The Daily Diversion Archive

Monday June 3, 2002

Happy birthday to Jane and Claus!

It was a productive weekend. Well, at least Saturday was. Sunday was spent trying to get some stuff done in the office. I was mostly successful, but it's bad when you look up and it's 6PM when it should only be 3. Drag.

We went to one of my favorite bars for dinner last night and I became aware of how much TV I don't watch any more. Not only did it seem way too loud, but it was just overwhelming. It was the basketball game that was on last night and it just dominated everything my wife and I were trying to say. We ended up filing the evening away under good food and a cross-cultural experience. Since we don't watch much TV, it was almost like observing a different culture.

By the way, people with money must watch pro basketball. There were tons of commercials on for investment services and such. Also, American Express says that if you can't spend time with your kids, you can buy them off with trips to Disneyland. That was the gist of one of their commercials. Dad was calling home to say that he really needed to make this meeting and that he wouldn't be able to catch Junior's recital or something. After hanging up on his family, he turned around and booked a trip to Disneyland with his AMEX card. Moral: You CAN use money to assuage your guilty conscience--and the kind folks at AMEX can help!

What a bunch of shit.

To the person who sent me an ignition system for my old Gold Wing, let me know your email address again. I seemed to have lost it. I figure it's inside one of my dead laptops. Nuts. By the way, the ignition system works just fine, so a million thanks to you.

Wednesday June 5, 2002

I gotta find a good way home. My commute in the morning is a breeze. I'm doing more than the legal limit from the time I leave my house to the time I hit downtown Minneapolis. Sometimes there's a slowdown around HWY280 or at the river bridge, but most days are smooth sailing. It's pretty cool.

The afternoon is another story entirely. From getting out of my parking lot, to the always backed up intersection of 4th and Marquette to crossing the pinch point at Portland and 5th to the huge bottleneck on I-94 at the 6th St. on ramp to the inevitable slowdown at the river and at the Ontario St. curve to the occasional slowdown at Cretin-Vandalia to the frickin' enormous backup coming into downtown St. Paul that usually starts just after Lexington to the mess that is Spaghetti Junction to the unexplainable slowdown on the hill coming up Dayton's Bluff it easily takes twice as long to get home as it does to get to work.

I've decided that if I'm not on my motorcycle, I'm going to have to car pool. I hate waiting in traffic jams, so if I can turn that time into productive time, I win both coming and going to work. I'll start looking into my options this fall. I've also decided that if it's going to take a half-hour or more to get home, it might as well enjoy it.

You won't find me on the freeway on my motorcycle in the afternoon anymore. I either take 3rd street out of downtown to the Northeast, take a right on 2nd Street just over the bridge and take that all the way into Dinkytown. From there I get over to Rollins and take the Rollins/Kasota/Energy Park Drive all the way to Snelling Ave. From there I jump over to Pierce Butler Route and take that to its end at Minnehaha. I take Minnehaha to Como and hook up with Pennsylvania Ave. I get off on Jackson St. and follow that North to the secret street under I-35E (Cayuga) and then weave through the back streets of the Upper East Side until I find myself back in my driveway. It takes nearly the same amount of time and I find myself waiting for stop signs and stoplights. Not stopped traffic. I have a much easier time of it frustration-wise to be stopped for a reason. A red light or a stop sign is far easier for me to take than traffic stopped on a road that in a couple of hours people will be doing 65mph on again. I understand road capacities, but being stopped on the expressway drives me nuts. The Least Self-Loathing Option is to make my commute easier on me. Therefore, I'm taking the back roads.

In case I didn't mention it before, there's new tunes over on the right column. Click on "Tunes" to get to the menu page. I'm sorry for all the bouncy stuff. I'm assembling tunes presently for next month's cock-rock bonanza. Stay tuned.

Thursday June 6, 2002

I went for a ride last night. I had just finished fixing the turn signals on my old Suzuki and I decided to take it out for a long ride. In my travels, I swung by my pal Pete's place, but he wasn't home. I then swung by our old house just to see it again. I hadn't seen it since we left it for the last time on December 20. It was good to see it again, but I didn't linger. That would have been spooky. The fella that bought the place from us hasn't done anything major to the outside of the place. The lawn, the plants and the fence all look exactly the same.

It was a bittersweet reminder of why we left, though. As I passed the old place, ahead of me in the intersection were no less than 20 kids just hanging out. My bike is pretty loud what with the crossover pipes not sealed, but I could still hear them from about 200' away. Amazing. Loud. Not an adult in site and the average age of these kids was probably 10 years old. It was also around 9PM. So nothing has changed.

The exodus from Fremont Avenue N is continuing as well. In the two blocks I drove it, there were 5 houses for sale. I didn't see any on our block or the surrounding blocks, so it's nice to see that people aren't leaving in droves. That wouldn't be nice. Driving around the area, I was reminded of the reasons why we left.

I was kinda lonesome for the old place, but I just can't deal with the area.

The bike performed very nicely all evening. It's becoming rather pleasant to ride. Sure there's a list of things I'd like to do to it so it can become as much like an appliance as possible, but as for now, it's a fun ride.

Monday June 10, 2002

Well I did go to First Thursday last week and it was fun. The one problem was that although the day was a bright and sunny one, a slow-moving thunderstorm pretty much brought the evening to a close. As I was riding out to my buddy Paul's place, I saw this enormous massing of clouds in the western sky. Bummer. We went anyway because all I would get was wet from the rain. It turned out to be a pretty fun time. I saw a bunch of cool bikes, caught up with my old friend Liz, and pretty much just walked around for a while. Paul and I left when we heard thunder and saw some lightning.

I decided to take the southern route home and it was a mistake. It seemed the clouds extended themselves over me as I beat hell down I-35W to the Crosstown. As I was haulin' past the airport, I started getting hit by raindrops the size of quarters. They were thankfully infrequent, but they signaled that bad things were about to happen.

I crossed the river and took Shephard Road back to my side of town. Going through downtown, I hit a small shower--just enough to dampen my clothes. Nothing huge. The bike was not bothered by it, so I just continued through. I did eventually make it home without getting too wet. My wife and I sat down on the porch to watch the thunderstorm that I thought would be right behind me roll through.

Wrong.

We sat up watching the sky boil and hearing the nearly incessant rumblings from the west, but after an hour and a half passed, it was totally dark outside and STILL not raining. We went to bed.

It did eventually rain, but I'm sure it was long after we retired.

Silly weather.

Saturday found us out of the cities at a dog show out in Waconia. It's strange to see people who are following a way of life, not just a hobby. These people know their dogs backwards and forth. They have a far different approach to dog ownership than I do. They live a life totally devoted to their dogs. I know a few people like this. The ones I know are really into horses. They seem to be people cut from the same cloth.

Actually, it was comforting to see someone even farther off the deep end over their avocation than I am about mine. It made me feel normal.

After the dog show, our friends John and Yumi had us over for an excellent barbecue. On the way home, we spotted what could be our next car. Someone had a decent Sable stawag by the side of the road. It was not ancient, and they wanted around a grand for it. That's our price, our year and the car passed muster visually without any reservations at all. If it hasn't sold by tomorrow evening, we're going to go out and have a look.

On Sunday, we went to Rochester to go to my cousins' graduation parties. Way to go, Brian and Erin!