Thursday, 11 November 2010

Today is Veterans Day. That means it’s been 92 years since the cease-fire ended the War to End All Wars. Damn. 92 years without any wars. It’s been great. Happy Veterans’ Day.

This is one of those holidays that it’s impossible to speak about in anything but reverential tones, but I’ll try to do my best…

Did you know that there is a Librarian Day? If you did know that, do you know when it is (hint: we’ve already past it this year)? Did you know that there is a World Teachers Day, too? Did you know that, like Veterans Day, it’s missing an apostrophe? Do you know when World Teachers Day is (hint: it’s the same day as when Babylonia fell to Persia)?

I appreciate the work so many of our veterans have done, and I applaud them for not getting killed in a war. Even though the United States hasn’t participated in a morally justifiable war since at least my birth, I know that the military does much good, and I am all for protection and preparedness. Still, I think the country would do good to elevate the others who serve us via the government – such as librarians and teachers – to the same level as former military personnel. Does Applebee’s have a free day for Kindergarten teachers? I sure hope they do. Next time there’s a Super Bowl, will the pre-game antics bolster patriotism by having a brass band followed up by a line of librarians waving to the crowd? I hope so, ’cause then I’d watch.

Maybe, instead of singing the first verse of that violent tune of rockets and bombs, we could sing about what an awesome chunk of planet earth we have, and a whole bunch of National Park forest rangers could come out and stand at attention.

Is there a National Park Forest Ranger Day? I don’t even know.

Friday, 12 November 2010

I spent my lunch break at Home Depot today. Wait! Before you stop reading, I assure you, I’m not gonna whine about lousy service. This time. To the contrary, I was helped by Ray (at their Maple Grove location) who was friendly, knowledgeable, and competent – and to his supervisor: give Ray a raise – Home Depot needs to hire more people like him.

I signed up to take a woods class through the local community ed program. It starts tomorrow morning. It’s not so much a “class” as just getting to use the school’s equipment. I was going to build a hutch for our dining room. Just a small one – about 6.5 feet high, and about 18 inches wide. Today, I figured I’d better go buy the wood.

Ray showed me the available stock. I wanted pine, but the planks weren’t tall enough, so I had to decide on either shortening my hutch or combining two pieces. Neither option sounded that appealing. Ray suggested I use some press board, which – despite my prejudices – actually looked pretty decent. But, you know, it’s not authentic. Besides, two pieces of press board would’ve set me back $90, and I’d still need a lot more lumber.

Ray started helping me load my cart and, at one point, he said, “You’re racking up quite a bill here.” He was right. Long story short: it was too expensive. If I could buy a hutch for less money than I can build one, then what’s the point (yes, yes, I know, there are some good arguments for building my own)?

Anyway, despite Ray’s stellar customer service, I left empty-handed. I had Jennifer call and cancel my enrollment in the class.

Oh well.

Saturday, 13 November 2010

Wow! What a great day!

First of all, snow fell. And how! There was a ton of heavy, wet snow everywhere, and since I had nowhere to go (see above) I was just fine with that.

Instead, we all just did a bunch of projects around the house. My wife braved the elements (I’m using the ancient Greek’s definition of ‘elements’ here, not the modern one) and scored us some groceries. Owen, meanwhile, used his art supplies to knock out a couple of coloring books and prepare some artwork for his three out-of-state grandparents. I got three loads of laundry done, organized the files on my computer, and my wife did lots of dishes and made a great soup for dinner.

We polished the night off with an episode of the Muppet Show.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

But wait! There’s more! The inclement weather staycation continued today: I organized the garage by cutting up slices of last year’s Xmas tree and shoving everything I could into the corner. I made room for our car, and driving it into the garage was absolutely the only driving I did all weekend. This is good, because my satisfaction with a day generally drops off the more miles I log in an automobile. There’s an inverse correlation, for all of you smarty-pants out there.

Oh – and in case you’re wondering why I have to cut slices of our Xmas tree, and why it took me ten months to do it, let me explain: We save part of our tree from each year for sentimental reasons, most notably turning one slice into an ornament for future years.  To answer the other half of your question, I just forgot to do it. I cut off all the branches way back in January, but the trunk just sat in the corner of our garage, where the bottom two inches slowly rotted into mush. It was only last week, when I began cleaning the garage that I remembered to do it. So there.

Also, my wife hung up a bunch of new photos of our model-caliper children, Owen cleaned his room, we found a good spot for Isla’s toys, and Jennifer whipped up a batch of pearl onion/potato stew. It was awesome. We spent the better part of the afternoon and evening rocking out (or would that be ‘folking out’?) to Mason Jennings and Jack Johnson.

I hope your weekend was at least half as good as ours.

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Last week, following the 6K, I picked up the shirt I earned for my participation. It’s long sleeved; a little heavier material than a t-shirt. It’s also bright orange. Like the kind of orange you’d wear if you were going to kill deer or work on the highway.

I hung the shirt in my closet and, this morning, I decided to wear it for the first time. And, I’m sorry, but it’s just too bright. By 9:00, three co-workers had commented on the shirt’s radioactive brilliance. Thankfully, I have a plain black t-shirt at work, and so I swapped out my upper-torso wear. It’s been a little cold at work in short sleeves today, especially during the Toastmasters meeting, which took place in a room surrounded on two sides by windows. Still, I think the change was prudent. I’ll keep the if-clothes-could-talk-this-shirt-would-be-shouting shirt for when I workout.

Also today:

It’s the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s demise. Here’s an extremely well-made video that includes archival news media, footage of the ship during its final days, and, of course, that great song that knows how rhyme “Gitche-Gumee” like nothing else:

Monday, 08 November 2010

Today my family of four attended a birthday party (it was Isla’s first time attending a birthday party). This one was at Edinborough Park in Edina. Owen and I used to frequent a similar park in Maple Grove, called Maple Maze, and we’ve been to another one in Woodbury, too. These play areas-within-a-community center seem to be catching on. It appears that, if yours is a suburb of significant size and affluence, then you must build one of these things. I bet there’s one in Apple Valley, I just don’t know about it yet.

I vote for Edinborough Park as the best of the three, though. For one thing, it doesn’t smell like a dirty diaper. The six-story high roof maybe helps with this. It’s in a large building, as are the ones in Maple Grove and Woodbury, but unique among the three, the one in Edina is not cordoned off from the rest of the building. So, you know – more air flow.

For another thing, adults can actually fit in the play area. At the other two, it’s been difficult for me to get my immense body (i.e., over 5 feet tall) through the tubes. When Owen’s asked me to go down the slide with him, I’ve had to practically lay down to fit. Not so Edinborough – I was able to walk through most of the tubes, and I could actually sit up as I went down the slides. There were some pretty kick ass slides, there, too. There was also a play area with some fun carts, balls, and one of those inflatable jumping things. Not a bad Monday evening.

The grapes were very tasty, too.

Tuesday, 09 November 2010

Jennifer and I went to Owen’s school today for our first ever parent-teacher conferences.I told Jennifer that conferences used to scare the crap out of me. Literally. I would get so nervous I’d get diarrhea and I couldn’t eat or think about anything. Primarily this was because my parents made an enormous stink about everything, so when my mom would attend conferences and find out that I wasn’t paying attention in class for a minute last Thursday, or that I turned in an assignment a day late, or that I only got a B+ on the latest math exam, this was typically met with spankings in the case of the former and disapproving comments in regards the latter.

Now, like with just about everything else, I don’t see what the big deal was.

In Kindergarten, there’s not much to ‘rate’ a kid on: Owen is doing good in reading, writing, and drawing. His socializing is behind, but he’s coming along. He “loves the concrete nature of math,” which isn’t too surprising, and he is always pleasant to be around. The teacher gave us a folder (complete with a fall-theme on the cover that Owen colored) with some observations and goals for Owen and a few pieces of his artwork.

In the coming weeks, there will be some tests to see how the kids perform, and the results will be used to place the kids in future classes. If Owen doesn’t exceed expectations, I’m gonna beat him. Just kidding.

Oh – and I know it’s a bit early to be thinking about Xmas presents, but you might want to consider this for the little ones in your life:

(CLICK HERE for more info about this wonderful book, which will help your preschooler equate President Obama with Josef Stalin.)

Saturday, 06 November 2010

We made another trip to Michaels today.

Last week, we visited their custom framing department to inquire about getting three pictures framed. This would have cost over $400. Yikes! Did I mention that was with the non-fancy frame style and did not include glass? Yep. The employee told us they do have 50% off sales all the time, which makes sense, because I can’t imagine anyone pays full price. We sure didn’t.

Instead, my wife went online and selected the frames we needed. For less than $80, we bought all three frames (and this time it included glass). The problem was, it did not include spacers.

Spacers, for those who don’t know (and I sure didn’t) are little pieces that hide between the glass and the picture (tucked behind the frame) that keep the print off the glass.

No problem, we thought, we’ll just pick some up at Michaels.

So today, we stopped at the apostrophe-starved store and my wife went in while I waited in the car with our two miniature versions. She came back ~10 minutes later empty-handed. Turns out, Michaels does have spacers, but they only sell them in with custom framing orders. When they asked my wife if she bought her frames from Michaels, she said no (have I mentioned she’s honest to a fault?), and they said that they couldn’t sell them to her.

Fine, if they don’t want our money, we’ll take it elsewhere.

We ventured over to Gallery Editions. The sign on their window said they are open until 5:00 but, even though it was only 4:45, the doors were locked and the lights were out. A sign on the door said that they had to adopt shorter hours, including closing on Saturdays at…5:00.

Um…if the economy is cutting into your hours, Gallery Editions, maybe you should at least stay open as long as your signs say. That way you could have made some money off of us.

Sunday, 07 November 2010

Today was sure to be a good day, as we were determined not to go to Michaels. Instead, I stopped at Deck the Walls, a store that, despite claims to the contrary on their website, were not willing to help me ‘created my masterpiece.’

We also stopped at Things Remembered. After the teenage employee got off the phone with her BFF, I asked her if she could stitch our daughter’s name on a new blanket we purchased. She said they can only customize blankets that were purchased in their store. I said, “Oh, you must’ve changed your policy in the last few years,” and she said, “yeah.” Then my wife said something super sarcatic to her (that’s the kind of thing that makes up for her überhonesty, which is a word I just made up so that I could use an umlaut), and we walked out of that store.

I gotta say, though, I’m kind of happy that the girl refused our money. She didn’t exactly make me feel confident. She was a typical gum-chewing, hair twirling ditz who was gabbing away on the phone when we walked into her store, despite the fact that other customers were there, presumably looking for assistance. She only got off the phone because I just walked right up to the counter and stared at her until she said to her friend: “Well, I have to go now, yeah, okay, talk to you later, okay, mm-hm, yep, bye.” For some reason, she just didn’t exude “You can trust me with your family heirlooms.”

I guess I’m saying this because, thanks to that girl, I have no intention of returning to Things Remembered for any reason. If I need something customized, I’ll go somewhere where the employees at least seem competent and ready to help.

Thursday, 04 November 2010

Today I tried the Maple Grove library’s drive-up book drop for the first time. In the past, I have always gotten out of my car and went in to return my items, but today I had no reason to go in, so I decided to try the book drop. Unfortunately, the woman in the minivan ahead of me was returning about 5,000 items, which she had to insert into the drop one at a time. She kept reaching around in her vehicle, picking up one thing at a time.

Then I went to Michaels, which never fails to put me in a bad mood. I had to return a tie-dying kit we bought the other day. There was no signage for where to make a return, so I asked this young employee (who was busy organizing stuff on a rack and didn’t bother to look at me) where I could return something. She replied, but she mumbled so much that I couldn’t understand here. Oh – and she also started walking away mid-sentence. She went behind a cash register, so I assumed for a moment that she was going to help me, but instead she just yelled out: “I can help who ever’s next!”

I just went into a different line, where I was told the wait would be long. So then  I went into a different line. When I got to the front of that line, the cashier told me she’d have to get a manager to help us. And guess what? The manager turned out to be the mumbling, back-turning girl I had first tried talking to!

Man, I hate that store.

Friday, 05 November 2010

Let’s first talk about what went wrong during today’s 6K race.

First, I once again was unable to determine when, exactly, the race began. I was standing there, near the starting line, listening as best as I could. But the starting point is near a highway, and the PA system they use was (once again) inadequate. I wanted to stand closer to the announcer, but it wouldn’t be right for me to stand too close to the front, as I would just get trampled by the ‘real’ runners. So…I started my stopwatch and began running as soon as I could, but I knew I’d already lost some time.

Second, we were instructed to travel counterclockwise around the path. For the last month, I had been running clockwise around it. I know, I know, this shouldn’t make that much of a difference, but it does. See, I knew where all the markers were, and I knew how to pace myself (e.g. “Don’t stop running until I’ve crossed the bridge”). But with everything the opposite way, I couldn’t keep track of my pacing as well.

Alas, I think both of these things made me do better. Since I was worried I had lost several seconds at the start, and since I didn’t know when I could slow down, I just kept on running. In fact, I kept passing people that I had been pacing off of – they would get winded and slow down, and I just kept going. It wasn’t until about 90% of the way around the path that I stopped running. My side hurt and so I took about 30 seconds to walk while pushing in my side. Then I ran again. Then I stopped running again, but this time only for about 20 seconds.

Then, I could see the finish line in view. I looked behind me to see no one closer than 50 feet. I looked in front of me and saw the clock: it was a good thing I hadn’t trusted my stopwatch, as I was several seconds off.

Running slowly and steadily, I was first passed by a tall man who suddenly had a burst of energy. “Oh well,” I thought, “I didn’t want anyone else to get in front of me, but I suppose I’ve done well enough.” Then a woman, about 50 years old by the looks of her, also passed me. She was followed closely on her heels by two more people – also several years older than me.

Somehow, for some reason, I decided to kick it into high gear. I didn’t want to be outrun by three older people in the final few seconds. So I ran. Fast. So fast I kept wondering how high off the ground I was launching myself. So fast that my heels were nearly hitting my butt with each kick back.

With about 5 seconds to go, I passed the three people. At the speed I was going, I nearly smashed into the tall guy. So I increased my speed even more, and, with one second to go, I stepped around that man, put myself directly in front of him, and reclaimed my position.

But since I was so concerned with pissing off four of my co-workers, I neglected to look at the clock.

No worries. One of the ladies who works in my department finished just after me. She said her time was 34:54. The official times won’t be published until sometime next week, but I must’ve finished in 34:40 (give or take 10 seconds), meaning I not only set a new personal best, but I beat my old record by over 80 seconds.

At the moment, I have no plans to beat this record next year.