{"id":1719,"date":"2011-07-15T11:59:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T16:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2011-07-15T11:59:41","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T16:59:41","slug":"cities-and-speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/07\/cities-and-speeches\/","title":{"rendered":"Cities and Speeches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 12 July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, we were gonna go to the Mille Lacs Indian Museum<\/a> in Onamia this morning but, in keeping with the to-hell-in-a-handbasket nature of the rest of the state, it was closed. My father-in-law then immediately enacted his modus operande, which is stipulated thusly:<\/p>\n

\n

On the final day of any vacation, participants should, without fail, proceed with all due haste back home. They must neither stop for meals, entertainment, nor any other diversions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, they drove back home. We got in our car, too, and proceeded southward.<\/p>\n

However, we first drove through a certain small town that was practically screaming our name. So I asked Jennifer to take some pictures (I wanted the whole family in the shot, but a quarter of us were sleeping).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After that egotistical layover, we ventured to the city of Big Lake<\/a>. We used to live there and, though I’ve gotten close, it wasn’t until today that I actually re-entered the city for the first time since the day we moved out.<\/p>\n

It was a little bittersweet, really. The house has been fixed up nicely – new siding around the windows, a new roof, some pretty landscaping in the front (where I could never seem to get the grass to grow) and a shed in the back yard. We pointed out where Owen’s bedroom windows were, but he said he had no memory of living there. As we rounded the corner and drove out of town, we pointed out so many memories: the library, our favorite pizza place<\/a>, our grocery store, the place where we purchased our first cell phone, even the mailbox where we mailed the letter saying “fuck you” to the elders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We then sped on to Elk River, where we visited the historic downtown area. I was pleased to see that the city has continued in rejuvenating this area, and it appears to have transformed into quite the hubbub of activity. We stopped at our favorite bakery ever<\/a> (we hadn’t been there since the day before we moved out of Big Lake – over 3 years ago). We bought three loaves of bread, enough to give us our Diamond City fix for a couple of weeks, at least, and then walked over to a local restaurant.<\/p>\n

In the evening, Jennifer and I watched Babel<\/a>. Skip it.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, 13 July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, Happy Birthday to my sister! She continues to lag behind me by several years but, from a percentage viewpoint, she is catching up.<\/p>\n

Second, at Toastmasters today, I gave speech #5. I got off to a quick start in Toastmasters, giving speeches #1 – 4 in December, January, February, and March, respectively. But I wasn’t assigned any speeches in April or May, and I declined a speaking assignment in June due to my super-stressful college class.<\/p>\n

My speech today was titled “A Short History of #1” and I based the content of my speech on THIS BLOG POST<\/a>. I went overtime on my speech for the first time ever – but not by much; I probably wrapped it up within 15 seconds.<\/p>\n

The Competent Communication book that comes with membership to Toastmasters has ten units, each one a different speech and a different aspect of public speaking to work on. So now I’m already half done with those then. Once I finish all ten, I get an award, which includes a certificate, a letter to my manager, and a couple of free books (on public speaking). I’m gonna shoot for that goal. Five more speeches. I hope to accomplish this before my next birthday (I have just under 11 months).<\/p>\n

Thursday, 14 July 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today I carpooled with a co-worker. I haven’t done much carpooling lately, but today he and I decided to try making a go of it.<\/p>\n

I think I probably put more miles on my car in the past 12 months than any other comparable time frame, actually. For the first several years we owned the Cavalier, I didn’t have to drive that far to work.\u00a0 From 2006-2008, I carpooled to work with a couple of people. That was great, because they met at my house, meaning that on days that they drove, I didn’t even have to start my car. There were some weeks when I only drove my car to work once.<\/p>\n

When we first moved to St. Paul, I again began carpooling with a couple of people. One person was an intern, so she left for college pretty early on. The other guy eventually moved to Roseville, so he wasn’t as convenient anymore. He’s the same guy I carpooled with today. The downside is, I still have to drive as far as Roseville even on days that I don’t drive. But the upside is, less wear and tear on the car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 12 July 2011 So, we were gonna go to the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Onamia this morning but, in keeping with the to-hell-in-a-handbasket nature of the rest of the state, it was closed. My father-in-law then immediately enacted his modus operande, which is stipulated thusly: On the final day of any vacation, participants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1724,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}