Weekend Update

It was a pretty good weekend for me. Had a big ass bonfire and few Old Mil's Friday night, two hours of wiffle ball on Saturday afternoon, then a hawaiian party in New Richmond Saturday night. Sunday was a world class walleye fish fry. Here are a few shots from the weekend. Please pardon the lack of my generally sarcastic statements/innuendos. I'm swamped today and wanted to get a post up today.


Fried walleye lunch, the labor.


Fried walleye lunch, the outcome.


The Walla Walla onions from the garden. They're as big as softballs now.


Tomato's are pretty damn close to being done... I still can't believe how big these bitches got this year.


Sunset looking west out of Roberts / New Richmond on Saturday night at the hawaiian party.

I'll come up with something better later as time permits. For now, F the vikes. And buy this shirt or this shirt.

Various cool shit on my phone

Creativity? Nope.
Overdue for a post? Yep
Time on my hands? Double Yep.


Got home today and Dupa had picked up this. Nectar of the Gods. Never tried the Peach, but turns out it's pretty damn good.


Huge peppers from the garden. 8" long, easy.


Each of those delightful little specks is a tomato. I've never seen plants this vined and big. The top of the middle plant is nearly 6'.


The only French word I like is "rotisserie". This is a salt cured spiral ham on a charcoal grill powered-rotisserie, amazing.


Minneapolis on a beautiful day. I know, hard to recognize without the gang fights, vagabonds, heathens, drunks drunk on listerene, theives, petty crooks, crooked cops, vikings, labor law violations, parking restrictions, $.25 "charge" for using a credit card, veterans who play pretend on washington & broadway who are homeless", skyway jackoff kings, people who go to The Drink in downtown, pan handlers and drug peddlers. On rare days like this, I actually forget I'm in Minnesota.


Venison bacon, farmers market eggs, whole wheat toast. 08/20/09.


Laser cat


Graffiti artist antagonism. This guy painted two huge (6'x4 1/2') tags on a warehouse alley where we would park our cars at the old office. I got to work a couple days later and saw two women scrubbing like hell to get both of the tags off the building. Six days later, a Wednesday morning may I add, I arrive to park to find this wise ass reply by the artist. I had a minor LOL on the walk into the building.

Random Thought Volume 2

I had a car in college from my sophomore year through my senior year. But from about mid-junior year until the end of my (1st) senior year, I drove the car all of 200 yards (from parking spot at house #1 on Chippewa to parking spot at house #2 on Chippewa). I was relentless about not driving, too. I had my friends cart me all over the place, I would shop at the expensive grocery store on Water St near my place, I stole a couple bikes. When we (me + 15 of my closest collegiate friends) went to Panama City Beach for Spring Break, I drove from about Dothan, AL to Birmingham (translation: not far). I do believe this is the only period in my life, barring injury, where I will ever go that long without operating a car again.

In any event, I'm rambling. Here's the meat of this post. My car looked like this... the predecessor to today's modern cars w/ 90 degree angles. I present, the Dynasty.



Look at this sexy thing. It was like driving a huge ass sofa with wheels (and a V6). Perfect for sneaking booze/friends into drive in movies, burnouts in the IGA parking lot, and intimidating parking poses in Hick Row at West.

A picture's worth a thousand words...

Or in this case, an entirely new car. I wish I could've taken a picture of the cycle. I think this was the only known motorcycle vs. car crash in which case the car incurred substantially more damage than the bike.

That said, this guy was a fucking idiot.

I took these pictures Saturday when I was dropping off a thank-you package of wine and Bud Light to the homeowners who've let my wreck sleep in their front yard the last two weeks. I also grabbed the plates (glad I remembered them).


Skid marks from the impact site. He hit me at an estimated 40 mph, front wheel up in the air.




Note the tire tread on the bumper.



Final injury update on the motorcycle driver: Broke his back in three places, (had to get six discs fused), broken wrist, shattered forearm. These are the only things I know that happened. He was in various hospitals for over a week, finally ending up at the Mayo Clinic on Rochester the last I heard. He would've been dead had he not had his helmet on, guaranteed.

Somebody loves that Hennessy.

Found this little empty gem on my walk into the office in a parking lot three blocks away.

Great Taste of the Midwest

Here are a few pictures from my weekend at The Great Taste of the Midwest. The festival is the second longest running beer festival in North America, running for 23 consecutive years. It featured over 100 different breweries, microbrews, and brewpubs, with a total of over 500 different beers from the Midwest.


A license plate outside the Bell's Brewery preparty Friday night at Maduro downtown Madison. This place was amazing, with 14 Bell's beer's on tap for $4/pint ($4/10oz pour for Hopslam).


This doesn't really do justice to the amount of people who were at the gates, waiting to get in. There were literally a couple thousand people in line at about 12:45 when we arrived, and we had our first beer at around 1:25. Pretty impressive.



A view of downtown from on top of a hill at Olin Park.


The Ricola dudes. Unfortunately volume is not proportionate to size w/ those horns. Thats what she said?



Props to Red Eye, the only brewer representing Wausau (not including the Great Dane offerings)


Our tasting mugs held approximately four fluid ounces.


Brooklyn Park's very own Surly had quite a buzz about their attending the festival (pun not intended, but noticed). They had their "Brett Farve" offering at 4pm... but some wisenheimer added their own flair to the name. I like their obviously Minnesotan spelling of Favre. Rednecks.


A random traveling marching band. Not sure if this was planned or not. They had a nice beat, and you could dance to it.


Bell's had a M*A*S*H theme to their tent, and in a throw-back to old wars, had hung women's underwear around the top of their tent's. At around closing time, this chick grabbed a pair of the underpants, hiked 'em up to her boobs, and tried to dirty them all up in the mud. In this picture, she's doing a pretty good job of dirtying herself. She's enjoying some assistance from nearby dudes who gladly would pour their beer on a drunk chick.

All it takes is Ortega?

Another vehicle-related post!

Today was a bad day, all around.

Making no progress with the car...
Forgot my lunch at home...
Still can't read human facial cue's...

To boot, I was driving to Prescott to pick up the police report when I got a call saying that the office couldn't be opened, and that I had to come back during regular business hours. This would've been fine, had I not made it to fucking Bloomington already.

In any event, I'm a pretty reasonable guy. But each month I afford myself one asshole move of the month. Well, August's got used up pretty quickly, because it was gone at about 1215 CDT today.

I was leaving Taco Bell on Broadway in Minneapolis. Most of you know where that is and what a headache it is to navigate in to and out of, but for those who don't, just picture a cluster fuck.

I was turning right out of the lot, and inadvertently cut in front of a biker (crossing a busy street on a red). I always thought of bikes as equals to cars while sharing the road, but apparently this guy was of a different opinion. With my windows down, he said "Hey man, fuck you, watch out!". I thought, sure, I probably should've been a bit more patient with this guy, and let it slide.

The same guy pulls up to me about 4 blocks down the road and is still talking shit. Wrong move.

In an act of behavior that will almost certainly send me to hell, I took the extra change that I had in my pocket ($.38) and threw it at the guy. I said "Go buy a car, you fucking ******" to the guy, who obviously didn't have/couldn't legally acquire a license. I spent the next couple hours at work hoping that this guy didn't randomly cruise down alley's in the warehouse district, because then I'd likely have two auto claims in 6 days (and one incredibly pissed off fiancee).

In a string of bad luck, this jobber caught me at the wrong time. I mean seriously... who can do anything with $.38?

Profound?

Graffiti outside my office.

An attempt at being profound? Perhaps.

Some hipster got ahold of some chalk and Wikipedia? More likely.

How was your weekend?

The ever popular Monday morning question "How was your weekend" is really a staple when coming back into the office for a long week of work. Some Monday's have better weekend adventures than others, but you always get a good feeling knowing your compadre's had a stellar time not working on their two days of freedom from the Man. A brief poll around where I work shows that there was same real variance to what everyone did, but all in all, it was pretty relaxing. Here are a few things that were done by various coworkers over their weekend.

-Twitter'd for the first time
-Went on a bike ride by the lake
-Visited family
-Slept in late
-Saw a celebrity
-Purchased some new shoes
-Caught a local softball game
-Had a date (successful closing)
-Had a date (unsucessful closing)
-Made a new dish at home
-Shot a 49 golfing with a buddy
-Shot a 49 golfing with a buddy, then was plowed into by a guy on a motorcycle leaving a bar, doing wheelies on a Ducati, at about 40 mph.

I was lucky enough to meet a guy named Dean on Saturday. Dean has (had?) a fancy Italian motorcycle. He's probably read this website and been real anxious to get to meet me face to face, because Dean introduced himself to yours truly by slamming into the back of my Nissan Altima at about 40 mph while doing a wheelie (the second one in a series).

After I got over the initial "What the fuck is going on" stage, I looked over at my new friend Dean, who had quickly become a hot mess in the middle of the road. Poor guy had ruined his new bike, had multiple broken bones, and was lucky enough to get a ride in an ambulance.

I walked into the bar where my newly-turned jalopy was parked to clean up the mess in my pants, and was promptly offered a shot and a beer by the old guy behind the bar. While I appreciated the offer, I didn't think giving a police statement after ripping some Jim and downing it with Milwaukee's Best is the smartest way to swing the pendulum of luck in your favor. We gave our statement at the scene, and hauled my car to my friend's house. (Closed circuit to the Krauses'... sorry about the new lawn ornament, I'll get it out of your front yard as soon as I can)

So I got to my friends house and started making the obligatory calls. Parents.. Insurance.. Police.. I cleared out the shit in my car, and proceeded with my evening. I'm lucky enough to drive my fiancee's sister's car (1995 Dodge Neon - SPORT COUPE), but there's a hole in the coolant reservoir. So, I can drive it about 10 minutes before I have to crank the fans and get the cockpit hot as hell to cool off the engine block. I'll have a good idea of what to expect next week. I'll get some pictures up as soon as I can.

BTW... Dean's name has been changed, but he may or may not have looked like this at one point in his life: