I bought a scanner last night. Way too fun. The tough part is going to bed. The later you stay up, the more interesting it gets. Some Radio Shack employee in Highland accidently locked himself in the strip mall and had to call the police for help. Funny.

I don't really link here, but I was reading this evil Barbie story and just really had to save the link. It's milk-through-the-nose funny.

Parenthood is a zoo. It's smelly and loud and little kids throw up there. But it's a LOT of fun, and you get to see some really cool stuff. And you get popcorn.

The gas company dug up our front yard today to move the gas meter outside. Sheetrock happening this week -- I think it's going to be a basement again within a couple months.

I sometimes find that in a relationship in which there is a lot of teasing and jibes, not enough realworld interaction often causes problems. Like when Erik makes fun of me now, it feels like when my co-workers make fun of me, and I can't sense the friendly element of it. It just ends up making me all defensive and pissy. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Jill and Joe and Jin and I (the one without the J) snuck out of work a little early last friday and checked out Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Wonderful fun movie! Lots of noise and action and Star Wars action. Great fun and a better movie than the last, to be sure. No crowds though, which was a little sad. The theater filled up eventually, but it wasn't like the Star Wars hype that was around 25 years ago when I saw Episode IV. (In that very same theater.)

Jill's rents were here this weekend which resulted in a busy but fun weekend. We completed the painting we needed to finish up and had some good grillin'!

Saturday I got out on the Scooter for a couple hours, 46 miles all total. Went up Cedar Lake pkwy, Wirth, Memorial, etc. to circle around and end up in St. Anthony. It was really cold tho, and I ended up at Urban Bean for coffee. Finally found an appropriate time for Coffee!

Riding with 'The Regulars' this week was a blast! Last time there were about a dozen of us -- this week it was 25! Lots of interesting scoots and people, and the highlight had to be buzzing up Park avenue into downtown, the pack of scooters taking up four lanes and cruising down the street like a gang of dorky Hell's Angels. Awesome!

The ride was a bit short (7 miles) but the destination was Scooterville, the new shop in town. Bob sells some of the new/old Bajaj, Kymco, etc. as well as service on those and vintage scoots. Nice digs, hoping he does well.

Getting home was somehow more diffucult, as it apparently was 21 miles from Scootervill back to home. Stopped down by the river near St. Anthony falls. They've really done some nice remodeling/refurbing down there. The river road now goes all the way up to somewhere near Broadway now, I think. Might have to pursue that. In any case, I took my time getting home.

At the river I was checking out the Lock and Dam and saw that the Padelford was going through, but that it didn't look like it was movie. And all the passengers were looking up-river. Turns out there was a guy on the Hennipen avenue bridge threatening to jump. He was standing up there talking to two cops, but by the way he was walking around (must be a large ledge) he didn't look like he was going anywhere.

There were news cameras and lots of emergency vehicles, but after a little while he climbed back over. They were trying to help him over and he kinda went over onto the bridge forward (I can only assume they were cuffing him.) and there was a wondeful moment when his legs were sticking straight up. And me without my camera. By the way, besides being locked in a small, cushioned room for a few days, what's going to happen to him? They had at least one ambulance, a couple fire trucks, the Lock and Dam was closed while they talked him down, a sherriffs boat was stopping traffic upstream, and I think the bridge might have been closed. How much did THAT cost? Does he get the bill?

Fun facts from the online legal resources for Minnesota:

Hitch-hiking is legal if you're not standing in the street.

U-Turns are illegal on curves or where the road is not visible for 1000 feet in each direction.

No person shall open any door on a motor vehicle unless and
until it is reasonably safe to do so and can be done without
interfering with the movement of other traffic. No person shall
allow any door on the side of a vehicle adjacent to moving
traffic to remain open for a period of time longer than
necessary to load or unload passengers.

Speed limit: ten miles per hour in alleys

I'm not citing references as I'm lazy and you can go find them yourself. :)

Had a "perfect moment" last night.

The weather had finally been warm, and Eli and I met Joe at McD's in Uptown for dinner. Got some new CD's, Eli got a sucker, all was well.

When we got home it was "the golden hour" -- the sun was setting, a golden glow just oozing into the house, and while Eli played with his little people (using the "adorable voice" to make them talk) I sat on the couch and read trivia while listening to Tom Waits grumble through the soundtrack from 'Night on Earth.' And I wasn't cold. Golden happiness.

Ahhh...
When a cool product is no longer sold, the searches become crystal clear pools of water in which to frolic...

Snow predicted Friday.

We got Eli a sandbox on April 14th, and he's gotten to use it the day we set it up. That's it.

Sad.

We have a 'brain teaser' on our Intranet. It's really dumb, and I once submitted an answer that was correct, but not the answer they were expecting, so I didn't get credit. I've been bitter ever since.
I discovered that they get the questions off the Internet (duh) and don't bother to change names or words. So now when the new brain teaser shows up on the Intranet, I email the link to the answer to everyone I know.

There's a think on out intranet about a blood drive scheduled May 24th. Except it's not here. You have to go to a blood donor center to give. How's that a drive?

Idea: Get a bunch of bloggers to set up secondary blogs. Then send them an email daily summarizing the "news" of the day.

Sounds boring, huh?

Except this is a 'fake' world in which some sort of national disaster has happened -- a nuclear war, a plague, etc.

So all the bloggers are keeping journals of their experiences, what their local area is going through, etc.

Someone told me I need to figger something out so I can quit my job and go to work for myself.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately for that very reason.
I'm thinking my way out is for my insane brain to come up with something really unique, and have the luck to patent it and make money off it without being exploited and missing the boat.

Another possibility is creative. I like to write, and I am searching the cobwebs of my brain for something to write a book about. I don't want to be stephen king, but enough money to not work would be cool.

Although I think the odds are best in a niche subject or genre. Somewhere with little competition.
Or in a genre like Romance, where there is a ton of crap. To really write that stuff well could be lucrative.

I don't want my next career to be completely dependant on technology. I want to be out and about, and I think I want it to be creative.

So I spend a lot of time on "What simple thing hasn't anyone done yet?" and "What can I write about?"
There is no money in computers. No money in the Internet. And the problem is that I have to come up with something that will generate as much as I make in salary. Anyone can drop out of the workforce and do their mid-life crisis career switch (or go back to school) but I don't want be a freelance nature photographer if it means I have to give up the Satellite TV or my electronic gadgets.

So yeah, lazy dream.

So there we were, touring the DMZ in Korea. We were touring the building in which they hold the peace talks. You know, this one. It actually sits on the border between North and South Korea, so that one side of the table is North, the other is South. When they're not arguing about who shot who first, they take turns using the building to parade important and (in this case) not so important people through to ooh and aah. During each such tour, you can walk anywhere in the room and be 'legal' -- so I've actually been north of the border between the two Koreas. I think technically it was South Korean land at the time tho, so yeah.

Anyhoo, we're touring this room and (if you looked at the picture, right behind where the guard is standing) right outside the window on the North Korean side is a bonafide North Korean Commie Soldier. And they were right there. Literally two feet from us. We were gawking at him, as I'm sure everyone does, and I happened to notice his pin.

Side explanation: Every North Korean wears a pin with an image of their 'Dear Leader' or whomever happens to have inherited the throne last. But it's Every North Korean. Kinda wild, to think that everyone wears this pin. And if you don't have it on, it's probably bad news.

Well, we'd heard about these pins enough, and there not two feet away from me was one of the pins. I'm gawking at it when the guard moves his hand up and points at it with his index finger, as if to say "Hey, check out my pin!" -- when the M.P. (American Border Guard) says "Hey! He just flipped you off! Cool!"

While I thought he was pointing at his pin, he was merely using it as a nice opportunity to flip off a running dog American whatever whatever.

So I've been flipped off by a real live Communist, while (possibly, but probably not) in a real live Communist country. So there.

Sometimes it seems like they've revived or made a movie out of everything. Well, there's one thing that haven't raped yet:

Archie, Jughead, and the Gang!

Someone is on hold. And has been for literally hours now. And has their phone on speaker. With Muzak. BAD Muzak.

It's not the constant Musak that sucks, it's the little reminders. A lilting piano excerpt, a swooping violin. Just enough to remind you that someone is invading your personal soundspace.

Lovely weekend. Lots of puzzles, relaxing, and fun with the family. Had a ton of details and funny things to say here but just can't remember any of them. Need to start writing thoughts down as I have them, but never remember to. :)

I just split all my email accounts up, so they're not all forwarding to one account.

SO now I see that certain accounts are riddled with spam, while some are reasonable. One of the 'clean' accounts had a piece of spam in it, so I decided to click the unsubscribe link.

It was a form in which my email was populated. It had two options: "No thanks" and "Yes" -- but the question was "Do you want to recieve promotional emails from us." So the instinct would be to hit "Yes" to unsubscribe, and then you're screwed.

Wait for it...

I make it past their riddle, and when I hit submit, I get a dialogue box saying.. "Are you sure you want to do this? If you're not sure, click ok. If you are, click cancel."

So if you click OK you're still subscribed. Cancel unsubscribes you.

I feel dirty now.

Joy Division listening party complete. I'm now going back to listening to every mp3 I have. I'm on the C's.