Today I received a notification that "Punch Pizza" had made me its newest contact on Flickr. Now, I do love me some Punch Pizza, but how did they KNOW? I searched my photos for any "punch pizza"ish text, and came up empty. They must have done some very extensive market research! :)

Anyway, they're sponsoring a photo contest, the details of which are at I Love Punch Pizza, in case anyone else is interested.

Vacation news! One of my oldest childhood friends is having a destination wedding in Palm Springs in April! I'm going to take a week off work to attend and see the sights around PS and Los Angeles. I hope the weather is nice -- I can't wait to do some hiking in some of the desert parks. If anyone has any advice or recommendations for things to do or places to eat, please holler!

I'd made a list of all the things I wanted to do on my birthday, so just before 10:00am Jonas and I started out, heading toward St. Paul -- first to grab a light breakfast somewhere, then to the Minnesota History Center where I was going to do some research. But it wasn't to happen without complications.

Heading down Highway 5 in Chanhassen, Jonas managed to rear-end the car in front of us as everyone was slowing down for a light. As soon as he realized, he tried to swerve into the left-turn lane, but we still clipped the other car's rear left with our front right. Yes, this was with his brand new car!!! Nobody was hurt, thank goodness. A few minutes afterward the police showed up to herd us off the highway and into a safer place to conduct the post-accident business, and they helped out with getting everything straightened out as well.

The damage to the other car was minimal -- her left rear plastic bumper thingie got cracked. Ours was a little more severe -- the right front light cover was shattered (although, amazingly, the light still worked), and both the front part of the hood and the right side panel got crunched to an extent. We have full insurance coverage, but it will still be a $500 deductible to get the repairs done -- not really convenient around the holidays.

I was just so disappointed. Not only was it my birthday and we had planned the perfect day, but this is the third accident Jonas has had in four years (the fourth in our seven years together), and every single time he has been the driver at fault. That is scary. He's got a terrible habit of tailgating which comes back to bite him when he can't stop quick enough. So far he's never been injured, but I just know one of these days something worse is going to happen. The good news is that now he's determined to become a better driver -- I think this was a bit of a wake-up call -- but only time and determination will tell if he's even capable of changing at this point. He seems very earnest and sincere about it, so I'm going to cross my fingers.

I did end up getting to the history center, and brought home a great number of photocopied death certificates and immigration papers. Now it will take some time to look them over and evaluate them. After that we headed to Marshall Field's downtown to see the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory holiday display. It was so crowded, but it's always fun to see what they've put together every year.

We went to Woody's for dinner and had a pretty good meal, but I have to say we were a bit shocked at what happened afterward. After we'd finished our main meals, someone came by to ask whether we wanted dessert. We declined. Then our server came back bearing an ice cream sundae, and said, "I know you said you didn't want any, but you have to have some birthday dessert!" (we'd mentioned earlier that it was my birthday). So we shrugged and thanked her and each had a few bites of the sundae, although we were really too full to enjoy it. Then our bill came, and she'd charged us for the sundae!!! Let me get this straight: They asked us if we wanted dessert: we replied no. They bring us dessert anyway and charge us for it! Needless to say, she got no tip whatsoever, and I'd really like to send someone a letter about this. We were appalled!

So that was my birthday. It could have been better.

I hereby swear that this year I am going to send Christmas cards. I skipped it altogether last year, and then felt guilty every time I received one from someone else. So when I got off work tonight at 9:00pm I asked Jonas to meet me at Target to pick some out. Why should he have to be there? Last time I picked out cards he felt they were too contemporary to send to his family in Sweden, so I was going to make sure we did not run into that again. In the end, we ended up choosing something relatively contemporary anyway (a snowman design). Although it was a bit late and I was tired from work, it was nice to be out shopping together.

So now I've got the Christmas cards, and now I need to print out the small business-card-sized inserts that have our new address, phone number and emails that I plan to put inside. I haven't gotten around to telling many people our new address and that seems like a convenient way to do it.

When we got home there was the ultra-lame, two-hour finale of Average Joe waiting for us. I reheated some leftover pizza from Sunday night while we watched. What a complete waste of time -- the entire series of shows. When it was over all I could think was that I could have been doing something productive with my time! It was totally unfulfilling. The girl chose the looker after all -- surprised? Jonas just laughed at how grumpy I became about it. Of course, at the end they advertised the sequel to be aired in January, and there is NO WAY we are going to watch that one, dammit!

Speaking of the pizza, we have been trying to patronize our local businesses here in Chaska. Last night when we picked up Sarpinos, they had a sign displayed stating that because they are losing money they will be raising their prices. That sucks -- I don't especially care about paying a little more for a decent pizza, but this looks like a sign that it won't be long before they go out of business entirely. Ah, well.

I spent most of the morning lounging around, first reading then at the computer working on my webpage redesign. Jonas called in the early afternoon and said he'd swing by home and take me to the dentist so we wouldn't have to meet with two cars afterward. He was on his way to Dad's work so Dad could give his car a once-over. Incidentally, Dad thought the car looked great and couldn't find anything wrong with it at all. Yay!

My dentist appointment was for 3:30pm but I got dropped off about ten after. I was sitting in the waiting room for no more than one minute before I was called in. They seemed really slow -- there was no one else in the waiting room besides me. Without going into the cleaning, poking and scraping details of my visit, I'll just say it went great. No cavities, no concerns. Yay, again! Unfortunately, when I was done and called Jonas, he was back at work as some crisis came up. It was only about a mile away, so he ran over quick to pick me up, but then we had to both go back to his work. I sure am glad I had a book in my bag to read, since it took about two and a half hours! I was slightly annoyed, since I had been initially going to drive myself to the dentist anyway and could have avoided all this, but I did get some reading done and it was relatively quiet and peaceful in their conference room. I'm now less than 200 pages away from finishing ...And Ladies of the Club. Go me.

Finally, around 7:00pm Jonas came to retrieve me from the conference room. He warned me that he still had some things to do tonight, but could do the rest from his computer at home. We picked up some Culver's. I need to stop eating those delicious chili cheese fries, or else I'm going to get sick of them and then be pissed about it.

I spent the rest of the evening working on my webpages. It's kind of slow, but I wanted to redo each page individually. Overall, they look cleaner and simpler. I guess this will be v3.0 -- v2.0 was unveiled in 1998, and v1.0 back in 1995. I wish I'd kept a copy of that first one, it kind of sucked. :)

I'm not really a shoe girl, but last week I bought a pair of shoes/boots (shoots?) that I am in LOVE with! They are the type of half-boots that, if you are wearing pants that cover their tops, look like boots, although they really only come up to a few inches above the ankle. They are black and zip down the inside. Having not been a shoe girl, I haven't really been a heel girl either, but the heels on these are about an inch and a half -- not really that big, except all my other shoes are basically flat-heeled, so I've had to get used to wearing them all day at work with that little bit of extra weight being carried by the front of the foot instead of the back. But they are great! I love prancing around in them, much to Jonas' bemusement. :)

Currently reading at work: Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

For the first time in a while I was super busy at work. I even had to set some things aside to take care of Saturday instead. It was nice.

Now I'm just bouncing along to They Might Be Giants, waiting for Jonas to get home. After working late into the night yesterday he was home all day today, until late afternoon when there was some kind of security emergency and he had to go in anyhow. We met quickly for dinner at Biaggi's. Well, not exactly "quickly," since it's a nice, sit-down, Italian restaurant, but it still felt somewhat rushed. I had some yummy tortellini and some very naughty chocolate cake for dessert.

I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon. I'm not too worried, except I haven't been flossing all my teeth regularly. Heh, just my front teeth, which I run floss through every morning since that's what people see when you smile! My old dentist used to have a poster hanging in the room that read, "You don't have to floss all your teeth -- just the ones you want to keep." I think the electric toothbrushes have helped overall, at least in stimulating my gums so they're not so sensitive.

Woo, I just ran into Kevin, an old talker friend whom I hadn't run into in several years. He didn't have much time to chat, but we exchanged current emails.

Ooo. Jonas just called and is already halfway home. Turns out the guy they suspected of snooping in files he wasn't supposed to may have just made an honest mistake. They went through all the logs and didn't find anything else suspicious, so it was probably just an isolated incident. I guess they will keep an eye on him anyway, though.

Jonas got a new car! OK, not brand spanking new, but according to NBC: if you haven't owned the car before, it's new to you!

We had known for a couple of years now that the time for getting a new car was approaching. Jonas had been driving around in a 1989 Chevy Corsica which grew clunkier by the day. It also had a windshield cracked in multiple places, no rear-view mirror for the past year or so, and the driver's window didn't go down (or up, if you first made the mistake of trying to get it down). I've been driving a 1993 Corsica which is doing pretty well, although mine also has a small crack in the windshield on the passenger side.

Sounds like we had a thing for Corsicas, doesn't it? Not really, they just happened to have been conveniently available at the time. I should say something about some odd coincidences with our matching Corsicas: in the past year they both developed flat tires and cracked windshields within a week of each other. It was weird.

So just recently as his birthday was coming up, and as his windshield started cracking worse and in new places, we decided it was finally time to get him a new car. He shopped around for a Buick Regal GS (his dream car right now) at Car Soup for about a week or so before going to check one out at a dealer out in Buffalo. Despite it not being his dream color (it was silver, not black), he decided that was his car. It was a 2000 model with only 17,000 miles on it (not bad), flawless interior and exterior as far as we could tell, standard cool stuff, some extras like CD/cassette, butt heat, trip odometer, etc. It even still smelled like new car! They were asking $14,999.

Jonas had decided beforehand that he'd buy it if they knocked it down a grand. Our salesguy had no problem doing $500, but when Jonas asked him to take our $1000 offer to his manager, they said it was a no go. So we did the "Sorry, no can do" thing and headed out to our car (which was Jonas' clunker). Then the salesguy caught up with us and said, "So you'd sign on it right here today if it was $13,999?" and Jonas said, "Yep, right here today." The salesguy said, "OK, let's do it," and in we went again to start all the paperwork. It was relatively painless, except the finance guy was kind of a jerk. We'd never purchased a car from a dealer before so Jonas was asking a lot of questions, which apparently annoyed the hell out of the guy. Of course, by that time we'd already signed the purchase agreement and they weren't really interested in buttering up any longer, so I'm hardly surprised that their attitude changes. Anyway, a $3,000 down-payment later and we were on our way home with a new car!

We hurried back to Chaska (I got to drive the new one because the old one was a stick, yay!) to meet Mom and Dean at Home Depot, where they brought their pickup to help us get our new grill home (we'd purchased it last weekend, but left it in layaway since it didn't fit in the trunk). We were about two hours late for our original meeting time, and about a half hour late for the amended time, so we apologized but could hardly contain our excitement about the car. They thought it was pretty cool as well. After getting the grill home and into the garage we all headed to Pauly's American Grill in Chaska to have a birthday dinner for Jonas. He also got an Entertainment Book, which I was thrilled about -- I've been meaning to buy one for a while now.

Dean wondered what we were going to do with Jonas' old car. It had no retail value -- in fact, It probably had a negative value since the cost of a new windshield was more than the car was worth -- so we basically just signed over the title and gave it to him. He thought he might use it as a runner car for his job (driving a postal truck). It's a crappy car, but he seemed happy enough. At least it's off our hands now.

And Jonas is in seventh heaven.

I got to sleep in until about 9:00am, when Dean called for Jonas (who was at work). Then I thought I might as well get up anyway, so I went to the computer for a while and scanned some pictures in preparation for heading to Archivers a little later on.

About 11:30 I got myself dressed and presentable and headed up to the EP mall to meet Jonas for a Subway lunch. When I go to Subway I never get anything but a turkey breast sub, but for some reason today I was actually looking at the menu and wondering if I should try something new. Ever stuck in my rut, I decided to order the turkey anyway. Wouldn't you know they gave me a chicken breast sub instead of the turkey? I considered for a few seconds pointing it out, but in the end decided I was obviously destined to try something new. And it was good.

Jonas went back to work and I lugged my heavy bag of scrapbooking down to Archivers and worked in their workroom for a few hours. On my way out of the mall I decided it was time for a haircut and stopped at the salon/spa for a trim. While chatting with the stylist I mentioned that I've always wished my hair were straighter -- it is pretty straight already, but there is just enough wave in weird places to make it kind of annoying. So when she was done cutting and blow-drying she used a straightening iron on it. It was just the tiniest change, but it felt like a whole new "do," so that was fun. Jonas' initial reaction as he walked in the door, "You look like a boy," was kind of amusing. Yes, when I think of boys, I think of straight blond hair down to one's shoulders. Bizarre. He later said it looked good and that the first comment was just the first thing that popped out of his mouth. I'll forgive him.

I heated up some chow mein for dinner and cooked up some brown rice. Then we headed out to try our new bowling balls for the first time! Our first stop, Country Club Lanes in Excelsior, was already booked. Then we stopped at EP and they were also booked. Finally, we tried Louisville Lanes in Shakopee and they were also full, but we decided to hang around and put ourselves on the waiting list -- we really wanted to bowl with our new stuff, dammit! Jonas played some pinball while we waited. When our turn finally came we played three games -- Jonas won the first two and I won the third, tying my personal best of 139 with four strikes in the game. Woohoo! I don't think I've ever been in a smokier establishment -- we really stunk when we got home.

I slept like a log, not stirring one bit until the housekeeping lady knocked on the door and woke us up around 9:00am. By 11:00 we'd finally made ourselves presentable and were ready to go out the door and see what Pipestone had to offer.

First stop: Lange's Cafe. My getaway guide suggested we try this small cafe serving homestyle cooking. We went for breakfast so I can't say what the other meals are like, but I was served a plate with two of the largest pancakes I've ever seen. They were delicious. Jonas ordered some egg combo with hash browns, though I couldn't say what all was on the plate because it was covered in gravy. He appeared to like it pretty well.

Second stop: Pipestone National Monument. The vein of Sioux quartzite in the area has been mined by Native American tribes all over the midwest, who consider it sacred and for centuries have carved pipes out of it. (It is one of the most beautiful stones I've ever seen -- even the unpolished pieces are smooth to the touch. Strangely, I felt compelled to touch it each time I passed by some.) By the looks of it, PNM must be one of the least funded of all the parks and monuments run by the National Park Service. It had a kind of sad, forgotten look about it. We dutifully paid our $7 admission and watched the slide show, before taking a lovely walk around the quarry areas.

As we were nearing the end of the trail, we passed some young teenage girls, clearly Native Americans, walking the opposite direction. I felt very awkward just then. Here I am, traipsing all over land that is considered sacred. Sure, I'm doing it in the name of cultural education, but the reality that the fact that I was standing there represented such an incredible loss for someone else hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought of the girls that had passed -- how could they not hate me and everyone like me? Wouldn't I despise those responsible for the near-total destruction of my culture? It gave me pause, to say the least.

Third stop: Blue Mounds State Park. We didn't get nearly enough outdoor walking at the monument on this gorgeous day, so we went walking some more around this state park. There is a herd of bison living on the park land, but we weren't able to see them from any of the trails we were on -- I was disappointed! The beautiful pipestone was everywhere, however, with pink and purple chunks of it emerging from the ground all over the place.

Fourth stop: Lange's Cafe. Again?? Yes, we stopped in again in the afternoon for some pie. I had Reese's peanutbutter cup, and Jonas had lemon merengue. He didn't like his so I gave him half of mine, I'm so nice!

We noticed a bowling alley next door to the cafe and decided to go bowling that evening. Neither the exterior nor the name (Bol-Mor Lanes) looked promising, but it was actually a nice place inside. It's been ages since I bowled, but I managed to win the first game and Jonas won the second. We scored a pitiful 100 at the very highest, I guess that's not too bad under the circumstances. After bowling we headed back to the hotel for a delicious steak dinner at the hotel's restaurant. It was fantastic! The restaurant was practically the best part of the whole place. The food was delicious, and the ambience was very cozy. It was a wonderful meal. Then back up to the room to watch some TV and conk out for the night.

There is a hair salon on Main Street in Pipestone called "Curl Up and Dye." Great pun for a hair place, but would you really want to go to a place named that??

I really ought to brush up on my Spanish.

For almost four years I'd somehow convinced myself that the Mexican restaurant nearby was called "The Monkey," -- or as we joked, "The Crazy Monkey." Only tonight, after we finished eating there for the very first time, did it dawn on me that "loro" is parrot, and not "monkey." Loro/Mono, anybody could have mixed that up! ;)

"The Crazy Parrot" isn't half as fun-sounding as "The Crazy Monkey," but it will have to do. I shouldn't forget to mention that the place itself was fantastic! The decor was somewhat rustic, and it was quite busy so a bit loud, but the food -- I've had "authentic" Mexcian food very few times in my life, but I'm convinced this was one of them. We both had burritos (chicken for me, steak for Jonas) with some yummy butter-cream sauce (or something?) on top. Mmm, mmm, mmm, delicious.

I had a enjoyably chaotic day at work, partly due to the public phone line not working for several hours. A man called on the private line and said when he called the public it just rang and rang, no answer. So I picked up the public line -- no dial tone. Huh? Great, no patrons could get through! I tried everything I could think of, including rebooting the ADA machine which I honestly didn't think would help anyway, but no luck. Then all of a sudden someone remembered that there was a guy in the building messing with our security system. We didn't think that should really affect our phone lines, but to be safe I thought I'd better ask him. Sure enough, he didn't seem surprised at all that we were having trouble with the phones -- in fact, he appeared to find it strange that we were surprised. Apparently he knew all along that it was going to screw up the phones and never bothered to tell anyone beforehand. Hello, this is a place of business? Phones are necessary. Moreover, it would have been nice if he had visited on a morning that we were NOT open to the public. </rant>

I should be able to move to a new desk tomorrow. I'll still be sharing a cube with Janet, but we'll be off in our own little corner instead of right smack in the flow of traffic as we are now. Not that I think anyone's particularly interested in what I'm doing at my computer, but everyone seems to unintentionally look over my shoulder anyway as they walk by. Well, it's going to be an early night tonight -- last night was way too late.

When I got home from work this afternoon we went out window shopping for bedclothes and decorative bath accessories. In bedclothes we were looking for a comforter design involving dark wine red. It didn't have to be entirely red, but it should at least be one of the colors. We found a couple patterns we liked. One had a pattern in dark purple, dark red and gold. I just tried to find a picture of it online but failed, otherwise I'd have included a link. The plan is to get dark red drapes for the bedroom windows to complement the bits of red in the comforter. Our bedroom furniture is cherry, so it's also quite dark. I'm thankful that Jonas and I share the same ideas about what we want the bedroom to look like. It was the one room he wanted to have a say in -- the rest of the house is my playground. :)

While we were out -- we visited Marshall Field's, JC Penney, Sears, Eddie Bauer, Linens 'N Things, and Bed, Bath & Beyond -- I also had a look at shower curtains. The master bath doesn't need one as the shower is in a glass stall with the bathtub separate, but the spare bath on the second floor will need a curtain. I plan to do that bathroom in a bright yellow, so I was hoping to find a nice, cheerful shower curtain. One did catch my eye, so I hope they'll keep it in stock at least for another few weeks until I'm ready to start buying.

We grabbed a couple of burgers at Champps about halfway through shopping. I had a blue cheese burger, and Jonas had a double something-or-other with lots of cheese melted over his waffle fries. It was decent.

I never thought I would be into blue cheese. I don't really like the looks of it. While eating out a few years ago, however, I decided to try this Mediterranean pizza that had some melted blue cheese on top. It was great! Since then I've tried it melted in several other dishes, and once I even tried a chunk of it whole (unmelted), but something about the way that it's clear it is cheese growing mold still gets to me so I think I will stick with just melted (great on pizzas). It has a yummy, tangy flavor!

Work was decent. Being a summer Saturday, half the staff were coming from other agencies, including both of the librarians. They had both spent extensive time working at EP before, though, so were familiar with the territory. It was not very busy at all, and the day flew by as smoothly as I could have asked for.

17 days.

Currently reading at work: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

... mosquitos.

Work uneventful. When I got home I did a few household chores to make myself feel productive -- brought all the aluminum cans down to the recycle bin in the garage and emptied the dishwasher. I nearly broke a sweat. :)

Jonas had gone to have a beer with some co-workers after work, but when he got home we headed off to Dad's place in Buffalo. We were going to chat with him about how much he wanted to help us out towards our down-payment. When we pulled up, I had the brilliant idea of setting up our tent in his backyard to air it out. (Tomorrow we're going to be tenting down in Wisconsin and our tent hasn't been aired out in about two years.) Brilliant. Really.

I think I lost a pint of blood to the mosquitos.

I was wearing spray, too, but I'm now covered with welts of various sizes, including one in the very corner of my eye. Lovely. After the airing-out, we never quite got the tent back into its bag. It was a "Screw this!" moment, and we just threw it halfway-rolled into the trunk of the car. We're just going to take it out again tomorrow anyway, so *shrug*.

Stopped for a late dinner at Noodles. I do love that place! Got myself some pasta fresca with feta on top (yum), and Jonas had Japanese pan noodles. A year or so ago there was a rumor that one was going to open up in EP, but I haven't heard anything since. Sure would be convenient, although not necessarily good for my wallet.

Ugg, I'm exhausted. Would it be terribly disgusting to go to bed without washing off all the mosquito spray I slathered on earlier? I'm just so tired ...

It has become our corny Sunday evening ritual. Jonas and I and our Bioré nose strips, sitting on the couch watching TV while they dry. I have to wonder how many other guys out there have tried (or have secretly wanted to try) them, because it was his idea to begin with (though he'd never admit that to another guy!). I have to admit it was kind of cool to see just what comes out of my pores. That's the fascination for everyone, isn't it?

We bought a refrigerator today! I feel great about it. Several months ago when preparing to buy all the large appliances we consulted Consumer Reports on everything, and for the fridge we ultimately decided on one, a newer Amana bottom-freezer model. Today we walked into ApplianceSmart and there it was -- in white, too. This place receives items from the manufacturer that usually have some kind of dent or scratch on the outside, making them unable to be sold by the regular retail stores (Sears, etc.) and sells them for a discount. They're all brand new and still under the factory warranty, so if you get lucky and manage to find your dream appliance whose dent/scratch is out of sight, it's a steal.

We found our fridge. The few nicks and dents I could spot on the surface were far back on the sides, which would be completely out of sight inbetween our cupboards. Every other aspect of it was sparkling and perfect. Overall, we spent about $500 less than what Sears was selling it for. The same, exact fridge with a small dent in back that no one would ever see. They are going to hold it for us until we close.

As this entry seems to be going backwards, I'll end by telling about our morning when we drove down to New Prague. We met Mom and Dean at Schumacher's Hotel for lunch to celebrate our anniversary and Dean's birthday (both on the 15th). Mom and I both had salmon, Jonas had duck, and Dean had ... err ... I don't have a clue what he had. *pats self on head* It's a really lovely place -- in addition to the restaurant serving top-notch food, the upstairs is a quite expensive bed-and-breakfast with a dozen or more themed rooms. I've never stayed in a B&B before, but they always look so cozy.

Our anniversary isn't until next Tuesday, but we went out tonight to celebrate because the boat only goes out on Saturdays and Sundays.

Two years ago, also for our anniversary actually, Mom gave us a gift certificate for two for a ride on the steamboat Minnehaha. I didn't exactly forget we had them, but never got around to using them either until this week when I was trying to think of something different, but not too expensive, to do for our anniversary. You can't get much more inexpensive than free!

The Minnehaha was a commuter steamboat driving around Lake Minnetonka between 1905 and 1947. When the demand for mass transit via the lake fell, the steamboats were intentionally sunk. In 1980 they decided to raise the Minnehaha and restore it. It was completed in 1996 and nowadays during the summer months it gives cruises around the lake again from its port in Excelsior. It's not nearly as glamorous as some of the dinner cruisers on the lake, but it certainly turns heads and incites lots of honking by the other boats! The skies were blue, a soft breeze was blowing and the ride was relaxing.

After the boat ride we walked a few blocks to Maynard's, where I had made reservations a few days earlier. Although it's considered one of the better restaurants in the area, I was somewhat disappointed. We had poor service -- several times we wondered whether our server had gone home for the night, so infrequently did we see him. The food was OK, but I wasn't especially pleased. We did our best to just try to enjoy the night and have our own personal celebration.

Excelsior is a historic small town (celebrating its 150th anniversary this August), and they have put a great deal of effort into keeping it cute and quaint. The downtown is filled with small eclectic shops, a tiny theater, and a gorgeous view of the lake. Most of the shops were closed by this time, but we walked down both sides of the street anyway because the ambience was so cool. Jonas patiently waited in the line that was out the door and halfway down the sidewalk at Licks Unlimited to get us some ice cream. As dusk settled in, it was still a gorgeous evening.

Saturday morning we were woken abruptly by someone pounding on the screen door. Jonas stumbled out of bed and peeked out the curtain in the door, and a man goes, "Bob?" Jonas said, "Uhm, nope," and collapsed back into bed. An hour later someone knocked on the door again, but this time it turned out to be the cottage lady, bringing us a lovely basket of breakfast! Two pastries, two small wedges of cheese, an apple, an orange, orange juice and milk were in the basket. (I was really getting to like this place!) So we scarfed down breakfast and got ready to face the day.

The goal of the day was to skate on the Paul Bunyan State Trail, so we parked at the trail office and got our gear on. It was about 6 miles to the town of Nisswa, then 6.5 miles to Merrifield, and from there 8 miles to Baxter. I had realistic expectations of making it as far as Merrifield but, amazingly, when we got to Merrifield we still felt great and decided to push on to Baxter. The trail itself was FANTASTIC -- you couldn't ask for a better surface (flat and smooth), the scenery was varied and interesting, and the entire ambiance of winding in and out of quaint small towns made it one of the best trails I've ever skated. Once at Baxter I used Jonas' cell to call this guy who runs the Bunyan Bike Shuttle and Rental. For $20 apiece he picked us up in Baxter and drove us back up to our car in Pequot Lakes. Excellent service for weary trail-riders! He also recommended to us the Bar Harbor Supper Club as a good place to have dinner, and it certainly was.

Back at the cottage, I tried to read for a while before falling asleep. Jonas somehow managed to stay up and watch an entire movie.

The weekend will continue with my next entry ...

Woohoo, finally it's weekend.

Work was relatively un-noteworthy, just a regular day. For dinner Jonas and I picked up Leonardo's Florentine. Soooooo yummy. Munched on that while watching TV, then spent the rest of the night putzing at the computers -- Jonas playing games and I surfing and spodding.

Speaking of spodding, we had a rolicking mini reunion on Cut this evening. Somehow at least 10 of the old Ohio fest/Lakeside crowd all managed to be online around the same time. God, it was hilarious -- really felt just like old times. Everyone so far thinks a real-life reunion is a fantastic idea, so it will just be a matter of when and where.

Thinking of getting my webcam working again. Took it down about a year ago for some reason. I guess I got bored with it, but I sort of feel like putting it up again now. We'll see if that happens this weekend. Jonas would have to mess with it.

Watched Law & Order later in the evening, and we actually went to bed at a fairly decent time for a Friday night. The other day we decided we really needed to regulate our sleeping habits better (i.e. no staying up really late and then sleeping in late on weekends). It's going to be hard -- I love to sleep myself out on Saturday and Sunday mornings!

Work was frantic today. Everyone and his brother decided to come to the library for some reason. The benefit, of course, is that the day flew by super fast! So before I knew it, it was time to go home and relax for the rest of the weekend.

Jonas spend most of the day studying for a certification exam he's signed up to take on Monday. When I got ome he hopped in the shower and got dressed, then we headed to Noodles & Co. for dinner. As usual, the food was delicious, but next to us was a table with a group of about 10 teenagers who were exceedingly loud and annoying. We couldn't have held a conversation between the two of us if we'd tried, so we pretty much just finished our respective meals in relative silence. The guy who'd brought our food also left us two coupons for free dessert, so on our way out we picked out some giant cookies to take home. Yummy.

In the last few days I've been bumping into an unlikely number of ancient acquaintances, people I knew 8-10 years ago on old talkers like Castle and Lakeside whom I haven't encountered or been in touch with for ages. It's been great catching up and reminiscing about "the good ol' days" when the the phenomenon of Telnet was a most magical thing. Does anyone but us old-timers even use Telnet anymore? Or know what it is?

Nowadays most Internet chat rooms are web-based, with little personality. People who are new to or first becoming interested in the Internet generally encounter a web browser first. As a result, if they're interested in chatting with others they will most likely do it through that interface. Unfortunately, this negatively affects the user base of Telnet-based chat which, with the exception of a few brave souls "crossing over" to Telnet perhaps via the invitation of a friend, is steadily shrinking. Heck, I didn't even have a graphical web browser the first year I had my PC. Then I had to buy more memory so that I could actually even run Netscape (and even then it crashed half the time).

Just about everyone has a basic Telnet program on their PC, and very few probably know what it is. It's yours, it's free to use, why not try it out? Check out one of these communities:

The Resort: By far the largest talker around, and with that comes the good and the bad. Let's take the bad first: with a larger general population comes a larger potential for annoying gits whose first question will probably be, "Do you have a boy/girlfriend?" Easy to ignore them. The benefit of having a large player base is the likelihood of encountering others with similar interests or otherwise interested in genuine conversation. Resort has been around at least as long as 1994 (when I first found it).

Surfers: Smaller than Resort with a large UK-population. Alive and kicking since at least 1994.

Foothills: Used to be the largest talker around, but the program has been largely stagnant for many years, i.e. no new features added to entice newcomers. As with the others, FH has been around since at least 1994.

With few exceptions, the base code for each of these talkers is similar, so if you've learned the commands at one, you've learned for all. Log in, customize your profile, make friends, decorate your room, and invite others in to chat. Become a spod.

And then there are MUDs. But that's a tale for another day ...

I saw Dan Gladden today!

Jonas and I met up for lunch at Redstone this afternoon during my 2-hour break between shifts. (Yes, Redstone where Kirby Puckett allegedly assaulted some woman a few months back.) I had an open-faced turkey sandwich and Jonas had some kind of chicken sandwich.

I actually made it halfway through my meal before I noticed that sitting in the booth behind Jonas was Dan Gladden and two other guys, one of whom I thought may be Gene Larkin, though I saw only his profile. I discreetly leaned toward Jonas and whispered, "There's somebody famous sitting behind you." (OK, "famous" may be a stretch, but he's a familiar face to most Minnesotans!)

Dan Gladden was a member of the 1987 and 1991 Minnesota Twins teams who won the World Series. He currently does commentary for Minnesota Twins games broadcast on WCCO radio.

I sort of knew he lived in Eden Prairie. I saw his daughter at the library a while back. But it was the first time I'd ever seen him myself!

Well, that was the most exciting part of my day.

I'm so full of chili cheese dog and hot fudge sundae.

This morning, since he had the day off, I sweet-talked Jonas into driving me to work so that at 9pm when I got off he would be there to pick me up and I wouldn't have to go out and get into a freezing cold car. I suggested that after he dropped me off in the morning he could go treat himself to a nice breakfast somewhere. Worked like a charm. Heehee!

This evening when he picked me up we headed to Culver's to grab something to eat. I of course had a chili cheese dog and Jonas had chili cheese fries. The sundae flavor-of-the-day was Turtle Thunder, so for dessert Jonas had one of those and I had a hot fudge sundae (I don't like pecans).

Work was uneventful. As I mentioned above, Jonas had the day off. UNFAIR! Well, he did actually have to go in for a little while this afternoon as someone called him at home and said there was some kind of problem he needed to go in and fix (it always happens on days off or otherwise inopportune moments). Now it's practically time to go to bed -- Mondays always seem like a lost day. By the time I get home after 9pm and get a few moments to myself to wind down and relax, there's hardly time to get anything else done before bed. Ah well, I'm used to it by now.

Here's something fun for fans of language. There is a dialect survey study going on at Harvard. They are encouraging native speakers of North American English to participate in a survey about how they speak. There are 100+ questions, so it takes a bit of time to complete, but the results are really interesting. They ask that you answer the questions according to how you actually speak (or learned to speak), rather than according to what you perceive as the "correct" answer.

Some of the questions whose results I found most fun were roof/room/broom/root, drinking fountain/water fountain and pop, soda.

Last night Jonas made a late-evening trip to Target for firewood (the artificial logs). He ended up buying three computer games, Diet Dr Pepper and a new phone/answering machine (our old one has been broken for about a month), but managed to forget the firewood altogether. Heh.

Two of the games were war games he'd been wanting for a while, the other was Jeopardy 2003. Cool! We love our Jeopardy! We tape the show every day, although we don't always get around to watching them before they're overwritten. Anyway, it was a cool game. I kicked Jonas' and the computer player's ass the first game and was leading by a huge margin in the second game, but I boldly (foolishly?) decided to wager my entire score on a daily double that I blew. So the computer player won game 2. Unfortunately, Jonas is at a disadvantage when playing, as English is not his native language. I should maybe handicap myself in some way. Naaaah. :)

This afternoon we're meeting Mom and Dean for a movie and dinner afterward at Outback Steakhouse. This "quality time spent with your daughter and son-in-law" was part of our Christmas gift to them last year. The movie we're seeing is The Recruit. I haven't heard too much about it, but we'll have a good time. In about an hour we'll have to start getting ready to go. In the meantime, Jonas is studying a new book in preparation for the new class he'll be teaching soon. Don't ask me what it's about -- computer stuff, networking, or something.

I'm so proud of the cleaning job I did yesterday! Just needs a little vacuuming to polish it off and I will be satisfied.

Finally, tomorrow is Friday. This week has taken forever.

The self-checks finally got set up and working today. About damn time, it was embarrassing to have to explain to people that these hugely expensive machines their tax dollars bought are just sitting inoperative.

After work we went to Perkins for some burgers and shakes. Also picked up some blueberry muffins from their bakery for breakfast tomorrow. Yum yum.

Jonas has just gone to bed exhausted after yesterday. I decided to stay up -- I'm not so good at going to bed early. I always manage to wake up a few hours later and either become incredibly disoriented or completely unable to go back to sleep. So I'll stay up a bit and read.

That's all. Tomorrow is Valentine's, but instead of going out we're going to cook something up together at home. Haven't determined the menu yet.

Currently reading at work: Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal.