middle and cover hallways (although still open to the square) surrounding. It is in those hallways where rugs are laid down and people come to pray five times a day. On Friday afternoons thousands come to fill the place and pray and listen to their version of a service. We were allowed (without shoes) to explore as much as we wanted. Tranquility in the midst of chaos.

Next to the mosque is the Gayer-Anderson Museum that is basically two attached houses that originally belonged to a couple of Cairo merchants. It was donated by an Englishman who lived there from 1937 - 1044. It is still setup as it was then with period furniture and also a few rooms filled with pre-BC relics. The highlight of course was the harem rooms. Now, it was hot at the pyramids and the Sphinx. I mean, it is the Sahara, but there was a breeze and it was a "dry" heat. :) It was absolutely stifling in these houses. No breeze and "burst into flames" kinda hot. We were very happy to get back to the comfort of our air conditioned bus.

Then we went to the Khan El Khalili market which has been around since 1382. Now this was an experience. The alleyways are extraordinarily narrow, which I originally assumed were pedestrian (and donkey) only, but no, a giant tour bus can fit (which we discovered later on while diving into a shop as a self-preservation tactic). Ok, the shopkeepers are aggressive and persistent. Right in your face persistent. Calls of "Come see my shop", "How can I spend your money?", "We have your size", "You dropped something, you dropped something....no it's just my heart" filled the air, while men thrust merchandise right under your nose. It felt a little like running the gauntlet.

My senses where entirely overloaded with all the colorful merchandise, men and donkey hauling in more, people shoving things right in your face....all the while attempting to take pictures, not get pick-pocketed and repeating "No, thank you", over and over. It wasn't an entirely pleasant experience, but it is one I would like to repeat now that I would more have my wits about me.

Now, none of this deterred Aunt Linda. We weren't more than 50 feet into this market and we realized we had lost her already. We turned around and she was in the process of buying a belly-dancing head-dress. Watch out Uncle Craig! I choose not to ponder how that is going to get used.

Of course to be fair, once we escaped the market we found a quiet (so we thought -- we still kept getting accosted) outdoor coffee shop. We were good and kept saying "no", until the cutest little 7-year-old girl came up selling the same head dresses. Of course, we all melted and promptly bought some, mostly as gifts. Although, Karen's is a suspicious shade of John Deere green. Beware Gaylen!

The rest of the day was spent souvenir shopping and seeing how papyrus paper is made. So, far we have really lucked out on tour guides when we have chosen to take tours. Noha was our guide in Egypt and was absolutely fabulous. Mike, our drive in Cyprus made the trip, and Phyllis in Turkey gave us all the freedom we wanted to wander about. We couldn't have asked for more.

Frying blissfully away in the sun again today. Tomorrow is Athens!

Egypt - Part 1 - Camels!

2008-05-28T14:50:00.012-05:00

I'm not even sure where to begin with Egypt. It is the most crowded, dirty, chaotic, wonderful place I have ever been. I am completely and totally enamored.

Ok...with that out of my system...I am writing this from the bus on our way from Cairo back to Alexandria. And we are stopped in traffic. Road construction I believe. The sun is close to setting over the Sahara (damn, that sounds cool) which makes me sad because that means no more pictures. For some reason the 300 or so I took today doesn't seem like quite enough.

We started the day with a drive from Alexandria to Cairo on the "desert road". I expected it to be more "desert-y". I mean, it was in spots, but the drive is mostly through the Nile valley, so they get some moisture. So the drive was this odd mix of semi-pitiful fields being worked by hand or donkey, billboards after billboards and roadside stands (they seem extremely fond of Coca-Cola here). For security we had an armed man with us in our bus and a military jeep filled with soldiers both in front and behind us. With as aggressive as Egyptian men are, I was happy we had our own security with us.

Our first stop where the pyramids of Giza. No warm up, nothing...right away - pyramids! They are absolutely amazing and also surprising. I had always assumed they were in the desert...in the middle of no where (and I'm sure some are - there are 110 in Egypt). But the nine at Giza are flanked by the Sahara on one side and downtown Cairo on the other. It seems unreal when you are standing there.

We chose to just wander around the pyramids instead of going inside (hunched over for 15 minutes and no cameras). We got our first taste of the pushy vendors walking around actually trying to place things in your hands and then demanding payment. Also, camels everywhere with men offering rides or pictures. Actually, EVERYONE (including police) wanted to take our pic -- for a price. All of this adds up to people approaching you every 20 seconds with, "America?", "Hi-Ho Silver!". I have no idea why this is what they associate with the US.

Now, we had been told NOT to get on a camel. One price to get on and then they won't let you off until you pay more. Fun! But, Aunt Linda was determined and our tour guide got it set up, so her life-long dream of being on a camel was fulfilled....pictures to follow. :)

Then we went just down the hill to see the Sphinx. This is right in the midst of the city. Sadly, there is a KFC and a Pizza Hut directly across the street. There just is no escape.

Leaving the Sphinx, we quickly started to understand Cairo traffic. There are no lanes, no traffic lights, no stop signs. And the streets are filled with pedestrians of every sort, donkey carts, men on camels, bicycles, scooters, cars, trucks and giant tour buses. To add to the chaos, most city streets are incredibly narrow. But as a rule, if it looks like three lanes could fit, they somehow manage five. It is the perfect example of controlled chaos - all by using their horns.

Oh, and as an aside....gas is $1.80 a gallon. Yes, American.

Now I'm going to try to explain Cairo. Most everyone lives in huge apartment buildings because Cairo is so densely populated. It is this crush of buildings, both old and new. Many, many buildings remain undone. The bottom floors complete, with rebar sticking out the of the top and staircases that lead to nowhere, although they are inhabited. Apparently, you don't pay property taxes until a building is "complete", but many of these buildings have been there a long time which gives Cairo a crumbling appearance vs. a "in the process of being built" look. There is clothing hanging in most balconies and air conditioners and satellite dishes hanging all over. I also saw the world's scariest SPIRAL fire escape hanging precariously off the side of about a 20-story apartment building.

What you find on the street level of these buildings is miraculous. No big shopping centers here. Just street after street with small, open stores (almost stalls) selling everything from brightly colored cloth to the prettiest fruit you've ever seen (these generally had a donkey out front) to paint and building supplies. Also cafes where men sit to drink coffee and suck on hookahs. This hustle and bustle combined with almost professional loitering sends your senses on absolute tilt. I am reeling.

I am also exhausted and happy. So, I am not even proof reading, but will look at this again tomorrow after a MUCH needed shower and some sleep....and I'll add part two then.

Night all.

Cyprus Rocks!

2008-05-27T03:16:00.013-05:00

We had the best day yesterday! Aunt Linda was a bit concerned about the whole 4x4 thing, but it was so much fun. We did have a driver which helped matters...pretty sure we would have died with out him. Cyprus is very mountainous and we spent the day tooling around up into the mountains and visiting little spots. The first was a bridge that was built in the 1300s. Then we went off to this little village called Arsos, which honestly looked like something out of a child's fairytale book. I can't wait to be able to post pictures. From there we took all dirt roads (with a nasty, nasty dropoff on one side) up into the forest.

Our driver was way into herbs and would just pull the jeep over to one side (generally without stopping), reach out, grab part of a bush, hand it to Aunt Linda (who was riding shotgun) and announce "chamomile". Cyprus is extordinarily arid, but they have terraced the mountains all up and have filled them with almond trees, grape vines, apricots, cherries, pomegrates, etc. It is truly beautiful. Of all the places we've been, I think Cyprus is the one I most want to return to. They do have a major, major issue with water here though. The residents only get water 4 days of the week. I can't even imagine.

We ended our drive at the village of Omodos, high up into the mountains. The village is known for it's wine making....they still press the grapes the old way with these giant grape presses. It is amazlying good, and amazingly cheap. We bought some bottles for 3 euros each (slightly less than 6 bucks). Omodos also is the home of Monastery of the Holy Cross which supposedly holds a bit of the rope that Jesus was tied to the cross with, which they take out once a year on September 14. They also have the skull of the Apostle Philip in this little gold and silver case shaped like a pyramid. They allow you to look at the very top of it. I need to brush up on my religion.

Today, we have a much-needed day at sea. We have been getting up awfully early considering we are on vacation to go onshore. So we slept in today and are going to lay around working on our tans. The memory of sunburn is long-gone and we are off to happily repeat our mistakes.

Tomorrow....Egypt...seriously, I can hardly believe it!

Oh, I hope everyone had a good a holiday as we did!

Crispy Critters

2008-05-25T14:28:00.005-05:00

Well, first off I'd like to thank my grandfather for my Native American blood, because without it I would be in a load of trouble.

Today was beach day in Rhodes, Greece and we were in the sun...lots and lots of sun from about 9 am until 4 or 5 tonight. After 4 days, I am a lovely shade of carmel, granted slighted red-tinged carmel, but carmel nonetheless. I can not give the same report of my cherry-red friends. Lisa and Karen will be all aloed up and stuck to the sheets tonight.

So, we had a nice relaxing day in preparation for tomorrow. 4x4's across the island of Cyprus. Aunt Linda is frightened. Should be an interesting day.

Turkey Day!

2008-05-24T14:52:00.007-05:00

Now Lisa has been referring to our little adventure today, as looking at "old shit", and while she is technically correct, it is way cooler than it sounds.

We spent the majority of the day at Ephesus, a city from the Classical Greek period, that hosted one of the seven churches of Asia, addressed in the Book of Revelation of The Bible, and in addition, the Gospel of John might have been written here. Heady stuff. It is actually amazing to be in the location where so many religions converged. Of course the highlight for us was sitting cheek-to-cheek on the 48-seat toilet designated as "men only". Ancient women were screwed.

We also stopped at the ancient city of Miletus and the Temple of Apollo. I had the best day with my camera! I can't wait to be able to post pictures.

Turkey is an amazing place. It is this weird combination of old Turkish culture, with quite a bit of western influence. It wasn't unusual to see the stereotypical "Turkish grandmother" with her black dress and scarf up over her head and tied under her chin standing next to a girl in a glittery silver tanktop, short-shorts and high-heels. It's actually a bit jarring.

Again, we had a gorgeous day. I believe it was 82 and sunny. Same as what is expected for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are back in Greece....Rhodes this time. And we finally are getting our beach day. We need to relax after a couple hard days of sight-seeing. Don't you just feel bad for us?

oh, and Uncle Craig? Aunt Linda and Lisa would like some sort of indication that you are still alive and keeping yourself away from two-wheeled motorized vehicles. So if you, or one of your lovely daughters or random friends could comment on any "Craig sightings", we would be most appreciative.

Mykonos, Greece

2008-05-23T14:34:00.008-05:00

Well, I really, really wish I could upload photos. I stole one off the Internet that looks about right....so picture this with less clouds and you'd have how today was. I know....it's absolutely crazy ridiculous. Mykonos is a total tourist trap, but absolutely beautiful. The town itself has about 5,000 people, but they push through 900,000 tourists per year, so you can about imagine that every resident is trying to sell something. I buckled slightly and did buy a new silver ring. It's pretty :)

We struggled a bit this morning because the original plan was to make it to one of Mykonos beaches. But after standing in a crazy-long line at the ONE taxi stand in the center of town for 15 minutes and only having one cab come, we called it quits and headed off to explore. But it was hot, hot, hot....so after a couple of hours we went back to the boat the jumped in the pool to cool off. Lisa and I ventured back into town and had a great time taking photos and exploring. Little did we know, but Linda and Karen made it back too once they had a bit of dinner on the boat. Unfortunately, our favorite bar, the RamRod Club (no, I did not make that up - oh, and sound in link and obviously NSFW) didn't have a show until midnight, and we had to be back on the boat at 10:30. Aunt Linda lucked out!

After a rocky start, we all agreed that Mykonos was a great start to our explorations.

Tomorrow....Turkey!

Could I be any lazier?

2008-05-22T15:54:00.004-05:00

Wow....this whole cruising thing is such hard work. I mean, I had to get up, shower myself and take the elevator up to the main deck....and yep, that is about all I had to do today. It was a 75 and sunny, postcard perfect day. We had nothing to do today besides sun ourselves, explore the ship and eat. The food is way, way too good. I really should have brought a whole other set of clothes, just one size bigger. Man, it will be work-out time after this.

Tomorrow is Mykonos where we will be introducing Aunt Linda to a very special type of show. Google Mykonos if you'd like to guess what.....

I promise...more excitement tomorrow....

Boat Day!

2008-05-20T16:01:00.000-05:00

We woke up to the sound of the ocean and the sight of the clouds breaking up! The busy Italian street was filled with tanned tourists wheeling their luggage past the hotel. I can only assume they are coming from the ship we are about to enter.

Things have went well so far. We had a little setback with not understanding how to get into the bank and the bank guy not speaking english. You have to press the buzzer, tell the nice Italian man how much money you plan to exchange and then he buzzes you into this scary looking tube which you then stand in for what seems forever before the other side of the tube opens. It was a bit much for us. Aunt Linda was going to be the brave one, and then they were closed for lunch...grrr....so we were very Euro-poor today.

But we are on the ship now, and yes, we have some very spotty internet access, so I should be able to do semi-regular updates. Not seeing yet how to pull pictures from the camera, but I'll look into that tomorrow.

As my first cruise I'm finding most of this amazing. Very efficient boarding process, huge boat and dinner was amazingly good. I recommend the salmon. The boat is a bit rocky, so I am digging the dramamine. Damn motion-sickness.

All for now...

It's raining in Rome....

2008-05-20T11:07:00.000-05:00

Through a combination of hand signals and Lisa's "spa-talian" our impossibly-handsome, "I only speak Italian", make your heart melt-into-your-shoes driver told us it has been for two days straight. Hopefully it is getting it out of it's system. Luckily our Rome days are 12 days from now with any luck we are sailing off towards better weather.

So we are in Civitavecchia. It is about an hour drive for our driver (scary fast!) or maybe two hours for normal people south of Rome (or Roma if you are Italian). We just had the best-feeling shower ever, even though the shower is about the size of a bathroom scale. Washing 24 straight hours worth of airport funk off always feels good.

We had our first meal here in Italy at 10 pm. A lovely cheese and salami pizza and some very, very good wine. For some reason food tastes better here.

Til tomorrow....

Well, we've made it to Amsterdam...

2008-05-20T07:05:00.002-05:00

and Whoo hoo!..... Internet access that I bought with my spankin' new pocket full of euros. Holy crap, I give them a crisp $100 and they give me 56 euro back. Ouch. We'll be spending a bunch of time not thinking about that. But so far, so good. We are happily drinking our diet cokes and munching on cheese that came from Danish cows.

More as things progress....

Graduation, Trip Day!!! Whoo hooo.....oh, and man babies?

2008-05-19T10:46:00.002-05:00

First, thank you everyone that came to help celebrate my graduation on Saturday. I had a great time, I hope you all did too. It ended up being quite the party. It was the perfect way to end my seemingly endless school career. Done. And seriously, push me in front of a bus if I start talking about a Doctorate ...please....it's only humane.....

Yes, yes, and today is the day. Flight leaves at 9 pm for Amsterdam. And yes, we have a four hour layover, but I seriously doubt I'll attempt to leave the airport. We'll see though.

I blogged earlier about the itinerary, you can either scroll down or find it here. For those interested in the time difference, Rome is 7 hours ahead of Minnesota. Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Egypt are 8 hours ahead. I am a night-owl, so I'm not too concerned with adjusting on the way over, but I am going to be a grumpy girl when I get back and suddenly have to get up 8 hours earlier than I had been. I would like to apologize in advance to those of you that need to deal with me on June 5-9.

It will be a couple days before I get Internet access again, so to keep you amused, I found this deliciously creepy site. Why, oh, why did someone think this is a good idea and why can't I look away?

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

See you in a couple days!

Coolest stop-motion video - made on walls

2008-05-15T20:19:00.001-05:00

Amazing video.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Stop-motion video made entirely on walls and sidewalks of public places. I can't even imagine the work that went into this. Creatures that morph and mutate from one to the next. I've watched it twice so far. Link to the artist site.

Zoey and Make A Wish

2008-05-13T23:29:00.001-05:00

My god-daughter Zoey had a wish granted by the Make A Wish foundation last week for her birthday. Zoey chose DisneyWorld so she could be a princess, and the whole family headed down to Orlando for a week. Josie split the blog into the different days, so you'll need to scroll back.

It really is amazing how far Zoey has come in the past 2 1/2 years since the diagnosis of Rasmussen's Encephalitis and her hemispherectomy. Josie has done such a good job at keeping the blog up all these years and if you haven't read the story, it's worth a look. Scroll all the way to he end (which really is the beginning) and take read away. Or if you'd just like an overview, try here. I really envy the strength Josie and Dan have shown throughout all of this.

Craig is riding the MS 150 again

2008-05-11T12:14:00.003-05:00

My uncle is doing the MS 150 again on June 6 - 8. This is his 5th year. He'll bike from Duluth, MN to the Twin Cities. Generally, three thousand people participate and they raise over $2 million dollars to move research closer to a cure and also help to support people with MS and their families. If you'd like to actually participate, check out the Bike MS: Larkin Hoffman MS 150 Ride 2008 page. Otherwise if you are like me and will be just too full up on vacation food and drink to even think about getting on a bike, toss in a few bucks to support Craig and to help the MS Society all at the same time.

Nine Days and Counting....

2008-05-10T22:46:00.001-05:00

I suppose I should start talking about the big trip. For those of you playing the home game, here is the itinerary:

May 19	Leave Minneapolis
May 20	Civitavecchia, Italy
May 23	Mykonos, Greece
May 24	Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey
May 25	Rhodes, Greece
May 26	Limassol, Cyphrus
May 28	Alexandria, Egypt (although we will mostly be in Cairo
May 30	Athens, Greece
June 1	Naples, Capri, Italy
June 2	Rome, Italy
June 4	Back to Minneapolis

And a helpful map:

The beauty of this trip is that my last day of work is May 16 and I don't go back until June 9! At the moment, that almost seems unbelievable. oh, and here is the cruise ship.

If you peruse all those links it will almost be like being there. I actually did buy some clothes and travel stuff today, so I am finally officially getting ready. I feel horribly unprepared though.

I will try to post some things from the trip. Not sure if I'll be able to pull photos off the camera, but I'll give it a shot. More to come....

Sir Reginald has tenants

2008-05-08T20:21:00.001-05:00

So, for those that don't know, when I came back from DC a few weeks ago I had a lovely surprise waiting for me. See exhibit A.

An appendage of Sir Reginald where it isn't supposed to be.

So, I love this tree. I've named this tree. It is right outside my back door. It shades the house and my little patio. Of course it is horribly messy, and it leans at a very precarious angle directly over the garage. The tree is huge and if it ever goes, it will take the entire garage out. With that said, I had the big decision of "should I take the whole tree down since I have the tree guys here"? And with an estimate of $2700 (it's a BIG tree), I opted for them to just make the branch go away.

Good Thing!

So last night when I came home from work there was an albino squirrel in my yard. It scampered off as soon as I walked onto the porch, but still....cool! A friend said it was an sign. When I asked what kind of sign, he said, "It's like how white buffalos are supposed to signal the End Times". Hopefully because of a squirrels relative size compared to a buffalo, the sign merely foretells of me burning dinner or something.

So tonight. Come home from work and albino squirrel (I need to name him I think) is running up my driveway in front of the car and jumps up onto Sir Reginald. So I get out, and head into the house to grab my new camera to see if I can get a picture this time. I come out and he is peeking from around the side of the tree, but being terribly skittish. I stand around for a bit and move onto the patio to see if I can get one from there. And suddenly ANOTHER albino squirrel starts climbing down from higher up in the tree. There are TWO! I did get a couple shots of this guy. He was much more into the camera.

So how can there be two? I thought albino squirrels were a rarity. A quick Google search brings back the Albino Squirrel Preservation Society. I had no idea. I've having a hard time finding info on how they actually come about. Anyone know? I thought it was a genetic mutation, which would lead me to believe you wouldn't easily get two of them in the same litter (is it called a litter?). I am not up on my squirrel lingo. I need a squirrel expert.

Things I wish I was doing.....

2008-05-07T17:38:00.001-05:00

An ex-coworker of mine, Jeff Baker, has his first photo show starting next weekend. I've seen a bit of his work here in the office and actually pondered stealing one gorgeous print he brought in. I'll be checking it out when I get back from my glorious three week vacation. I really wish I could make the 16th. The link has more details and I'll let him tell you the details in his own words.

http://studiobaker.info/renewal

What you may gather from the link is that you have a number of options. First, you can attend on May 16th and see both me and the photos, and talk to me in depth about what I'm trying to say with my art (yeah, right). Second, you can visit during the run at any other time the gallery's open and see just the photos without me there. This might an attractive option to some of you. Third, you can choose not to go at all. This is not a good option, and I'll tell you why.

Because May 16th is also the kickoff of Art-a-Whirl, NE Mpls' big annual art festival. All the artists up in that hippie bohemian part of town open their studios, display their wares, and have a big laid-back party all weekend.

It's worth exploring in my opinion, especially if you've never been up that way before. Great food, odd people ... you'll fit right in. And chances are you'd find something artistic worth looking at. See this website for more on that:
http://www.nemaa.org

I can totally vouch for his assessment of Art-a-Whirl. It is a great way to explore that part of Minneapolis and experience art in a not-so-typical atmosphere. Good luck and I am horribly jealous Jeff!

The World is Spinning....

2008-05-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

The other important reason I started this is because I am currently semi-trapped on my couch with the world at an unusual tilt. Day 3 actually. This appears to be a genetic predisposition (thanks Dad!), as one of my sisters, my dad, my aunt and my late grandfather have all had this issue. Last time for me was twelve years ago and I'll be happy if it is another twelve before it happens again.

Apparently it is Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. Benign meaning both "no danger" and "there isn't a hell of a lot you can do about it". If you want the dirty details you can look here. Generally though, there is crap floating around in my inner ear that shouldn't be floating and until it decides to stop floating, I'm stuck in my own personal tilt-a-whirl.

There are pluses though....sitting or laying still while keeping my eyes focused in one general area seems fine. So my Linkedin profile is up to date, all emails are finished and I started this blog. I also watched the sweetest movie, My Neighbor Totoro. My first real foray into Japanese animation. Highly recommended, especially if you have kids.

I doubt I'll ever be in India to see my toilet in action, but....

2008-05-04T10:15:00.000-05:00

if you are, please take a pic and send it to me.

Pardada Pardadi was founded by Virendra "Sam" Singh, a sixty-eight-year-old American citizen and chemical engineer who left India in 1960 and returned in 2000 to invest his savings in a school for girls. Eight years later, the school enrolls 700 lowest-caste girls aged 8-21 from 43 surrounding villages, teaching them academics along with health, hygiene, money management, legal awareness, and life-changing vocational skills.
It's not easy to convince a poor father to send his daughter to school. Daughters are valuable labor, even eight-year-old daughters. The abstract promise of an educated future cannot overcome the reality of living hand-to-mouth, praying for a good monsoon and fearing what drought might mean. It's not a question of a father's love -- it's stark economics.
So Sam structured the school around tangible economic incentives for attendance. It provides free books, uniforms, and meals, and deposits ten rupees ($.25) a day into a bank account set up for each student, building a 30,000 rupee ($750) trust that matures the day the student graduates, turns twenty-one, or marries -- whichever comes first. This is a huge sum in rural India -- on graduation day, it transforms a girl from the daughter of a poor farmer into one of the richest and best-educated women in the entire district.

And if that isn't enough, he's started charity drive to raise money to build toilets for these girls. Yes, I know this sounds odd, but hear me out. Toilets are not readily available in this portion of rural India. Everyone uses the fields. What this means for women and girls though is that they must hold it between sunrise and sunset. Can you imagine? I'm in for one. The "Nancy Reed Toilet" has quite the ring to it, doesn't it?

Check it out yourself.

No, this blog is not for you

2008-05-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

It is just for me to collect things I find of interest and to start publishing here and there. I blame this short clip. I just recently finished grad school (I haven't even walked yet) and have found myself with a bit of "cognitive surplus". I'm exploring ways to use it productively. From Clay Shirky's talk at the Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008.

The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible, and I hope that this one succeeds, obviously. But even if it doesn't, it's illustrated the point already, which is that someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus, enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago.
So that's the answer to the question, "Where do they find the time?" Or, rather, that's the numerical answer. But beneath that question was another thought, this one not a question but an observation. In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."

At least they're doing something.

If you can't deal with the video, here is the transcript.