For Kim, Part 1/5

In the 3rd season of the sitcom "Friends", there's an episode (The One with Frank Jr.) where Ross infamously crafts a list of five celebrities that he's allowed to sleep with should he happen to run into them. Every guy who's ever seen it has carefully crafted their own list to share with their significant other. This is not that list.

Instead, this is the post that I promised Kim over at HarrisWorld I would make when I made a return to blogging: my list of five celebrity "guy crushes". After careful consideration, I've assembled this list of the 5 male actors that for whatever reason really make me interested in seeing a movie or TV show. [Note: Clive Owen was not allowed to be on this list, as I'm told that girls actually like him.] Without further ado, in no particular order, here is the first of them:


Nathan Fillion -
I'm not the world's biggest Joss Whedon fan, but Fillion's funny and nuanced performance as Captain Mal Reynolds in "Firefly" makes it an exception well worth watching. Believe it or not, other than 2007's criminally unseen Waitress, I've never seen anything else that he's in. His inclusion on this list means that I certainly want to make the time to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or his current TV project "Castle" some day.

It's Flying Day!

Last Saturday, some of our good friends from HarrisWorld came up to the Twin Cities to partake in what was truly a unique experience. I've been to some interesting events in my life, chief among them our trip to see Punxsutawney Phil a few years back, but the Red Bull Flugtag ("Flying Day" in German) may take the cake for strangeness. I only learned of its existence a mere two days before going, but I'm glad I did.

Apparently, Red Bull (the energy drink people) select a handful of cities every year to host the event and we here in Minnesota were lucky enough to be graced with its presence this year. What is it, you ask? Essentially, teams of five spend weeks and months putting together a "flying" machine of their own design and then proceed to run it off a ramp and into a river after performing a skit that usually involves bad dancing. Yes, it is as silly as it sounds.

The beauty of it is the elaborate themes that the various teams use for their "aircraft". At our version of the event, there were "planes" modeled after nearly everything. Among them were Prince's Little Red Corvette, a Zamboni machine, a hockey penalty box, a coffin, a giant roller skate, and even a bathroom (literally a complete bathroom on wheels). I keep putting the words "aircraft" and "planes" in quotation marks because although the stated point is to see who can fly the farthest and with the most style, in truth most of these contraptions plummeted straight off the edge of the ramp to the bottom of the Mississippi. The bathroom even managed to flip completely over and land upside-down -- truly hilarious.


There was one actual aircraft that managed to fly, setting a Flugtag world record in the process. Mere inches before crashing into the river, the pilot pulled a lever deploying some wing flaps (real aeronautics at work!) that leveled the plane and allowed it to glide over 200 feet before coming to rest gently in the middle of the river. The applause from the amazed crowd gathered on both sides of the river was deafening. Which reminds me, the turn-out for the show was truly astounding, but that's probably because the best part of it? It was free. I never thought I'd say this in my life, but... thanks, Red Bull.

You can check out the highlights yourself on their website. The videos should start automatically.

The Birthday That Keeps On Giving

I mentioned earlier the birthday get together I had back in September at Dos Amigos. Well here's proof for you non-Minnesotans that it really happened. I was ambushed by a sombrero and whipped cream.



Little did I know at the time that I had already missed getting one of my birthday presents. Apparently, my parents had shipped a package to me so that it would arrive on Thursday, the day before my birthday. Despite the fact that we were home at the time, the UPS guy inexplicably opted to leave it out on the back steps of our house instead of delivering it to us. As a result, my birthday present walked off with some not so friendly neighborhood person instead of going inside with me.

After wrangling with UPS for awhile, my mom tried again last week. This time she told them to hold it at their delivery center so I could come pick it up. I finally got it last Thursday, making me the proud new owner of Guitar Hero II for the PS2 (Yes, I do have some game systems that were released in this decade). Don't you just love late gifts? It's like you get a whole month of birthday goodness.

We were out of town over the weekend, so I just got the chance to try it out last night. I'm starting out on Medium difficulty (4 buttons only) which I'm decently good at, but instead of just blasting through the game I'm trying to work up my technique for the Hard (and Expert?) times ahead. I've played 7 songs so far and have 5-starred 4 or 5 of them. For those who don't know what it looks like, here's me playing at the baby shower we went to in Dallas back in August that I never wrote about.

Here's hoping I don't end up too addicted.

Great Weekend

Let me tell you about the great weekend that I just had.

Friday was my birthday, so to celebrate Meaghan and I took over the basement of the downtown Dos Amigos with 22 of our friends for a dinner party. Thanks for the wonderful turn-out everybody, I really appreciate it. I had a great time, ate good food, and even got some fun presents (comics, DVDs, lunchbox, etc.) out of the deal. We didn't bring our camera, but if you were there and you happen to have some pictures to share from the event, they could soon be featured here.

Saturday was "Get Together Day", the 6 year anniversary of when Meaghan and I started dating. Since our real anniversary fell on a Monday (today) this year, we decided to use this occasion to celebrate instead. We used our "Great Escape" package that we won in the Rochester Library's Amuzing Race, so we enjoyed a relaxing night in a suite at the Kahler Grand Hotel. I won't bother telling you what our presents for each other were, but we both managed to (sort of) integrate the traditional and modern 2nd anniversary gifts of china and cotton.

Meanwhile on Saturday, just one week after stating that I thought they wouldn't win a single game this year, my good ol' alma mater was kicking the pants off of Iowa 15-13. Apparently any sports prediction I attempt to make will quickly be proven wrong in all cases. From now on, I promise to only present the facts and offer no opinions. I'm still not confident that the 'Clones are going to win much of anything this year, but this at least prevents the first year of the Chizik era from being a complete failure.

In the NFL, the Lions managed to beat the Vikings in overtime 20-17 in what was possibly the ugliest football game I have ever seen. Play was marred by 10 turnovers, countless penalties, two potential game-winning field goal misses, and general ineptitude al over the field. A win is a win as they say, so I guess the Lions will take it, as that brings them to 2-0 in a season for the first time since who knows when. My research department tells me that since 1990 (the start of the wildcard era), 65.7% of teams starting 2-0 have made the playoffs. I expect the Lions to help decrease that number a little this year.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that the Tigers swept the Twins in the dome again over the weekend. We all know what happened last time, so I'll keep my mouth shut. Big series against the Indians starts tonight. If you can watch it, please do, and be sure to root for the good guys.

Road Trip Pt. 1: Nebraska Wedding

8/17-8/19


The first leg of our three part August road trip took us to a friend's wedding in the tiny northeast Nebraska town of Bazile Mills. We started out Friday night by staying another night at the wonderful HarrisWorld B&B where we would be leaving Zelda for the duration of the trip. Many thanks to Mike & Kim for continuing to look after her whenever we leave town.


We left Rochester early Saturday morning in order to arrive with enough time to secure our lodging and change before the 5:00 ceremony. We knew there weren't a lot of places to stay in the area, so we opted to camp for the night at the nearby Willow Creek SRA. We don't take the time to go tenting often enough, so this seemed like a good excuse to get out there for a night. The catch was that Nebraska state parks don't take reservations on the weekend if you're only planning on staying for one night, so we had to get there as early as possible.


We made it all the way to South Dakota before we realized that we had forgotten to bring any of our cameras, so we stopped in at the Yankton Wal-Mart (the first time I've set foot in one since the great Boo-Berry search of 2006) to get a couple disposable ones. As a result, we had no zoom, and everything you are about to see looks like it was taken from at least 100 yards away. We tested it out with this picture of a bowling alley/family fun center there in Yankton. Only in the heartland can you get away with painting the word "SH-BOOMS" on the side of your business.




We made it to the state park in no time, but that's where the trouble starts. It would seem that the park system doesn't receive a lot of funding in Nebraska, especially the ones in extremely rural areas, so the signage was poor to nonexistent, there were no maps anywhere, and everything is self-service (meaning that there are no offices or rangers where you can get help). I had looked at a map of the park while drawing up this plan and had picked out the tent campground on the NW edge of the lake as our destination, but when we got there all we found was a barren loop with a bunch of signs saying, "Do Not Camp Here".


I hadn't brought a map of the park with me and there wasn't one to be found, but I luckily remembered that the main trailer campground was around on the south side of the lake. I just didn't know how to get there. After many false turns due to poor signage, we made it there and picked out a site by around 3:30. That left us about half an hour to pitch our tent, fill out all the forms, pay for our park pass and camp site, and change into our nice clothes for the wedding. We managed it in about 40 minutes and bent a few speed laws to get to the church on time. (I understand they're loosely enforced 'round those parts anyway.)


I suppose I should probably tell you whose wedding this was we were going to. The groom, Brett, is a friend of mine from work. We play on the same Rochester city league football and basketball teams, are bitter foes in the work volleyball league, and have been to each other's game nights, etc. He was marrying his lovely girlfriend since college, Sarah, whose father presided over the ceremony. The ceremony was in the lovely little 19th century Lutheran church where Sarah essentially grew up. Here's the happy couple now, being bombarded with bubbles on their way out of the church.



Their getaway vehicle was a school bus (which we somehow managed to not get a picture of) with enough room for the entire wedding party and more. I landed a seat on it, and we whooped and hollered through the streets of nearby Creighton (where Brett grew up). It was fun to see how they knew everybody that we passed on the streets. There was even a sign congratulating them in the window of one of the local businesses. I guess that's small town America for you.


The reception was relatively uneventful. Instead of a toast, Brett's best men (his twin brothers) sang him a song to the tune of "Don't Worry Be Happy". Thank you for not doing that, Steve. As you might expect, the DJ played a lot of oldies and country music. Despite the urgings of our friends, Meaghan and I managed to not find a song worth dancing to before retiring to the campground relatively early. We had a long drive ahead of us the next day.


Before hitting the road the next morning, we took a quick spin down to the beach and took a walk out on the stone jetty that protects the swimming area. It reminded us of the much longer jetty protecting the much larger beach in Pärnu, Estonia that we walked along on our honeymoon. Here's me with proof that there are bodies of water in Nebraska (even if they are man-made reservoirs).



I'll continue with the next leg, visiting with Meaghan's family in Pflugerville, TX, sometime in the next couple days.

Coming soon: Road Trip Review

We just got our pictures back from Target yesterday, so a big overview (with pictures!) of our sprawling road trip across the country will be coming soon. For now, I'm off to the Mall of America to meet up with friends and partake in my 2nd of a possible 4 fantasy football drafts. For a guy who doesn't like it that much, that seems like an awful lot of drafts. Oh, well. Keeping true to form, I'm selecting 10th out of 10 in this one.

BBQ at HarrisWorld

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to the folks over at HarrisWorld for another fabulous Saturday barbeque. Despite the fact that their place was literally swarming with tiny tots, Meaghan, Zelda, and I managed to have a good time.

I rocked it as Moon Knight (who knew that guy existed?) in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance with Mike, Chris, Tony, and Kim's brother, Jay. Think Double Dragon with superheroes, if you're not familiar. Incidentally, I stake my claim now on Amethyst, Princess of Gem World (just check out that winged horse) if a DC version of this ever comes out.

We also broke out our German card game Bohnanza, in which you trade, plant, and sell different kinds of beans. I think a good time was had by most, even though we'd never played with 7 people before and inadvertantly made a mockery of the rules as a result. We'll get them right next time, I swear.

I don't get to see a lot of the people that spent a significant amount of time hanging out in my dorm room very often as they're all spread out so far across the country (it turns out that people don't often want to stay in Iowa), so it was good to see Jay again. I'll have to see if I can dig up some embarrassing photos that prove that I knew him my freshman year at Iowa State.

Amuzing Race

So I'm not sure how it managed to happen, but the powers that be here at the Amber Tower and over at HarrisWorld have both neglected to comment on the funnery that was The Amuzing Race (brought to you by the Rochester Public Library). I'm positive Kim took pictures at some point, but maybe all evidence has been erased by now.

It turned out to be a great way to spend a Saturday morning, that is if you find things like running through a dealer's lot looking for a car with a specific VIN, running up a large hill to the edge of a quarry, shagging flyballs whilst attached to your spouse, constructing the world's flimsiest birdhouse, and flying paper airplanes to be fun. There were a few rough spots, but that's to be expected given that it was their first try at it. Luckily, they let us submit constructive criticism afterward. My biggest disappointments were that there really weren't any puzzles (most clues told you exactly where to go and what to do) and that we never left Rochester (the propaganda said it would span across Olmsted county).

Scavenge Like the Dickens managed to take home 16th place out of 35 teams, and for some reason we're still waiting for our trophy in the mail. We did somehow win the Grand Prize during the door prize drawing at the end, a night's stay in one of the better suites at the Kahler Grand in beautiful downtown Rochester. The Harrises graciously let us keep it, as we no longer live there and could perhaps one day be seeking lodging there.

Speaking of lodging, this marked the first time that Meaghan and I had ever stayed overnight at the HarrisWorld B&B. I must say that we heartily enjoyed our stay and hope to be able to visit again sometime in the future. I recommend the room they call "Kim's Mom's Room" to anyone thinking about staying there.

Oh, and unless I'm misremembering, people were talking about how cool it would be if there were something similar in Minneapolis only you were restricted to using public transportation. It turns out that already exists. Thanks Salvation Army! Maybe we'll try this one next year, too, when we know Minneapolis a little better.

The Big Move, Part 2

Only a month late. Oh well.

5/19/2007 - Loading and Unloading

After averting a near disaster by picking up our U-Haul truck on Friday, all that remained was the physical loading of said truck, driving to Minneapolis, and unloading the truck. Now I know that Meaghan and I must be two of the strongest people in the world, but we have a lot of stuff. More stuff than we could probably shuttle in and out of a house twice in one day. So in order to manage the job, we enlisted the help of 12 extremely nice friends. Thanks Brett, Jeff, Mike, Kim, Tony, Urrv, Andy, Brett, Matt, Laurel, Chris, and Alaina. We really couldn't have done it without you. (Thanks, too, to Carol and Isaac for moral support and mad sidewalk chalk skillz.)

The help was so incredible that we managed to tightly pack the entire 24' truck with all of our earthly belongings in a mere hour and a half. Chris and Urrv's pack job was amazing, especially given how few things we had available to provide padding. After a quick lunch at Subway, the caravan hit the highway.

This possibly took longer than either the packing or the unpacking phase. I don't know if you've ever driven a fully laden U-Haul before, but man does it chug up hills. There's not exactly any Pike's Peak in between Rochester and Minneapolis, but we were topping out at 45 MPH trying to get up some of the larger rises. As a result, the first part of the caravan got to our new place a good half hour before the truck did. To kill time, the early arrivers apparently had some adventure trying to help a random woman turn off her two car alarms... or something like that. I wouldn't know, I was driving the truck. (Incidentally, not a day has gone by without a car alarm going off for minutes at a time at some point.)

Once we finally got there, it only took another 90 mins to unload everything into the house. Well... almost everything. Our new house was built in 1907, so it's safe the say that the width and angles of various doors and halls aren't up to modern building standards. Miraculously, with a little cajoling everything fit with the exception of our queen-size box spring. We figured that might happen, so it wasn't a big deal. It was only another week of sleeping on sleeper sofas before we were able to get our half-queen springs from Slumberland.

After a day's hard work, we all went over to Pizza Luce on Lyndale. (Thanks for the idea, Kim.) They have an interesting array of pizzas to choose from, all of them good. We'd been to the one in St. Paul before, but it's good to know one is so close by if we're ever in the mood.

Our First Houseguest

For the first half of last week, our friend Andrea visited us all the way from Hoboken, NJ. The digital camera is still in a box somewhere, so I have no actual proof of this. You'll just have to take my word for it. I was working most of the time, but she and Meaghan have known each other since 7th grade so they didn't really need me anyway. Even so, we managed to do quite a bit.

Here are the highlights:

- Shopping for furniture at Ikea: I didn't go, but my misgivings about that place proved true. Meaghan and Andrea picked out loads of stuff on the showroom floor, but arrived at the buying floor to discover that only a single piece of the furniture that they had picked out was actually available. The rest had been discontinued, and they refused to sell the floor model. Which begs the question: why keep it on the showroom floor if you have none to sell?

- Went to see Waitress at the Lagoon: Great little romantic comedy of sorts chock full of interesting characters. I highly recommend it to everyone as it's now showing at regular theaters, too. If you're at all a fan of Nathan Fillion (Mal from Firefly/Serenity), you should love it. Best use of Cake in a soundtrack ever.

- Watched a lot of the first season of the Gilmore Girls: Turns out that Andrea's only pretty much seen episodes of this from season 4 onward and we happen to have seasons 1-3 on DVD, so it was fated. I'm not entirely sure what I like about this show, as I seem to enjoy it in spite of itself. As a general rule, I dislike the fast talking, the constant pop culture references, and I don't find either of the two main characters all that sympathetic. I must like the supporting characters.

- Learned we can get to the airport in about 30 mins without walking much more than a block in total, all for the low price of $1.50 per person. How cool is that?

A good time was had by all. Hopefully, we'll be able to see her (and her husband Mike) again before too long.

The Big Move, Part 1

So I know that I said in the beginning that this blog was going to cover the big move, but it turns out that when you're actually in the process of moving you're way too busy to write. We've officially been in Minneapolis since Tuesday night, so let me take you through some of the things we've been through to get here.

5/18/2007 - I Haul for U-Haul
I made a reservation with U-Haul on 5/11 for our move on 5/19, but apparently that wasn't early enough for the booming Rochester market. The way it works is you make a reservation for the size of truck or trailer you want (I went with the 24 foot, 3-4 bedroom variety), and they call you the day before telling you where to pick up your truck in the morning. It would've worked out all right except for two things:

1) We had to pick the truck up in Austin, over 40 miles away.
2) We had to pick it up at 9:30 Saturday morning when we had told all of our friends to show up at 9:00 to help load the truck

Luckily, the people at the reservation center were very understandable when I called them and said we could pick up the truck on Friday without being charged for an extra day. The only hitch was that the Austin rental place closed at 5:00 PM, so we had to get moving. Additionally, we had to make it back to Rochester quickly because we were going to a 7:00 movie with friends.

It seemed like everybody and their brother was clogging the roads around Rochester that day. I don't know if it was just the typical early Friday rush or if there were a lot of people trying to get away for the weekend to enjoy the nice weather (I saw a lot of travel trailers out and about). Either way, without breaking too many speed laws, we managed to get to Austin at about 4:55.

Now we just had to find our rental place. There are two U-Haul rental centers in Austin, both of them conveniently named West Side something or other. We were looking for West Side Auto Repair. According to the address and map at the U-Haul site, to get there you exit the freeway and turn left. When we got to that exit, however, we noticed a large collection of U-Haul trucks to our right. Straining our eyes to read the sign we could just make out "West Side...". Thinking it was the other one, I turned left. Two u-turns later, we ended up right back there at West Side Auto Repair. It was 5:03. Stupid lying maps.

Luckily, the place was still open and we rented our truck without a hitch. The drive back to Rochester was fairly uneventful... except for the fact that I took off down the highway in the wrong direction and the speedometer in the truck didn't work. Apparently I can't read road signs when I'm driving something big and new. After a quick conference with Meaghan at the next exit, we decided that she would lead the way back to Rochester since she had a working speedometer. It was a long, slow, bumpy ride, but we made it back in time to go to our 7:00 showing of 28 Weeks Later. I'll talk about that later.

Mail Musings

Well it took about two full months, but I finally got a postcard in the mail that my friend Frank sent from Amsterdam. Apparently the Dutch postal service isn't the fastest at getting stuff over the ocean. There were a few bends and a small tear in it, so maybe they tried turning it into a paper airplane and throwing it over here first.

In other postal news, the regular rate for mail has now gone up to 41 cents so there's even more reason to pay your bills online if you're not already. Additionally, the USPS is introducing this concept of the "Forever Stamp". You buy it now for 41 cents and it'll still be good no matter how high they raise the postage in the future, kind of like those gasoline co-ops where some lucky people locked in $1.00/gal prices some years ago. Only I don't know how many letters I'm really liable to be sending in my lifetime.

The Amuzing Race

The Amber Tower and HarrisWorld are going to join forces on Saturday, June 9th to participate in the Amuzing Race to benefit the Rochester Public Library Foundation. It's supposed to be a crazy, local version of the "Amazing Race" (CBS Sundays) in which we'll drive all over Olmsted County for a morning of chasing clues and taking the physical challenge. I'm hoping it'll be like the travelling questions from Kaleidoquiz (for all of you Iowa Staters out there).

We're not allowed to use any maps or outside help. Since I know where nothing outside of Rochester is, I guess I know what I'll be studying for the next couple of weeks. What I need from you, gentle readers, are ideas for a team name. I'll be accepting entries until next Wednesday, May 16th at high noon. Submit your best and brightest ideas. If you came up with the chosen name, you'll win something great.

Dungeons, Dragons, and Dorks

Last night was my weekly get together with friends to play D and D. I'm currently the DM of our little group, despite my tenuous grasp on the rules that make up the game. Not much of note happened. The party continues to spam the heal wand on their trek through Baron Harkyn's castle in their quest to recover the Star of Tochiro. They took down a couple of smallish blue dragons in a smoke-filled lair, but not before their erstwhile goblin companion Grignak (a cookie to the first person to spot the reference) was felled by a killer line of lightning.

Anyway, the real reason I'm talking about this is because we learned two of my friend Mike's lifelong goals: 1) To beat Space Quest II 2) To play any of the Leisure Suit Larry games

As luck would have it, the all-consuming conglomerate Vivendi released some reasonably priced compilations just last year. Keep that in mind come birthday time, friends of Mike! Come to think of it, I would probably even like these. I have great memories of playing the first Space Quest on our trusty old Apple IIc back in the day.