I heart...

1. weekends in Okoboji
2. flair on facebook
3. playing kickball
4. garden tomatoes
5. air conditioning
6. the Olympics!!
7. when the Twins win
8. my houseguest
9. Strongbow cider
10. el dirtee cee

If only July lasted longer...

Here's a dining tip for you: Only 9 days left, but this is not to be missed.

When Hobbies and Hang-ups Collide

The good news is that I took a long lunch break today with several colleagues and we walked over to the Target Center for the noon tip-off of the Lynx game. The bad news is that a week-day noon tip-off means the promotions staff has to work double-time to turn out a crowd. (Even more than they usually do for sparsely attended WNBA games...) Today's gimmick apparently was "invite every kid at every day camp in the 7 county metropolitan area." I'm not even kidding -- I'd say 90% of the crowd was under age 12. It made for a good looking arena because there were a lot of people, and each pack of kids had matching brightly-colored shirts. Someone likened it to a gigantic bowl of Skittles.

But I have to tell you, as much as I love basketball (and that's a LOT) this game really tested my mettle. There were literally thousands of kids. Screaming. And not the exciting kind of loud stadium yelling that adults generate, but the horrible kind of loud kid screaming that's two octaves too high and really should only be audible to dogs. Please, take a moment to imagine, just imagine, a thousand 10 year old girls squealing at the very tip top of their lungs. Now imagine what happens when the #$@% jumbotron operator flashes "LOUDER!!" on the scoreboard. I'm pretty confident it's precisely what hell sounds like.

I spent the better part of the second half wondering if I was officially old. You see, on more than one occasion, I plugged my ears. Sat there at a sporting event with my fingers in my ears. Totally embarrassing, right? But I polled my colleagues and they unanimously agreed that today didn't count. It wasn't that it was too loud. It was too high-pitched! Whew, that was a close one.

Luckily, the game turned out to be a decent one. The Lynx lost, following their recent habit of getting down big in the 3rd quarter then mounting a furious comeback in the 4th but falling just short. But the overall quality of play was higher than I tend to expect in a WNBA game, and I love, love, LOVE watching Lynx rookie Candice Wiggins. I'm trying to find out how to make her my new BFF. My current plan is to intervene on her behalf to get them to stop playing "gettin' jiggy with it" every time she makes a good play while flashing "getting Wiggy with it" on the arena screens. I mean, she has to find that annoying, right? Also, Sue Bird is really fun to watch.

At any rate, I'd have to say watching hoops is a good way to spend your lunch break, even if it is with thousands of kids. And you might even get me to admit that the unbridled joy of those kids brought an occasional smile to my face too. Maybe.

UPDATE: I read in the paper this morning that the announced attendance was 12,276. Meaning there were probably TEN thousand screaming kids. And the official game designation was "Kids' Day." Lesson learned.

Believe it.

Recently, my friend Maureen started a new blog. This is important for two reasons. First, it necessitated me updating my blog so I could add a link to her blog (see right). Second, it made me fully realize a horrible blogging mistake I made.

See, I originally thought that if this blog had to be about something, I was in big trouble. It turned out that because it wasn't about anything, I was in big trouble. I rarely found inspiration. Maureen's blog has an awesome theme: she writes about new things she tries. Anything new counts. (Apparently not new things also count, so long as you make special note of their not-newness.) This seems to me to be a nearly endless supply of blogging inspiration.

So I talked it over with Maureen and Emily (she of my original blogging instruction) and we came up with the following plan. Starting now, my blog is about my hobbies. We further determined my hobbies are as follows:

- sports
- watching tv
- dining
- gardening
- traveling

Maureen's a little annoyed that watching tv is one of my hobbies. But too bad, because it's true.

Frequently I get to combine my hobbies. Like right now, I'm watching sports on tv (MLB All Star Game). It's also common for me to watch tv about dining and gardening via Food Network and HGTV. It now occurs to me that I never watch the travel channel though. Huh.

Anyway, I'm back. And now I have lots to write about. Stay tuned!

March Madness Haiku

Filling out brackets
A national holiday
Oh, you mean it's not?

Sounds Like Chicken

I was just sitting here having a perfectly pleasant morning watching Duke lose to NC State (right up until Duke won by one - ugh, H8 Duke), and for some reason started thinking about pop music from my college and early post-college days.

I brainstormed a list of late 80s/early to mid-90s bands that I listened to a lot: Toad the Wet Sprocket, Gin Blossoms, Matchbox 20, Goo Goo Dolls, Counting Crows, Hootie and the Blowfish, Better than Ezra, Spin Doctors, Crash Test Dummies.

So now it occurs to me, these are basically all the exact same band. I sort of have to remove Toad, because they are one of my favorite bands ever and it doesn't seem right to disparage them by lumping them in the with others... and Matchbox has had some staying power... but the others. Eeesh.

Don't get me wrong, I still like hearing some of the classic hits from these bands because like music always does, they take me back to specific memories that are primarily of the good variety. But we really aren't talking classics here. Sure, there are some arguments to be had: which is the better song - Hey Jealousy or Mr. Jones? Push or Name? Only Wanna Be with You or Two Princes?

Um, you could similarly argue which of the previous comparisons is the worst song. Or band. Seriously, in retrospect, did Crash Test Dummies have any redeeming artistic value?

Which brings me back to my original point -- most of these bands are essentially the same band. Thank goodness my music collection at the time also included Nirvana, Live, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, REM, Pearl Jam, U2, the Indigo Girls, and Madonna. C'mon, you can't argue with Madonna.

So go search your itunes or do some web surfing and weigh in, what are your nominations for best and worst 90s bands?

Hippity-Hoppity

I was thrilled to discover that the Easter candy season is upon us when I went to the grocery store this weekend. Well sort of. I'm actually quite well known for my hatred of Peeps, so I wasn't so thrilled to see those. One time, I sort of yelled, "I HATE those damn Peeps" when I saw them in a Target in Ames, Iowa. An over-reaction, perhaps, but from that quote was born quite a Peep tradition in my life. Or anti-peep tradition. My extended family passes around a gag-gift of a package of peeps to one family member each Christmas. The recipient has to keep the Peeps and pass them on next year, with a poem explaining what Peep-worthy thing the new recipient has done. That same pack of Peeps has been circulating through my family since, oh, about 2000 I think. The Peeps appear to be pretty much in the same condition as they were 8 years ago. We even have a Peep family journal/photo album (titled "I hate those damn Peeps") to document the Peep's travel.

Another friend signed me up for the Peeps On-line Fan Club. I have to admit that was a pretty good one -- I laughed out loud when I got my welcome email.

But I digress, because this post is not about Easter candy I hate, but rather Easter candy that I L-O-V-E. In my opinion, dark chocoate is the only way to go, and there are two candies not to be missed this time of year.



I've already filled my office candy dish with a bag of these. I expect the whole bag to last about 2 days. Maybe a day and a half. Especially since my boss discovered them today. He had to take one of each color, just to verify that the color of the candy coating didn't affect the flavor. Naturally, I thanked him for this important research.



I've got a bag of these Dove dark chocolate eggs waiting in reserve when the Cadbury batch runs out. I regularly stock the Dove "promises" dark squares in my candy dish. The egg shape is a great seasonal diversion.

In short, Peeps=bad, dark chocolate eggs=AWESOME. I, for one, will be thoroughly enjoying the next month of Easter eggs of the non-poultry variety.

UPDATE: For no obvious reason, my brother and his wife just brought us a package of milk chocolate Cadbury mini eggs. They are also outstanding.