More fun than Mayonnaise... or at least equally fun... OK, it's less fun, but you're still reading...
More fun than Mayonnaise... or at least equally fun... OK, it's less fun, but you're still reading...
Sat 7/8, 8pm: Player
Sat 7/8, 10:30pm: Announcer
Fri 7/14, 8pm: Player
Fri 7/14, 10:30pm: Player
Fri 7/21, 8pm: Player
Fri 7/21, 10:30pm: Announcer
Fri 7/28, 8pm: Player
Fri 7/28, 8pm: Player
Walking along the Mississippi, I strayed from the cement path, following well beat-down grass for thirty feet so that I could get a view of the sunset while sitting on a stony alcove. Unsure if I was trespassing on Federal land, my palms sweat for a few minutes until I ran into a barefoot middle-aged man drinking Mountain Dew, two couple with guitars singing like John Mayer and another couple watching the sky from a blanket they brought with them or made there... I don't know which. I was suddenly surrounded by more people in these bluffs than the sidewalk along river road.
The sunset was beautiful, I saw real fish flopping around in the Mississippi and a pair of birds fluttered around the bushes. Was I actually in St. Paul proper?
This may sound like a rhetorical question, but I'd really like to know "where does life go?"
The way it slips through your fingers quicker and quicker must have something to do with the molecular structure of white castle burgers, but I just can't put my finger on the exact connection...
What a week! One day I was reveling in my loneliness, the next I realized I had been fornicating every night for a year, then it hit me it wasn't much more fun than watching TV and finally everything returned to "normal"
Roomie is studying the bar and had the legal definition of fornication on a flashcard. There's the obvious definition and there's a second test: "a man and a women cohabitating openly and notoriously".... which I did my first year in Minneapolis! I immediately notified my former roommate and her husband reguarding the state of her purity.
Then it hit me that fornication wasn't any more fun than watching TiVo all night. So what's the point of continuing life? How is this helping my species? How do birds and bees do it without electricity?
Finally google told me that MN does not recognize the second test... so I actually hadn't been fornicating for a year.
What an emotional week.
Today there was a nut on the bus carrying a large papyrus bush. (Earth to loser, we don't use that to make paper anymore.) He had a fancy snap-down shirt (obviously a player), but dyed jean shorts (obviously not). And who wears a hooded sweatshirt in the summer? May he should have used the hood to hide his disheveled hair and the gleam of his eye, which could only be the sign of a misunderstood genius... or madman... His breath wafted of raisen and almond granola bars while he kept futzing over his damn plant taking up the walkway. Weirdest of all, he had orange shoe laces. THAT's what other people saw....
i sat across the bus from a guy who would make a perfect serial killer in the movies. 32 years old. loaner. straight, no-frills hair. large, brown plastic-rimmed glasses. simple, yet-worn t-shirt. engrossed in book (i can only assume the catcher in the rye). half of the 6 spades, cut down to bookmark size. green kakhi army bag "purse" hanging from his neck. i gave him jonneekkee's card and asked if his powerpoints needed help.
1. 5 oz bag of dried cherries, roughly 4 cherries remaining
2. Simon & Schuster's Guide to House Plants
3. Green pen with cap chewed up
4. Sticky note with last half of a URL (/~webtrn11/)
5. Travel brochure to South America
6. Letter opener with another room's number taped to it
7. Piece of chocolate wrapped in multi-colored foil to look like a finger
8. Wacom graphics tablet
9. Chinese for "You Know Dog Farts"
10. A sticker with the mystery number "2110925"
12:46PM
Receive email picture I find funny. Want to post it, but it doesn't seem to apply to my life.
2:14PM - 4:48PM
Receive news all afternoon about things I like scheduled to change (and in opposite ways than I'd like them to change). In another word, lots of bad news.
12:26AM
Post a picture that now seems appropriate.
12:30AM
Wonder why I stay the same, when the world around me wants to change.
Think about combating change with change of my choosing.
Excited that I finally have an excuse to do things I have been afraid to.
Sorry for the cripticity of this entry, but the nature of the changes do not lend themselves to public record. (Sex changes never do.)
Please use the comments section to give this picture a caption. The more the merrier. I googled it months ago... was cleaning out my 123 desktop icons and found it once again.... no idea about its original source...
What's even better than budgeting? Running reports on financial data you've been collecting over 5 years....
Food
63% - Spent on Groceries
25% - Dining at Restaurants
12% - Dining out, while on vacation
Grocery Stores
82% - Rainbow Foods (the closest)
16% - Cub (on the way home from most places I go)
1.3% - Lunds (expensive chocolates)
Gas
Over 4 years, the amount I pay has trended from $14/fill-up to $17/fill-up.
I have always believed that I would wait to buy gas until I found a good deal... and then buy a lot of gas.... however, running regression analysis on my checkbook shows that the pump price only explains 1% of my purchasing behavior (R^2 = 0.11, F=.706). Days-between-fills is a much more powerful indicator, but still only explains 5% of my purchases (R^2 = .056, F=4.022). Thus, since both variables are very low, I conclude that my gas purchases are fairly inelastic and affected more by personal whims than market changes.
The density of dots in the first third of graph show the massive amounts of driving I did while living in South Dakota (until Jan 04). The the density of dots then shrinks when I moved to Minneapolis and started riding the bus. Finally, the density increases slightly (April 05) when I start driving to uptown to do Comedy Sportz.
South Dakota = 7.5 fills/month
Minneapolis, while riding the bus = 2.75 fills/month
Minneapolis, doing Comedy Sportz = 3.75 fills/month
Addendum (6/15/06):
I couldn't sleep because I know that the price pump has more of an influence on me than just 1% of my purchasing habits, so I began thinking about my methodolgy. Comparing Total Spent and Pump Price is a bad comparison. When the pump price increases, I will buy fewer gallons (lowering my total spent) but it also costs more per gallon (raising my total spent). What I really want to compare is pump price to gallons purchased. When I run that regression analysis, pump price has an R-squared of .078.... which means the pump price explains about 8% of the GALLONS I buy.
I went to a fancy-pants restaurant (St Paul Grill--made sure to wear regular sneakers, not orange laced ones) for a birthday dinner and ended up doing vallet parking for the first time. (Normally I would have avoided it, but all of the hourly parking decks had a jacked-up "concert rate" because the Boss was in town).
Valet was very confusing and I had no idea who we were suppoosseed to tip.... the guy who takes your car? the guy in the top hat who you give your car-retrival coupon to? the guy in gray shorts/shirt who actually drives your car to you? all of them? none of them? Do I really trust any of these people with my keys?
msp is no longer safe; for riding on the metropolitian bus system is the hairiest man ever seen. imagine robin williams doing a monkey. you pervert. now think of the furriest man you know and cross him with a wildabeast.... that doesn't even begin to explain the groves of thick black hair bustling from this man's shorts, sandals, short sleaves and v-cut shirt.
i couldn't tell where his regular hair ended, neck hair began and chest hair started... it was all equally thick and luscious.
but scariest of all was the ear hair. not IN the ears, but on the ears. growing from each lobe in a perfect "c"-- a halo of black fur enshrining his face.
given my minor interest in all-things-sugar, my parents had to be extra careful to warn me against taking candy from strangers.
this week i got a seemingly-trustworthy message that cookies were in a hidden mailbox awaiting my consumption. without giving it much thought i savored a ziplock bag filled with delicious chocolate chip home-bakes. after i finished, i wondered if someone had hidden other cookies in the building and started looking around. i never found any, but i suddenly realized that someday i will die from a poisoned chocolate chip, left inconspicuously on my front door step.
but in the mean time, i shall continue to eat every mysterious cookie i can get my hands on.... particularly if they are as scrumptious as the last batch...
Welcome to "Let's Make a Deal"....
Host: Pick a door, Steve... 1, 2 or 3....
Steve: Two, since it's the only even door....
Host: You've won a lifetime supply of good health.
Steve: Yeah (deadpan)
Host: However, you may trade it for what's behind door 1 or 3... keeping in mind that one of those doors contains 3000 days of paid vacation time to use at your leisure.
Steve: Ooooh, tough decision. I'll trade good health for door number 3...
Host: I'm sorry. You win two stalks of asparagus held together with a rusted paperclip.... and worst of all, we'll have to take away all your immunizations.
--
It's my only 'splination for my 3rd cold this season.