The Daily Diversion Archive For August, 2002

Tuesday August 6, 2002

Vacations are good.

That's where I've been for the last week. My wife and I took the MDU (Mileage Disposal Unit) on a summer road trip. We spent 3 days in Galena, IL, a day in Dodgeville, WI, a day in Milwaukee and a day in Montreal, WI.

Galena, IL is a nice little town. It certainly has its roots firmly embedded in the leaded soil. While we were in Galena, we toured U.S. Grant's house, Belvedere Mansion and the Dowling House (the oldest one in Galena). Grant's house is probably the most impressive house historically. It's pretty much as Grant left it. It has all its original furniture, a bunch of stuff Grant left and is very historically correct. The Belvedere Mansion is pretty much over the top. It's owned by a couple of antique dealers and is packed with furniture. There's curtains from Gone With The Wind (you know the ones, the green ones...), all kinds of stuff from Liberace and scads of BIIIG furniture. The best thing for me was the Tiffany chandelier in the dining room. Very nice. We had the worst tour ever in the Dowling House. Our tour guide was on her first tour, and had not adequately studied the subject matter. She pretty much failed on the giveashit scale. The house had 6 rooms. History isn't rocket science. The rookie tour guide was being "helped" by an obvious veteran of the tour, but his "teaching" style left a lot to be desired. Don't bother with this tour unless you're sure you get a veteran guide.

We took the Trolley tour and our guide was excellent. He was a decent driver and a great story teller. You could tell he had a knack for the tour and was a damn fine ride.

As much as I liked the historical stuff in Galena, the physical landscape there had changed radically since the frontier days so that it was rather hard to envision the way things used to be. The Corps of Engineers had put up a levee along the waterfront so that the town wouldn't flood every spring. The river channel used to be about 100 yards wide, but the current channel was about 50' or so wide. Historical pictures also showed a Galena virtually bare of trees. As is the case with almost every historical site here in the Midwest, trees are a problem. They get in the way. I'm pretty conflicted about trees and historical sites because I really like trees. However, it's sometimes hard to get a feel for how a place used to be when the reason they are how they are is largely covered in Johnny-come-lately trees. Grant's house is way up on a hill. I would imagine he had a commanding view of the valley, but since there's trees all around the house now, there's no view at all. Similarly, the Belvedere Mansion was originally built by a riverboat captain to look out over the river. Where the house is situated, it would look directly down the river channel coming up from the Mississippi. All you can see today are trees and brush.

As good as the history was, the food in Galena wasn't. We stayed at a nice inn right on the Main Drag, and although their restaurant was serviceable, it wasn't spectacular. We went to a very popular Italian restaurant the next night and were massively under impressed. It's not that the food wasn't good. It was good, but that's it. It was a notch or two up from the Microwave Garden, but it didn't live up to it's billing around town.

I think my wife and I could be called foodies. Foodies are food and wine hobbyists. We like good food and good wine. We appreciate it when we get it, and we don't return to places when we don't. Galena didn't have much to offer us. I think the biggest problem Galena has is what seems to be a massive labor shortage. Most of the places we went to had terrible service. Galena, home of the 20 minute gap between appearances by your server.

The way we measured restaurants, bars and othersuch this: Do we wish we had this place back home? Only two places in Galena win that coveted prize. The first one was The Grape Escape. This is a bar on main street. It's a "wine" bar, but only in feel. It had a comfortable atmosphere, the air conditioning was ice cold, the specialty martinis were very good, their beer and wine selections were good and the place became the place we retired to after a long day of touring. It was very hot while we were in Galena, and the air conditioning was much appreciated.

The other place of note was Cannova's Pizzeria. This place was head and shoulders above all others in quality of service, food and wine list. Nothing else came close. Perhaps we missed a couple of places, but we'll be going back to Cannova's next time we are in Galena. No doubt.

Galena is famous in the area for antique shopping. I suspect that this fame has changed the downtown area of Galena quite a lot in recent years. There weren't that many antique places in downtown Galena and precisely zero good deals were found. Perhaps I'm jaded, perhaps I'm not looking for the right stuff, perhaps I'm just an asshole, but I found Galena's reputation for good antique shopping largely undeserved. Yes, there were some antique stores, but not as many as we were lead to believe from the stuff we'd read and heard about the town. There were decent antique shops in the area, but I suspect that Galena's popularity and toni-ness with the retired/artist set has driven rents way up downtown. The best antique shopping near Galena is in the small towns up and down the river.

Our next stop was Dodgeville, WI. This town was chosen for a decent roadside motel not far from our targets of interest in the area. We were there to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and The House on the Rock. We did the Rock first.

Ummm....

What to say?

Hmmm....

It was (pause) interesting.

It's really hard to describe. The House on the Rock name doesn't really do this place justice. It should be called The House on the Rock and the various collections of a really wacked guy.

I'm not saying it wasn't worth the $20 to get in, either. It was.

The Rock was built apparently as a parody of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural style. The ceilings are super-low, the viewing angles are not subtle, and the place is entirely covered in shag carpeting. There are fountains and running water everywhere. The house has the "infinity room" that is a structure that cantilevers over the forest below. The room plays with the eye and doesn't seem to serve any other purpose. This is what it is like at The Rock.

The house is just the first part of the tour. The next couple of hours are spent walking through "collections" of stuff. There are more automated music machines (machines that play music on real instruments) here than I've seen in my entire life. There is a whole room full of model circuses. There is a place that looks like a Main Street. There is a large room where there's a huge (100' at least) structure depicting a giant squid fighting with some kind of sea monster. There are cases and cases of dolls. There's an enormous carousel. The room that is worth the price of admission to me was the "Organ Room." Here, amidst all kind of apropos de nothing machinery such as giant city-wide water pumps, old steam tractors and old power plant generators are several pipe organ consoles, cannons, banks of pipe organ pipes and various other stuff. Toss all this stuff into a large, dimly-lit room with not a level floor to be found and the whole thing becomes some kind of air-conditioned (YES!) glimpse of someone's abstract nightmare. To see this room on LSD would break your brain. I'd be diapers and drool for the rest of your life. There's a certain undertone of madness to the whole place. There's lots of models of people about to get eaten by sea monsters, tons of full-size mannequins with angel wings on their backs, suspended a short distance from the ceilings and cases and cases of stuff. The place is mighty cool, but I came away frustrated. It is run as a commercial attraction. Fine. I'd say perhaps one in a dozen things has some kind of label on or near it. There's no context to be derived from these collections. They're just collections. There are no little cards on the wall telling you who made this pistol, what this crown is made of--hell, even some of the ship models didn't have names on them. The lack of any identification on most items gives this place a certain sad chaos. One wonders if the items on display are just collections of junk, or real, rare or desirable items. It almost seems a waste to display all the stuff without any kind of identification. Odd.

Taliesin was not what I expected at all. It was really neat, very scholarly and our tour guide was a real pro. It was cool to see the shell that inspired the Guggenheim museum in New York. It was really neat to see how one's position relative to the room really matters in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It was certainly cool to see that most of the furniture there was built out of plywood. It was his workshop. He tried stuff out at Taliesin, before selling it to customers.

For all his genius at architecture, he certainly didn't have much luck anywhere else. It was humbling to hear of his personal tragedies, the fact that Taliesin had burned to the ground not once, but twice and the murders committed on the premises. I really don't have much to say about the place except for this: If you're a fan, go see it. It's well worth it.

It certainly provided a bit of contrast to the other destination of the day. For as ultimately frustrating The Rock was, Taliesin wasn't. Taliesin is being taken care of. It's being restored. It's being studied. It's still a school. It still has lessons to teach. It certainly isn't a finished product, but the foundation taking care of it is keeping it moving along. Where Taliesin is controlled and deliberate, The Rock is chaos.

We finished off the day with a trip to A&W and then to a really dreadful movie. Mike Myers needs to put Austin Powers down and leave him there. It was funny, but if you take away the poop, fart and pee jokes, there really isn't much of a movie left. It's drive-in or beer party fodder at best. See it if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you.

More tomorrow.

Thursday August 8, 2002

More of the vacation saga.

We woke up in Dodgeville, WI and hit the road. We stopped a few miles down the road for breakfast at this fabulous little diner on the main drag of this small town. The name of the town escapes me a this moment, but I'll get it. The town was very Norwegian/Scandahoovian etc, etc, and had tons of antique shops. It figures, because it's within "antiquing" distance from Madison. Anyway, The Troll Breakfast was awesome and we hit the road towards Milwaukee. We thought about hanging around and hitting some of the shops, but we had some stuff to do in Milwaukee that turned out the be very cool as well.

Our trip to Milwaukee was uneventful. We swung into town down by the lake and drove around a bit. We decided to go to the Pabst Mansion. Our tour guide book told us it was in the northwest portion of the city. Those of you from Milwaukee know that this is wrong. It's about a mile due west of downtown. We didn't know this and our tour book was wrong. After driving to the place we thought it was and finding it not there, we finally called them and they set us straight. We drove to it and we were glad we did.

The Pabst Mansion is one of the best historically preserved houses I've been in. The women's parlor room was worth the price of admission alone. I'd never seen a truly rococo room before. Wow. They did a wonderful job restoring it. Other big wows on the tour were the cabinetry in Captain Frederick Pabst's office on the first floor and all the cool tiles in the kitchen area. I'd go back again.

We also did the nearly obligatory brewery tour. We did the Miller Brewing Company Tour. I came to find out the Sprecher tour is cooler, but this was quite neat. The beer was good, too.

After that we went to our hotel. We had reserved a room in a place pretty close to our friends' house, but that particular inn had bad juju from the start. First, it smelled bad. Second, there was a gargantuan construction site directly next door. Third, none of the outside security door controls worked. Fourth, the place had weeds growing up through its parking lot and in its landscape/rock gardens all around the building. Fifth, when we finally got in, every coin-operated device in the pool area had an out-of-order sign hanging on it. Sixth, there were dead leaves and litter around the pool. Seventh, when we got to our room, it was under construction. A plasterer who wasn't currently there, was working on the ceiling in the bathroom. There was a ladder and some plaster just sitting on the sink and all the towels were on the bed. The room smelled of fresh plaster. Bad. Seven strikes and you're out. We checked out at the front desk with no problems, but first we scored a room in a well recommended inn downtown called the County Claire.

For about $20 more a night, we got a room with a Jacuzzi tub, a nice bed and right down town. The County Claire is a pub and inn and it couldn't have been nicer. If you're in Milwaukee, try this place first.

We met our friends and went out for Sushi. We saw their new house for the first time, too. We had a lovely evening.

We woke up and took off for the north shore. We had a long but very nice drive through Oshkosh and tons of other small towns on our way up to Montreal, WI. We stopped in Minocqua, WI on the off chance a clock I saw in an antique store a couple of years ago was still there. It wasn't. We continued on and arrived in our pretty little B&B by about 5. We checked in, got a recommendation for dinner and proceeded to eat the best steak dinner I've had in a long time. The place was called the Sky Lawn Supper Club and it's about 7 miles south of Montreal, WI on US51. Yummy. We then drove up route two to Saxson Harbor to watch the sun set. Then we went to DQ.

The next day we got up and decided that we'd had enough of this vacation stuff. We ate a delicious breakfast at the B&B and then left for Bayfield, WI.

Bayfield could very well have been transplanted directly from New England. It was very pretty. It felt like a small harbor town. It is. Anyhow, we hung out a while and then took off for home. We took the long way around northern WI. by taking Hwy13 to US2 to Duluth. Once again, it was a very lovely drive. Once we hit Duluth, I was surprised to find that Minnesota had raised the speed limit on I-35 to 70. That meant most every one was doing 80+. We made it home from Duluth in two hours.

We dropped off the MDU at the house and took the stawag to go pick up Boo. We then proceeded to hang out for the rest of the weekend.

Verdict: A damn good vacation. I can't wait for the next one.

Thursday August 15, 2002

Feh.

I'd love to have something to say today, but I really don't.

Notice that this isn't stopping me from writing some worthless drivel.

No, today's entry will be about everything and nothing at all. Not a quality entry today. Nope.

Life could be worse. We have a schedule of things to do this summer and if we work every day as if it was our last, we might even be able to get all these things done. It could be worse if I was aspiring to be an Islamikaze or, as they say on LGF, a splodeydope. Nope, no strapping on a bomb-belt and blowing my self to paste in the midst of a bunch of innocent people for me. What kind of drugs would you have to be on before that sounded like a good idea? Strong ones, I imagine.

Anyway, it was a festival of crappy driving this morning. I was on my way to the overpriced ramp downtown that I park in when I'm too lazy to walk the 15 blocks it takes to get into the cheap parking lots when I saw what had to be the dumbass driving move of the week. I was on First Avenue North crossing the street where the viaduct comes into the downtown grid. I think it's Fourth St. Anyway, the light was red so I came to a stop in front of the Army/Navy Surplus Store. Two of the extendo-bendy MTC buses came to a stop in middle of the intersection. The problem with this is that our light just went green. The second bus driver had no business whatsoever entering that intersection as the first extendo-bendy bus hadn't even gotten halfway out of the intersection. The second extendo-bendy bus driver pulled up to the rear bumper--no shit, 6" of space max--of the first bus and did this when the light was either yellow or red. The guy un the USPS truck next to me rightfully lost his shit and laid on his horn. He was followed by at least 6 other cars blaring their horns. The guy in the second bus looked at us with a "WHAAAAT?" look on his face, but his passengers looked as if they'd all simultaneously swallowed a bud vase. The eventually crawled out of the intersection, but only a handful of cars go through during that light cycle.

Inspired by this piece of simply dreadful, I'm-asleep-at-the-wheel driving, the lady in the minivan that ended up in front of the USPS truck only a block up the street turned left from the center lane. The guy in front of me locked up his brakes and so did I. The lady just seemed to be half asleep or something, because normal people don't take lefts from the middle lane. Perhaps she was having a stroke. Perhaps it will improve her driving. Bet on it.

We ended up at Chino Latino last night. I happened to be in a shirt and tie because of a client visit at work earlier in the day. I didn't bother taking it off when we got home as we were going right back out and I'm too damn lazy. Plus, I look like hell in a collared shirt without a tie. I don't have enough neck to pull that one off. Anyway, so Chino Latino is this very chic fusion restaurant in Uptown. It's an enjoyable place even though you pretty much need to be "cool" to fit in in there. I've seen sports stars and other local celebs there and they just kinda fit in. This might give you an idea as to what kind of see and be seen this place is. I always feel a bit out of place there, but it was a bit different this time. I guess the tie helps.

A buddy of mine's dad used to say that people couldn't hear him unless he was wearing a tie. I would have to agree with that statement. Think of wearing a tie as being exactly the opposite of a facial piercing or tattoo. Anyway, my experience at CL was different in a couple of ways. First, we rolled up in the MDU for the valet parking. The guys had us out of our car in a couple of secs and we went in. It almost felt as if that car was cool enough for that place. We got our table and I ordered a drink without looking at the menu. The rest of our time there seemed to be as a "cool enough" guest. It must have been the tie.

Tuesday August 13, 2002

It was a fun weekend. We went to an annual get-together for a bunch of our friends. I drank a lot of beer and pretty much hung out for a couple of days. It was relaxing.

What wasn't so relaxing was the noises we heard from Camp Ripley just a few miles to the south. They were practicing killing stuff and it sounded like live fire. PUM PUM PUM .......BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM. It rattled the windows. I can say this: I wouldn't want to be an Iraqi soldier right now.

It was tough getting out of town. It's never easy when you have tons of stuff to do, but the house wasn't cooperating. Just before we left on Friday morning, one of the garage door springs let go. I had just shut the door and was in the kitchen when I heard what sounded like a huge marching- band crash cymbal crashing in the garage. I went back in and there was one of the springs hanging near the garage door. Nuts. More stuff to do.

We also had a ton of errands to do. We got the oil changed in the car. We dropped Boo off at the kennel. We went and got coffee for the folks at the cabin and also stopped at the liquor store to get some beer. Gotta have beer, folks. We finally made it out of town only to waste 45 minutes in an interminable traffic jam up in Anoka. The bridge on 169 over the Mississippi is down to one lane and that backed up traffic for forever. Worse, I wouldn't have bothered taking this route if I-94 wasn't a frickin' parking lot due to construction. I guess the DOT simply MUST block all available routes going anywhere this year. Downtown Minneapolis is a nightmare. The DOT has a knack for shutting down parallel routes at the same time. Why? Dunno.

The best thing about this last weekend is that I broke a tradition. I didn't get sick. I'd been sick for the last 3 of these parties and I wasn't this year. My wife was, but that's pretty unusual. Of course, it was inevitable that I'd be sick sometime around this time of year and yes, now I have some kind of intestinal goo. I feel crappy and nauseated. Blech. I hope to we well done with this crud before too long as there are a bunch of things I want to get done and sitting on the couch watching TV in a miserable state is not a good way to finish these projects.

Monday August 19, 2000

The Twins took 2 of 3 from Boston this weekend. Life is good.

My softball league is over for the summer. Now I have to find another league to play in or find some other form of exercise that doesn't make me want to barf.

I was terribly sick this weekend with a nasty summer cold. I stayed home on Friday and moped around the house. Saturday was miserable until about 8 or so at night. Sunday was OK, but only after a stiff dose of ibuprofen. Today I'm OK. My voice is hacked from all the coughing and my ears are still full of goo. I don't sound like me, but that doesn't mean I don't write like me.

OK, hot link for 'ya. For all you security wonks, geeks and various anti USA PATRIOT bill people, there's a fascinating article in this month's The Atlantic Magazine. The gist of it is that security is only as good as it's weakest link, and that link is invariably, us. Further, it goes into the distinction between ductile and brittle security measures. The link to the article is here.

Tuesday August 20, 2002

The music's gone. It was time to shut it down. For those of you who got some, right on. For those of you who are wanting some, blame the RIAA, the DMCA and DRM. Sorry.

Not much else to say, really.

Thursday August 22, 2002

Abu Nidal is dead. There's a guy who just needed killin'. It's about 10 years too late, but at least he didn't die right away when he put a bullet through his head. Hopefully he died slowly and in terrible pain. It would be a just and fitting death.

On a lighter note, I picked up a bunch of beer for the beer tasting. I could have bought the whole first round of the contest, but I didn't want to buy a whole case of returnable bottles of Old Swill.

Q: What's good?

A: Pizza, big cars and clean floors.

Q: What sucks?

A: Late summer colds, mosquitoes and losing momentum on a project.

I've a project in my back yard that I've totally lost interest in. I really wanted to get rolling on it, but I just don't seem to be able to get up any gumption to get moving on it. I guess I'm just done with it. More later.

Monday August 26, 2002

We went to the State Fair on Saturday. What fun. We walked around, ate all kinds of stuff that was bad for us, and generally did some people watchin'. It was a pleasant time. The best thing: The Fine Arts Building on the north end of the fairgrounds. There is always good art in that building and this year was no exception. The worst thing: As always, there's just not enough places to sit in the shade.

What's cool? Toyota MR2s, laptops and cultured diamonds.

What sucks? Sores on your typing fingers, writer's block and sunburn.

Every once in a while, I toss out a few links for those of you who don't get around the web too much. Here's a few:

If you like reading what smart people have to say about engineering stuff, check out USS Clueless. This guy writes well and, being an engineer, knows how some stuff works. Usually there's lots to read and good stuff, too.

Pissed off at the Saudis yet? If no, check out littlegreenfootballs.com. This fellow keeps track of the oil ticks and kicks a little butt once in a while as well.

A fellow I know has a nice weekly column on his website called Click Me Hard, The Website. He just happens to be hosting another pal of mine's weekly deal called Dan Defrags the Universe. Go check'em out.

Thursday August 28, 2002

I have a new favorite bottle of wine. Marietta Old Vine Red Lot #9. Oh holy cow was that a good bottle. The Modern has it on its list. Go there. Drink it. Yum.

Speaking of the Modern, Tuesday is half-price wine night there. If you are a foodie or just like a good meal and good wine, head on over. It's located just east of the corner of 13th and University Ave NE over in Nordeast Minneapolis. The Modern is just one of the things we miss about Minneapolis.

What sucks?

Car repair bills. Cars that don't start. Impending strike dates.

What's cool?

Half price wine night. Station Wagons. Paying someone to clean your house.

Yesterday was very difficult. The Sable Wagon is in the shop. Normally, that would mean I drive the truck, but the truck had other plans. It wouldn't start and the throttle is stuck again. I'm getting tired of that. So now I'm going to be going to work on two wheels. Fine. It's nice out and I'm ready to go. Then I realized that on my home from my sister's place last night, one of the carbs had stuck WFO (Wide Flippin' Open) and that made it quite a handful to ride. Hoping for the best, I turned it on, punched the starter and the thing revved to the moon. I killed it and started the troubleshoot.

The bike in question has three carbs. It's also a two-stroke. It's an odd one. Anyhow, it's also very old and has older style slide valve carbs. Obviously, one of the slides was getting hung up and sticking open. I unscrewed the carb tops and found it was the center carb. Of course it's the one that's hardest to get to.

I started fiddling around with it and found, to my dismay, the pin that holds the slider in place an oriented correctly has worked its way back into the carb's body. I took a screwdriver and pushed it back in, stuck the slider back in and voila, fixed carb. Off I went to work.

Today I'll write a huuuuge check to our car guy and hopeful all the mechanical woes of our Station Wagon will be over.