A New Leaf

One would think that being housebound because of the onset of a global pandemic would have been the perfect opportunity to revive this blog.  But no.  Instead, as we start to put COVID-19 in the rear-view mirror, or at least learn to live with it forever, I found myself tinkering with Blogger today in an effort to migrate this dusty old thing over to my real Google account, nearly five years after my last attempt to restart was hampered by having to juggle two accounts.

Friends, I am here to say that it was successful.  Welcome back to the Amber Tower.  I suspect you'll see a lot of capsule thoughts about movies here -- Meagh and I see an awful lot of them these days, since we signed up for AMC's A-List plan a few years back.  Outside of that, we'll see what the future holds.  I hope you enjoy.

Decker Director Series

Back in the summer of 2014, Meaghan and I started a weekly event series with some friends.  Here's how it works:

• Pick a movie director who's made at least three feature-length films.
• Put that director's movies in order chronologically and make a weekly viewing schedule.
• For each week, pick a potluck dinner theme that corresponds to that week's movie or director in some way.
• Get together with friends, eat good food, and watch good movies.
• Repeat.

Three years later, we're still going strong.  So far, we've watched all of the movies of Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, Lenny Abrahamson, Frank Darabont, Ridley Scott, Ben Stiller, Ang Lee, Sarah Polley, David Lean, and Lynne Ramsay.  We're currently working on both Hayao Miyazaki and Woody Allen.

If any of our directors puts out a new movie after we've completed their filmography, we organize a "field trip" to see it in theaters, usually on opening weekend.  I'm bringing all of this up now because the director that we started this whole thing with, Darren Aronofsky, has a new movie in theaters this weekend, mother!  We're going to check it out this afternoon, so hopefully I'll be able to put some words together about it tonight or tomorrow.  It's supposedly a pretty difficult film; I'm looking forward to exercising my brain with it.

If you have any suggestions for directors we should check out in the future, or want to share some fun things you've been doing with your friends, feel free to comment.

My Brain is Turning to Mush

I don't know if it's the fact that I'm getting older (I've now survived 38 years on the planet) or the constant exposure to screens in my life or the overwhelming disposability and superficiality of nearly everything in this world, but I can feel my ability to think creatively or critically slowly beginning to slip away.  I've tried my best to combat the cell phone addiction that's rampaged across this country over the last ten years, but even I have a smart phone now.  Don't worry; it's not that smart.  Even so, I find myself checking all the usual suspects like Facebook and Twitter once a day despite there not being anything particularly new or useful to be found on any of them.  It's a world of information and entertainment overload, only hardly any of the information matters.

Ironically, my solution for all of this is to re-open the Amber Tower for business.  Sorry in advance for overloading you instead, dear readers, but there's something about the act of putting words together in a coherent fashion that does something for your brain that nothing else can.  Even if no one's still watching for updates on this blog or ever reads what I have to say, it'll be good for me and that's what I need right now.

Been There, Done That, Ate the Turkey Leg

The Warrior Dash turned out to be a ton of fun. Not only did we get some good exercise rambling up and down the ski slopes at Afton Alps, jumping over cars, climbing cargo nets, and ducking under barbed wire, but we did a bunch of other stuff I never thought I'd do. Among them:

- blasted clean by a fire hose
- ate a turkey leg at 9:30 in the morning -- my dad would be proud, there was absolutely no meat left on that bone when I was done with it
- queued up for beer at 10:00 in the morning -- it was free, and it was bad

If it comes back to Minnesota next year, I'd love to get a big group together to go with us. You don't have to be in fantastic shape, and can even walk it if you want to. The absolute worst part was right at the beginning because the course went straight up one of the steep ski slopes at the resort. We went at Meaghan's pace, which was less than strenuous, and finished in 50+ minutes. Even so, we didn't feel particularly out of place and could complete all of the obstacles with relative ease.

Because of the messy nature of many of the obstacles, we didn't bring a camera along, but there were professionals there to immortalize the occasion. Apologies for the watermarking, I'd have to pay money to get rid of that.


No, we're not drenched in sweat there. One of the first obstacles was to run through a couple of snow machines that were on at full blast. Since it's the summer, this amounted to being blasted with a metric ton of water.


Nearing the finish line, after going back down the ski slope on a giant Slip n' Slide, we had to hurdle a couple of flaming berms.


Emerging from the mud pit at the finish line, ready for the fire hose. Some of those clothes will never be clean again. Meaghan's still crawling through the mud somewhere behind me here.

Breaking the Silence

It's been a busy couple of weeks since returning from Europe.

I had fully intended on using that first weekend to load this place with tales from the journey, but instead we turned around almost immediately to get on a plane to Florida for Meaghan's G'Pa's funeral. Unbeknownst to us, he had suffered a stroke while we were gone and was placed into hospice. To our relative good fortune, he managed to hang on until the day after we returned so we were able to visit with the family at least a little as opposed to missing it completely. I only knew him for a small fraction of his 92 years, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a kinder soul.

We returned to Minnesota again to the news that one of Meaghan's students had committed suicide, so we attended our second funeral of the week that Saturday. Between that and trying to get acquainted with the current goings-on at work, it was a difficult week.

For this past week, I don't really have an excuse beyond working too much. We saw a couple of movies in the theater that I'll be writing about before too long, and as I write this we're in the midst of completing Disney movie #3. There are scads of bonus features and multiple commentaries on our copy of Fantasia, so it's taken us a long time to make it this far. Dumbo comes next for those of you tracking our progress.

None of that is the real reason that I'm making the effort to break my silence at such a late hour, though. My reason? Sunday morning, Meaghan and I become WARRIORS! Or at least, we're going to make the attempt. As a fan of "American Gladiators", "Ninja Warrior", etc. it'll be fun to try something that's even a tenth of what those contestants do. I'll let you know how it goes next week.

The Lazy Bachelor

So I wish I could say I had a good reason for the recent hiatus. In fact, I thought I would have loads of time to build up a big buffer of prepared posts. Well, I have had loads of time...

You see, right after the end of the school year back in the 2nd week of June Meaghan left the country and I've been living the bachelor life ever since. It turns out I'm apparently really lazy when I'm all alone, or maybe just demotivated from doing things -- not sure which.

Why is Meaghan gone? Remember that German teacher exchange? Well, she got to go to Düsseldorf to visit Cordula for the 2nd half of the program. In fact, she'll be staying in Europe for the better part of a month. She co-sponsors a writing-based trip at her high school. Last year, she took about a dozen kids to London, Paris, and Rome. This year the trip size is up to 20 and they're going to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. What am I saying? We're going to those places. 20 was the magic number that they needed to hit for me to go along as a chaperone. I leave Monday, and am starting to get amped up for the trip. Hopefully, not too many of the teens give us grief.

So what have I been up to for the last couple weeks? Good question. I've attached a couple small pieces below along with a teaser for the series that will hopefully keep you company while I'm gone -- assuming I can get them all written before I leave. Enjoy!

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Before Meaghan left the country, we went to see another movie at one of our local art house theaters. This probably deserves its own post, but I'm probably not eloquent enough to do it justice. The film was Terrence Malick's new work The Tree of Life. Like all of his films, it was beautiful and strange if not lacking a little bit in coherency. For those not familiar with Malick, despite the fact that he directed his first movie back in 1973 this is only his 5th full-length feature. I've only seen the two previous to this: The Thin Red Line and The New World.

It's a largely autobiographical story about his childhood growing up in Texas in the 1950s. Depicting his father as a violent force of "nature" and his mother has a beautiful force for "grace" (nature vs grace is the dichotomy set up in the opening narration, hence the quotes), it's essentially a series of related vignettes showing their interactions, their troubles, and the events that shaped him into the person he is today.

My childhood was not nearly as contentious as Meaghan's (she's compared us to the Cleavers on more than one occasion), so I didn't relate to the actual story elements as much as she did, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a beautifully made film. And oh yes, there are dinosaurs!

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Last year when Meaghan was in Europe, I spent a lot of time watching the World Cup, so it's only fitting that this year I've been keeping my eye on the Gold Cup. What? You didn't know that North America's largest soccer tournament has been going on in our country over the last two weeks? I'm shocked.

Wait, no I'm not. Apparently this is the year that I spend all of my sports-related energy on the sports that Americans just don't care about. The finals are tonight, but the only places you can see it are on FOX Soccer (who knew that existed?) and Univision (in español). Predictably, the USA is facing off with Mexico. It's not been an easy road to the finals for the US, so I'm expecting them to get pasted by "El Tri". We'll see what happens.

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Lastly, I spent a lot of time on an unexpected journey that I'll be sharing over the next two weeks. It started with me questioning my sanity, and then I thought I'd completely lost my taste. In the end, though, I came to grips with reality and learned how to stop worrying and love the tween.

Hotlanta!

I've been a little short on time since coming back from Atlanta this weekend so I'm sorry in advance for the lack of detail in this update. More will be coming as time allows, which might not be until the weekend.

It was a good, long, tiring weekend. We exceeded our expectations in the tournament by finishing the best out of all schools from Minnesota, making it to the second day of play, and even winning a match in the playoffs. Overall, our A team went 7-5 and our B team just missed the playoff cut at 5-5. Both teams improved greatly on their finishes in last year's national tournament, so Meaghan and I are really pleased with the result. I also got to see the aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola, and the best 24-hour diner/karaoke bar in all of Atlanta. I might even have some pictures to share if I can find our camera. Stay tuned.

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The SWAT team is reconvening this Saturday to jump out of airplanes again. Since hours of training will not be needed this time, I will probably be on hand. I'll see if I can get some pictures of the festivities.

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Djokovic Watch = 43

After beating Del Potro in four sets, Djokovic breezed through a straight set win over #16 Richard Gasquet and then got a free pass to the semifinals because his would-be Italian opponent pulled out with a torn leg muscle that he'd suffered in the previous round. Because of this Djokovic won't be able to tie the record by winning the French anymore as walkovers do not count as victories. It also means that he'll have had four days in between matches when he takes on #3 Roger Federer on Friday, always a tough task. Incidentally, all four of the top seeds advanced to the semifinals in the men's draw. I'm not sure how often that happens at a grand slam event, but it does mean that we're probably in for some quality tennis the rest of the week.

A Bowling We Go

This weekend Meaghan and I will be flying to Atlanta along with 12 of the best and brightest students from her high school. That's right, it's time for the High School National Championship of Quiz Bowl. We have two teams that have qualified, and our goal is to get at least one of those teams into the 2nd day of play. This would mean that they would have to finish 6-4 or better on Saturday. 14 of the 218 teams entered hail from Minnesota, so we're looking forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces around the tournament.

Folks may recall that in the past the national tournament has been held in the Chicagoland area, which means that we'd be within driving distance. Unfortunately, the experience of sharing the hotel and convention center there with a bondage convention last year has scared the organizers into seeking a new venue. Let's just say that if you wandered into the wrong place last year, you may have been exposed to material inappropriate for a high schooler.

I'm looking forward to getting to see a little bit of downtown Atlanta, as I've never spent any amount of time there. Depending on when we're eliminated we may get to see the world's largest aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola, or other cool things in the Underground Atlanta. I'll let you know what happened in an update next week.

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Djokovic Watch = 41

Djokovic ran his streak to 41 this morning with a 6-3 6-1 2-3 (ret.) victory over the Romanian Hanescu. His 3rd round match on Friday will be a true test. The opponent is #26 Juan Martin Del Potro. The dangerous Argentine was ranked as high as #4 in the world before injuring his wrist early last year. After getting it surgically repaired at a certain medical clinic in Rochester, he's been on the comeback trail. The fact that he's still ranked #26 despite missing almost an entire year speaks volumes to his skill.

SWAT Team! aka Why My Wife is Crazy, Part 2

It was a stormy day on Saturday. Thankfully, one of the system's bands of rain lifted out of the metro area around 2:00 leaving behind a beautiful blue sky. Perfect for skydiving, one might say. And so it was that Meaghan was able to put the morning's training to good use and performed her first solo jump. Obviously, being her first such jump she wasn't completely alone. Two experienced jumpers fall near you to correct your form and pull your ripcord should you prove incapable. After that, for the controlled flight and landing portions you are truly on your own.

This is a scary proposition (for me, anyway) as we saw an experienced jumper break an ankle on landing two years ago when we were there. Meaghan came through with flying colors, however. She only missed the target landing zone by about 15 yards. Not bad, considering that some of the other first-timers there ended up over a mile away on some of the neighboring farms. Speaking of first-timers, Meaghan went to the drop zone with a couple of her co-workers who had never jumped before. Consequently, the three of them became the charter members of SWAT. I won't tell you what that stands for as it reveals too much about where she works, but it's essentially a group of adventure seeking folks. Any event involving two or more people from her workplace will become a SWAT event.

Unfortunately, I had to learn about all of this secondhand. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the weather, they were really hustling flights up when the skies cleared and Meaghan wasn't given the opportunity to call me out to the airfield before she jumped. I was able to catch up to the SWAT team at a local bar afterwards, though. Look at those proud faces.


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Djokovic Watch = 40

He was a 6-2 6-1 6-3 winner over #71 Thiemo de Bakker in the first round at the French Monday. Next up: #60 Victor Hanescu

Why My Wife is Crazy, Part 1

The gangly kid with the big hair looked at Meaghan then squinted up into the bright blue sky. "Today is a good day to die, don't you think?" Meaghan, startled out of her thoughts, looked at him and laughed. Then the kid led my wife away from me across the grassy airfield to the small airplane that they were planning on jumping out of.

Two years ago, Meaghan went skydiving. At my suggestion, she made it a dual jump, so someone experienced would be in charge of packing the parachute and pulling the cord. They tell you that nobody (who survives the experience) has ever just gone skydiving once. So, she is going back for her first solo jump this weekend. She's also bringing along some members of her newly inaugurated SWAT team, a collective of adventure-seeking teachers from her school. Unfortunately, the weather is supposed to be a little iffy on Saturday, but with luck they'll be able to get their jumps in okay.

I'm not sure why I didn't post about her first jump two summers ago, but to prepare you for this weekend's event, here are a few (mostly bad) pictures from that experience.

Small Packages

Despite the fact that my dad worked for a Big 3 auto company, I am not a car guy. This is probably best illustrated by the fact that the three cars I've owned in my life (not counting poor Roger -- alas, we hardly knew him and yes, we name our cars) are a 1994 Chrysler Concorde [Medea], a 2003 Dodge Neon [Rivers], and a 2007 Dodge Caliber [Sunny]. You won't find them near the tops of any best of class or fun to drive lists, but they've each served us well so far in their own ways. Unfortunately, Rivers is starting to show the wear and tear that 8 years and 120,000+ miles can inflict on a car, and we're nearing the point where we're going to have to make a decision of whether to get some fairly major engine work done or call it a life and move on to a new car. There's a good chance that we'll just get the repairs, but in the event that we don't the car that I want may be a surprising choice.

Despite my 6'2" frame, for awhile now I've held the staunchly un-American view that my next car should be a small one. I think this stems from my last year of college when I got my PlayStation 2. Back in the day when specific games were still bundled with your console, I got the package that included the Sony/Polyphony classic Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. It's a racing game in which you start with $18,000 and eventually build up and tune a fleet of cars until you've won every race there is to win. With nearly 200 cars there's a lot of variety as each car looks, sounds, and drives differently. However, not being a car guy, I've never stuck with it for a lengthy career.

Despite the fact that there are so many cars in the game, your starting money is only enough to buy 11 of them. The vast majority of these are Japanese kei cars (subcompact), and being a stingy bastard I opted to start out with the cheapest car possible, the Daihatsu Mira. Thus began my love affair with the company that proudly proclaims to "do it compact".

The modern Mira

They make cute little jellybeans of cars, most of which get upwards of 50 mpg with their tiny engines. Unfortunately, it's not feasible for a lot of reasons (importation fees, crash standards, etc.) to ever hope to drive something like this in the United States. That's why I've turned to the next best thing.

Cinquecento!

Say hello to the Fiat 500. With Fiat soon to own a majority stake in Chrysler, they're practically part of the Big 3, right? These little guys have just started being sold in America in the last couple of months, so there's a good chance that you haven't seen any of them on the road yet in your neck of the woods. With luck though, you'll start to see them become as common as some of the other small boutique cars out there like the Mini Cooper and the Smart cars. I know what you're thinking. Is a car this small really practical?

If I had to tote around car seats and their precious cargo on a regular basis, absolutely not. But as a 2nd car that just gets driven around the city and occasionally to work? I think so. It would certainly make parallel parking easier, and I'd finally get to try out those "compact car only" spots in parking garages. Add in the fact that it gets 34 mpg with the automatic during this time of $4/gallon gas, and it's a win/win situation.

Maybe someday...

Our German Houseguest

Opening your home to strangers can be scary, especially if you're as reclusive as Meaghan and I are. Despite the fact that we rarely have anyone other than Meaghan's brother at our place, we decided to participate in the first ever German Teacher Exchange at Meaghan's high school by becoming a host family. They've had a student exchange for 30 years now, but this was the first year they've opened it up to teachers.

Our guest was a young woman named Cordula from Düsseldorf. Arriving on a delayed flight late one Monday evening, she stayed with us for the better part of three weeks. [If we were at all the kind of people that take pictures, this is where I would insert a picture of her. I'll see if I can track one down.] In short, it was a great experience. I'm sure that exchanges are entirely dependent on the people who participate in them, but with Cordula it was a bit like having the college friend we never knew we had come stay with us for a lengthy visit. There were never lulls in conversation, and it was always interesting to hear about how life here differed from the way it is over in Germany.

My only regret is that the weather wasn't nicer while she was here. The calendar may say Spring, but she was treated to a steady diet of 40-degree days with chilly rain or snow. At least it didn't curtail our ability to share some of our favorite restaurants (Los Ocampo, Chino Latino, etc.) here in Minneapolis with her. The three weeks went by in a blur -- one day we were picking her up at the airport, the next we were dropping her off at the terminal. Meaghan will have the chance to stay with her for a week when she travels to Düsseldorf after school finishes in June. With luck, she'll help cement the bonds of a new lifelong friendship.

It's Oscar Preview Weekend!

As we do every year, this coming weekend is our annual Oscar preview movie watching blitz. We typically hop on a bus to a theater-rich part of town and watch 3 or 4 movies in one go. Does anybody have thoughts on more movies we should add to our list of options?

Our current list is:
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
The King's Speech
True Grit

All of the above are currently receiving an 8.4 or higher on IMDb, which would easily place them within the Top 250 of all time should those numbers hold. Granted there is a skew toward movies from the Internet age since people don't have a tendency to go back and rate older films, but that's still impressive.

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.

Brief Hiatus

I had hoped to have a handful of posts queued up for while I'm on vacation, but wrapping up work and prepping for the trip have gotten in the way of producing anything of quality. There will be a post tomorrow, but after that you can consider this space to be on a brief two-week hiatus.

If Internet cafes still exist in Europe, I'll see what I can do about throwing a couple of live updates together while I'm over there. Otherwise, until I return...

Theft is Annoying

Having your wallet stolen is no fun. It's even less fun when you're planning on leaving the country for vacation in a week. There are credit cards, driver's licenses, and insurance cards to replace. In this high-tech digital world, there are automatic payments to head off and change the source of. Heck, there are even automatically reloading coffee shop gift cards that need to be halted and replaced.


Whoever decided to break into my locker (and at least two other members') at the gym Friday night while I was swimming laps in the pool, I hope you enjoyed the $8 or so that was burning a hole in my wallet as well as the pile of cancelled credit cards you inherited. As for me, I guess I learned the life lesson (which was reinforced by the responding officer's 'blame the victim' spiel) that you're apparently not supposed to take anything at all into one of those places as nothing is sacred or safe. According to posted signs, you're also not supposed to leave anything in your car either so I'm not entirely sure where that leaves me.

I've also learned that the club "is not liable or responsible for any lost, stolen, or damaged personal property, whether from lockers, vehicles or other locations on the premises." That doesn't really surprise me, but it does make me question what exactly the point of the lockers is. Since I'm not really a complainer (other than this missive to the void), we'll see if they decide they want to do anything for me. It's been three days now and I'm still waiting for that call from the general manager they said I'd be getting. If there's another chapter to this saga, good or bad, I'll let you know.

Troubles Come In Threes

For the 4th of July, I went back to my parents in Michigan for a much needed break from work and weekend to relax. That mission was accomplished [Thanks for having me!], but the car rides there and back were anything but relaxing. The drive itself wasn't so bad. The hours fly by pretty quickly when you're working through a backlog of Tigers games at 1.5x speed. I've finally caught back up to reality just in time for the All-Star Break, thanks for asking.

1) The drive to Michigan was truly pretty uneventful: normal holiday traffic in Chicago, nighttime road construction in Battle Creek, and oh yeah, my power steering and A/C went out with about 70 miles to go. No biggie. I took it down to trusty old Dick Scott Dodge (where I bought my first car - miss you, Medea!) with my dad the next morning. A mere $700+ later and I had a new serpentine belt and belt tensioner (which had locked up, throwing the belt).

2) After getting back from the shop, we intended to head down to the Detroit Zoo with my brother, his wife, and their son for the pre-nap portion of the day. When we hit the driveway to shuffle car seats and other kid gear, we found that the left rear tire on their car (fresh off a long road trip from New Jersey) was going flat. Jacking it up and removing the tire revealed a 2-inch piece of jagged metal embedded deep into it. Nothing that a side trek to various tire shops in town can't fix, but by the time all of that was said and done the zoo had to be postponed indefinitely.

The rest of my stay in Michigan was delightfully uneventful. As the saying goes though, things come in threes. Knowing this, I took it upon myself to spare my brother the pain of another car problem.

3) I knew I was tempting fate when I drove my 2003 Neon with 110,000 miles on it for this trip, but it was the only way I could listen to unlimited baseball (for technical reasons that will remain unnamed). Sure enough, on the return trip my engine started to overheat... on the Indiana Toll Road... near Gary. Let me tell you that if you're ever overheating on the freeway, you don't want it to be on a toll road. There are fewer exits, when there is an exit it rarely has anything worthwhile nearby, and you have to reaccelerate (bad for a hot engine) after every toll booth. After babying the car for a few miles at lowish speeds (don't worry, the hazards were running), I had to pull over and let the engine cool for a few minutes on the narrow shoulder of an elevated stretch of highway. Did I mention that Zelda was with me? Dogs love it when you stop for no reason and let everyone blow by you at 60+ mph.

I was eventually able to limp back on to the road and made it to the next exit where, being the naive traveler that I am, stopped at the first gas station I saw to ask for help. I knew it wasn't an actual service station, but there's still an old-fashioned responsibility for folks at gas stations to know about nearby businesses. Or not. The guy behind the glass looked at me like I was crazy, said he didn't know anything, and sent me on my way. Luckily, two fellow patrons knew where I could go, pointing me to a radiator shop down the street. They filled me back up with coolant, checked for leaks, and sent me on my way once they were sure I was back to running like a top. Incidentally, if you ever break down in NW Indiana I highly recommend Chevo's Radiator in Hammond. They took care of me and were nice to Zelda to boot.

Since troubles only come in threes, I made it home safe and sound after that without a problem. Not only that, I was so inspired that I decided to reopen the Tower. Keep on the lookout for semi-regular updates about whatever interests me in the near future.

Want to Know a Secret?

A lot of people have asked me over the past few years how it is that Meaghan and I thought to go to Estonia for our honeymoon. Behold! The truth revealed. In a roundabout way, it all starts with my dad. When my brother and I were younger, we played a lot of computer games. Every once in awhile, my dad would give us a random selection as a present for a birthday or Christmas. Unerringly, this ended up being something high quality which provided us with hours of fun. ex. Drol, 2400 A.D., Out of This World.

One such game was a little franchise-starter by the name of Command & Conquer. In C&C, you take on the role of commander of either the UN's defense forces or the terrorist organization that they're trying to crush, the Brotherhood of Nod. If you choose to play on the side of the government, your first mission is to establish a beachhead in eastern Europe from which you can drive out the terrorist forces. Specifically:


The game goes beyond just naming the country where the action is, it gives you a specific point of conflict. In this case, your hovercrafts storm across the Gulf of Riga in the cinematic opening to land on the beaches of Pärnu, Estonia.


Going there for our honeymoon is perhaps an extreme example, but I often like to take the time to learn more about the world around us through video games. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely not the only reason we went there, but C&C is the spark that even put it on the map in the first place. Without it, we never would've had the experiences that we did like staying in this gorgeous hotel 100 feet from the gulf in Pärnu.


Perhaps in the future I'll share more of the things I learn through gaming, if I ever find the time to play more games. For those of you wondering what the next C&C-inspired vacation might be? Latvia, of course, with a special stop in Jelgava. Be thankful I didn't find inspiration in Nod's campaign of terror. It starts somewhere in lovely, seaside Libya.

Bonus Material: Even if you never get to Estonia yourself, I strongly urge you to check out the story of how it gained its independence from the Soviet Union in The Singing Revolution.

Rites of Passage

They say that it can take awhile for a new house to feel like home, but we've had a number of firsts over the first month of living here that have helped to accelerate the process. Let's just say that we've been here for five weeks and buyer's remorse hasn't set in yet.

First Houseguests: Back in the middle of August, Meaghan's cousins from California Leo and Rebekah came to visit. Rebekah, 20, is a junior in college. Leo, 14, is going into 9th/10th grade on a 3-year high school program. Their arrival forced us to have quite a bit of the house clean and in working condition. If you're ever lacking in motivation to unpack and clean after moving, just invite some people to stay with you 3 weeks after your move-in day. Many games (mostly of Bohnanza, Killer Bunnies, & Seafarers of Catan) were played into the wee hours of the night, a day was spent at ValleyFair, and much fun was had by all.

First Repair Bill: Coinciding with the arrival of our first houseguests was the appearance of our first needed repair. When we ran the washing machine for the first time, we discovered that tree roots and other junk had completely clogged our house's sewer line to the street. Mopping up after a backed-up basement floor drain is not on my short list of final preparations for houseguests. Thankfully, our realtor hooked us up with a reliable sewer guy who rooted a large sack's worth of detritus from our line.

First Party: This Saturday we hosted our official housewarming party which meant we had to make a second pass of cleaning and arranging. Much of the work this time focused on cleaning up the yard since we were planning on having folks hang out on the back patio at the party. We spent six hours a couple of weekends ago pulling enough weeds and assorted plant life to fill five large yard waste bags. That's one major advantage of renting: you don't have to care about or take care of any of the green thumb work. And I am not a green thumb.

First House Payment: Yay for automatic payments. Our first mortgage payment went out the door right on time Sept. 1. I guess that means it's for real.

House Pictures

There was a slight clamoring when I posted about our new house last week. The problem: where were the pictures? Well, I'm certainly not about to show you a bunch of boxes strewn throughout the place. You had to be one of the lucky few who helped us move Saturday (Thanks everyone -- you know who you are) to get those visuals.

Let's make a deal. I'll give you a picture of each room as it gets finished until either you or I get bored with it. That's right... no pictures so far. Hmm, maybe I should be unpacking instead of writing this.