Just Plain Chips

I hope to get a couple slightly more detailed posts up about the weekend, it was a fun one. I thought I’d try to get this one up right away. The second party of my Saturday night was Linzy’s graduation party. As are all parties at the Eck house, it was very fun. The main activity of the evening this time didn’t revolved around a drinking game though. It was a video game called Guitar Hero. Basically instead of a normal controller you have a guitar in your hands. You strum in time with the music while pressing the correct button on the fret board. It by no means represents anything close to real guitar playing, but it is the best air guitar simulator ever invented. And if you’re like me, it’s easy to get into it. There were some great songs to play, the controls were intuitive, and you basically transformed into a total rock star.

I took a few pictures from the night. But they were all pretty crappy. And the couple that were passable wouldn’t add anything to the pictures I’m going to send you to. Steve was kind enough to send me a couple pictures of me playing.

The first is of me playing Felicia. Early in the evening I won a battle against her and got a little cocky. And then a little later she rolled off about 7 wins in a row in which I believe I lost twice. It was an impressive streak to be sure.

And now, if you enjoy seeing Brenden embarrassing himself a bit (which people seem to enjoy on a regular basis for some reason) you’ll really like this picture. Remember how I said you can really get into the game. This next picture is proof. I wasn’t Brenden Johnson: mild-mannered cabinet maker anymore. I was Brenden Johnson: Legend of Rock and Roll. As Steve says, you really don’t get the full effect of the insaneness if you can’t see my face. So click on the picture for a closer look.

That picture is the first in a series of 5 taken while Tony and I battled. You should go look at the rest and other pictures from the night at Steve’s post here. The pictures are a bigger size over there as well, so they’ll give you an even better look at the action.

Anyway, it was a really fun night.

So straight from my visit to the hospital in Burnsville, I headed west on 42 towards scenic Savage. A contractor that I work with was holding a Christmas party at his house. I stopped in and knew just under two people there. Call it one-and-a-half. I knew the contractor, of course, and I had met one of his workers a couple of times on a job site. Basically it was a nightmare situation for this introvert.

Unfortunately the host knew everyone at the party and he had many other much more important people (paying customers instead of a cabinet maker) to talk to. Alas. I did talk to the worker I knew for a bit until his father showed up and took him away for a chat. I wandered around the house with a Samuel Adams in my hand, admiring pictures and other knick-knacks on the walls. I also ate a few crackers. There was tons of tasty food but no one was eating anything. I’m not usually shy about being the first to eat but I didn’t feel like being the loner wandering around the party with a turkey croissant sandwich and meatballs. I was the weird loner with just a beer in his hand.

After wandering and looking at everything on the walls twice the worker introduced me to his dad and I had a nice chat with him for a little while. Before long though, he took his leave and I was left to wander again. This time I went for the food table and had a couple of tasty sandwiches and a bunch of meatballs. Mmmm.

After wandering around for a while with a plate of food and a beer a coworker of mine showed up with his wife. Hooray! Someone I knew. I chatted with them for a little while before I had to leave for my second party of the night.

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Saturday was quite the day for me. It started out like many other Saturdays of mine: lazy. I slowly got up and got ready for the day. I think I was finally ready about 12:30 or so, after a big bowl of ice cream. My accomplishment for the “day” part of the day was getting my car’s oil changed.

Later in the afternoon I went to visit Paul, Laura, and Evan. My parents were there when I arrived and we all doted over the little man and talked to his mom and dad. Just last May I had visited a zero day old baby for the first time ever. So here I am 7 months later and I get to meet my second newborn. Though this time I got to hold the baby! I was a little nervous, but I have a lot more practice holding babies since Elaina was born. He was such a good little guy and slept and was quiet pretty much the entire time I was there. He hardly made a peep right up until he realized he had soiled his diaper, which is the crying “on” switch. He bawled until the moment his dad sealed the straps on his new, clean diaper. Like a switch. But hey, who likes wearing a dirty diaper? I am pretty sure I wouldn’t.

I stayed for probably way too long until another friend of their’s showed up and I had to leave for my first party of the evening.

Thanksgiving weekend was great. I really didn’t do that much. I ate a lot of food. I talked to relatives and friends. I sat around and watched football. And I sat around and played video games. I’m sure there are a few other things, but not much.

My parents had a big dinner at their house this year. The first Thanksgiving in the new place. We had 22 people there. People from my dad’s side. People from my mom’s side. And friends of the family.

Following are a few pictures from Thanksgiving Day.

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On Saturday, Steve, Linzy, and I went to the Gophs vs. Ohio State game, thanks to Chey and her free tickets.

The Gophs were coming off of a bye week after a heartbreaking loss to the hated Badgers and this week were playing what should be a much mightier foe in Ohio State. The first ominous sign was that Ohio State had fans like this guy, Captain Ohio.

How can you compete against a team with freaks like that for fans. I think this guy was in his 50s or 60s. I would love to be travelling around the country watching the U play football games late into my life, but I don’t know if I’ll be dressing like that.

We got there early enough to see the pregame show. My favorite part is right before the team comes out. The band plays “Pageant Fanfare” and marches into place to form the block M. They then play the Minnesota Rouser and rotate and march down the field while in the M.

The game was fun even though the Gophers got beat 45-31. Aside from a few plays they stuck with the Buckeyes pretty well.

One the train ride back to the Mall of America I struck up a conversation with a cute young girl. She was dressed up as Miss Minnesota. The problem is that I don’t know if she was really Miss Minnesota or just dressed up for Halloween. There are factors that point either way that I may go into in another post, but I really don’t know. Oh well. It’s not every day I talk to a stranger out of the blue (I’m very shy), let alone a pretty girl (girls make me nervous) so that was an accomplishment.

That night I went to a party at my friend Gerard’s new apartment. It was a grand old time. There was just as much drinking as any normal party with this group of friends. But this time I decided to try something new and not drink too much. I ignored the slights to my manhood regarding my choices of drinks and quantity of quaffing and just drank as much as I felt I needed.

Pictures to follow.
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Alright, I’ve just got a few random things to get out of my mind.

A couple of nice things about watching the Vikings yesterday was that I was hanging out with a couple of friends while watching and they had the game in HD. Of course, being in HD just made all the suckitude that much more crisp and clear. Kind of like being able to watch someone vomit in smell-o-vision, there was just that extra bit to make it hurt a little more.

At one point Chris and I were discussing how nearly 100% of announcers are either idiots or are plain annoying or both. Not 10 minutes after that, the color guy for the Vikings game started talking about how poor the Vikings were playing and how they just didn’t even seem like the Vikings. They were the “Diet Vikings”. All of us had a hearly laugh at that. And we had to partially rescind our comment about all announcers being bad. Of course later in the game this same announcer coughed straight into his live microphone right as the game was coming back from a commercial. That was the second most entertaining moment of the game for a Vikings fan though.

So I went to lunch at Subway today and I went there at maybe 12:15 or 12:20 with the idea to get there after the initial rush. Mistake I got there 10 seconds before the height of the line length. Oh well. The most exciting moment of waiting in line was when my friend Allison from Texas walked in the front door. I was taken aback for a moment until I realized that Allison had not taken a supersonic flight up from Austin after emailing me this morning and that this was in fact a different girl who had similarities in her profile.

Anyway, that’s about it. Ciao.

I had some problems with the full size pictures not loading earlier, they should be fine now.

Thanks to Steve and Linzy for taking pictures and graciously sending them to me for me to post.

Saturday night was a little more active than Sunday. I headed to Matt and Jenny’s house and we headed over to Steve and Linzy’s together. Already there was Dan, and of course Steve and Linzy. We chilled out for a while. Just talking and discussing how old I was.

Chillin’ before grillin’. From the left it is Dan, myself, Jenny, and Matt.

An empty glass of Southern and Coke is not a good sign.

After a while Steve threw some burgers on the grill and before to long we were chowing down. (I’m getting hungry thinking about it) After dinner we decided to play a game. Steve brought out a few, including one that was still in the shrink wrap called Apples to Apples. A friend of mine had just played it and told me it was fun, so the choice was easy. It turned out to be quite a fun game, if I do say so myself. Though maybe I enjoyed it so much because of the Southern Comfort and Coke I had been sipping since arriving. Jenny ended up winning and I took second, so that wasn’t too bad. After the game we headed to the bowling alley.

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What a slow weekend. I did way too little. But it was relaxing.

I watched a couple of movies I had already seen on Friday night and enjoyed them again. Then on Saturday I settled in to watch some college football. During the half time of the Bowling Green/Wisconsin game I ran out to do some errands. From the moment I left the driveway it started raining and didn’t stop for most of the rest of the day. I felt that vindicated my desire to watch football.

Then yesterday I did some reading. I finished Ringworld and started the latest Harry Potter. Last night I went to see “The Constant Gardener” with Chey. It was quite good, if slightly depressing. The only problem was that I whined about going all the way across town to the theater she usually goes to. So we met at the Southdale theater, which was completely packed. I got there uncharacteristically late and we sat way in front and to the side. It wasn’t like we couldn’t watch the movie in relative comfort, it just wasn’t idea.

Then today I met my friend Kari and her husband Steve (who were in town from Madison) for lunch. First they were out at the house and showed us pictures from the crazy 6 week trip around the world they took this summer. We went to lunch at Pizzaria Unos. It was quite good. Then after I went swimming over at Matt’s, it was a perfect day for that.

Now I’m just chilling out. Hazzah!

I had a great dinner with my friend Erin last night. We met on campus at the U and ate at the Manhattan Loft. A new joint that was pretty tasty. I had gyros and fries, she had spaghetti. We wanted to see each other one last time before she left the country today. She’s flying to London this afternoon and will be mainly in the UK and a little bit in other parts of Europe for the next 8 months. Her plan as of now is to work in the south of England for a bit. Then head up to Edinburgh, Scotland and then maybe to the Highlands. And after that she has a connection in Nendaz, Switzerland that she might take advantage of during the winter. I’m very excited for her and jealous of her.

We sat at our table just talking for a couple of hours. It is great to have friends like her that really just “get” you. She’s one of those people that I had a great connection with right away. We never dated or anything, but we’ve been pretty good friends and really gotten along probably from the third time we met forward (the first two times we met were very short encounters). She’s always excited to see me and I’m always excited to see her which I think is the way it should be when two friends get together. She’s happy when good things are happening to me and bummed when not-so-good things are happening to me. And she can sometimes tell when either is happening, even when I don’t come right out and say it.

Anyway, we had a great time sitting down and chatting through our respective situations and everything that’s going on in our lives. There are things that make us each nervous about what’s going on with ourselves, but we’re both excited for the other. I think that works out pretty well.

I’ll try to gloss over the less interesting parts of my weekend instead of going in to so much detail like I normally do. One bummer is that I took no pictures. Am I not an idiot? I’m so mad at myself.

I left work on Thursday and headed west. I made it to a rest stop on this side of Bismarck and slept there for the night. I woke up for good at about 5:30 and started off again. I made it to a rest stop at the entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and took a nap for an hour and then headed out again. I reached Bozeman about 2:30 and headed to Eric’s house. No one was there and the door was locked. What to do? Hmmm, I’ll head to Emily’s house to see if she’s around. I went over and luckily she was there and I hung out with her for a while. Even better she invited me to stay in a spare room she had, with a matress! I figured that would be more comfortable and convenient than staying on a futon at Eric’s place in the middle of him moving. Emily and I hung out for a bit that afternoon and then we headed over to the groom’s parent’s house for the rehearsal dinner. I saw a few old friends and met lots of family members. The food was really tasty and it was a beautiful night to have an outdoor dinner.

On Saturday morning I headed over to Eric’s place to help him do a bit of moving. I helped him move up to Missoula from Bozeman two years ago. I helped him move back down to Bozeman about a year ago. And I just happened to be in town when he is moving from a rental to a house he bought across town. I kid of course, I was happy to help him out with some of his heavier things. But it was quite a coincidence.

After helping him move I headed over to the M and went for a little hike. I went up the “vigorous” way and came down the “popular” way. It was just perfect out and the sun and the little breeze felt great. I think there was one cloud in the sky, way off to the west, and it was pretty small.

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I’ve had a few good days in a row here.

Last night I had two choices as to what I could do. The first choice involved heading to Lakeville with my bike to go on a long ride with Steve and a friend that would have been fun, refreshing, good for my fitness, but left me very sore for my 14 hour drive to Montana tomorrow. My second choice involved going out to dinner with two hot ladies.

Sorry Steve.

So I met my friend Erin at Espresso Royale in Dinkytown on campus at the U. We’ve managed to see each other maybe a couple times a year since we graduated from college. Though it’s been difficult as I’ve been in Bozeman and she’s been all over the place. We chatted for a bit while waiting for Chey to get there from St. Paul. She eventually showed up and we headed over to a Chinese restuarant called Shuang Cheng. I had never been there before. We ordered cream cheese wontons, sesame chicken, and a noodle dish with beef and vegetables and shared them between us. The wontons and chicken were excellent, while the noodles and beef were a little disappointing. But there was plenty of food and we were all full and satisfied after eating.

After dinner we all went on a walk through a bit of campus. We headed to Northrup Mall and then through the recently renovated Coffman Union,down to the Mississippi River, and then back to Dinkytown. A very nice night indeed.

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Phew!

This is the quick overview, because I’m too tired to write too much. Of course this could mean I won’t have the time/energy to fully write everything up. But them’s the breaks.

On Friday night a bunch of people from work went to the Twins game. The Twinkies beat the Red Sox 12-0. After the game, my parents, Chey, and I went out to Nochee (a very stylish bar–not my parents’ style) for a quick drink.

On Saturday was a family friend’s wedding. My godparents’ middle child, Seth, was getting married. The ceremony was nice and the dinner and reception was nice as well. I invited Chey to come and crash the dance, which she did. So she got to meet the whole family all at once, even Brian, who was in from LA. Here are a couple facts:

1. It was an open bar.
2. Chey doesn’t drink.
3. My family has been known to tip a few back.

So, she got to meet everyone at their most fun and outgoing best. It wasn’t too bad until Matt had had one too many and we had to take care of him a bit and take him home. So the night was cut a bit short. I was the only one in driving shape so I drove everyone back home. Brian and I ended up staying out at Matt and Jenny’s place.

On Sunday most of us took our time getting up. Though Jenny couldn’t because Elaina and Luke weren’t going to wait for anyone. So I got up and helped her with the kids. After a while we all got ready and headed out to the Nelson’s on Lake Minnetonka for brunch. Famous Dave’s catered the brunch and it was super tasty. I had a pulled pork sandwich and a bunch of ribs and a corn muffin. Mmmm, mmmm.

After a while my dad and I left the party. He was pretty tired and Chey was going to call me to go out and meet her for a party/picnic with her family. She called after a while and I headed up to the northwestern suburbs to meet her. We met and headed off in my vehicle (which that night happened to be my dad’s car) as her car doesn’t have AC and we were getting an ice cream cake and it would be easier to just drive together. We drove out to some big lake/park out by Orono and Maple Plain I can’t remember the name of. I got to meet the parents, and about 8 aunts and uncles, and lots of cousins. They were a pretty fun bunch and we all had a pretty good time. After that we drove to one of the uncle’s houses and hung out there for a while. After that I drove her back to to her car and we both headed for home.

I think that’s about it. Lots of food and lots of family. That’s a recipe for a great weekend as far as I’m concerned.

So my dad and I went to the Air Expo on Sunday, didn’t we?

It was pretty fun. I didn’t enjoy it as much as my dad did I think, but that would have been hard to do. He loves airplanes and he loves WWII history.

A few of the highlights, let’s see.

The coolest person, to me, that we saw one of my uncle’s father, Ed Dunn. He was a B-26 pilot in WWII. He was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, which is the second highest military decoration in the US Army (behind the Medal of Honor) and is awarded for “extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force”. He was piloting his B-26 (over Europe I think) when his plane was hit with major flak and took serious damage. His crew of four was immediately decimated. Two crewmembers were killed and the remaining two were injured. He considered bailing out of the crippled plane but decided the only way he and his crew were going to get back with any chance was to fly home. He took the plane back to base with his tail being held on basically by the skin of the plane and performed a crash belly landing at the base because the landing gear was jammed and he couldn’t get them down. I’ve known Ed since I was a kid and I had never heard this story, it was so amazing.

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A pretty slow day here in the world of just plain chips. Work has been a little busy, lots of cabinets being delivered to the finisher. I just ordered some speaker grill cloth, that was exciting.

Last night was one full of accomplishments and encounters. I headed out from work towards Burnsville to go buy some speaker cloth, but the guy had closed up shop. Luckily the address (which was still given on the message when you called his phone number) was occupied by someone who knew the guy and he was able to tell me I was out of luck.

I then headed to Apple Valley, to Matt and Jenny’s house, to do some computer maintanance. They had a corrupted registry file that didn’t allow the computer to boot. The solution to this problem is documented here. Unfortunately there was one little snag, whenever I tried to start the recovery console, the computer would reboot again. This was a problem I had never seen before and it wasn’t a good sign. Luckily the solution was not much more difficult, it just took a bit more time. I installed a separate copy of Windows on the box and booted into that, then I was able to copy and delete the files that I needed in the original copy of Windows. Anyway, as payment I was given a delicious dinner of steak, cous cous with green peppers and onions, broccoli, and salad. Jenn’s dad stopped by as well, so it was nice to see him. The kids were hilarious and playful. Elaina was smiling and cooing and Luke had all sorts of stuff he wanted to show me and do with me.

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So the family went to Luke’s program last night. Before hand we had a dinner off of the grill at Matt’s house. A burger and hotdog for dinner is never a bad thing.

So we headed to the church and saw where Luke’s class had been and then we all filed into the sanctuary. Holy cow! There were hundreds of people there. I then remembered Jenny saying something about “a hundred kids or so” but it wasn’t until I had walked in when it hit me. We found a spot and after a couple of announcements they started calling the kids up to the front. First the 1st through 5th graders went up on the risers. There were tons of them up there. For some reason I had been expecting some little thing. I suppose it was because since this wasn’t my old church, which was gigantor, I figured it must be tiny and there would be no kids there. I was wrong. It turns out that even a “normal” sized church can be pretty big and have lots of families.

So then they called up the kindergarten and pre-kindergarten kids to stand in front. Which left all the youngest kids to stay in their seats for a while. Which is where Luke stayed.

Here is the happy Johnson family before the show.

After a couple of very happy sounding churchish songs, which is just as fun to listen to as you might expect if your kid isn’t actually up there, they finally called up the little ones. So Jenny started walking up there with Luke. I had Matt’s video camera going to capture the moment and let them watch without having to worry about it. As soon as Jenny set Luke down and told him to go stand with the other kids the entertainment began. I’m pretty sure anyone watching the video I took will get sick because the picture will be shaking from me laughing so much.

Luke was not really into being up there with the other kids. Jenny sat down in the front row and tried to encourage him to go up there and sing (which he had been doing a little at the dinner table). But he was having none of it. This was the scene:

He ran to his mom and pretty much just stood there with a pout on his face. He went to his dad for a while and sat in his lap and after that he went to his aunt Melissa and stood behind her for a bit.

So that was the performance. Pretty much what I was expecting, but still worth a number of laughs actually seeing it play out.

As soon as the songs were done and Luke was out of there, he perked right up. There was an ice cream social afterwards and as soon as Luke heard the words “ice cream” that’s pretty much all he thought about. We made our way out and all had a bowl. I had mine with butterscotch topping. Mmmm.

After some ice cream and some running around, we all had smiles on our faces.

When I got to the bar I ordered my first Southern and Coke of the night. Standing very near where I ordered from where a few guys I recognized but I couldn’t quite recall their names. The closest one turned to me and luckily either he remembered my name or looked quickly at my name tag and said “Hi, Brenden”. A quick (but noticible, I’m sure) glance at his name tag and “Hey Collen” (Zehnder) was what I said. Standing with him were Gabe Lucas, Adam Nelson, Collen’s wife Kelly (?), and I think one other guy, but I can’t remember. While I sipped we made some small talk about what we were all doing–the typical reunion type discussion.

I took my leave and headed back to the group I left near the door. It was fun to meet spouses (Brian’s wife’s name was Breana, which is the feminine form of ‘Brian’–I thought that was funny), talk about jobs, kids, ski bumming, school. Basically the even more condenced version of what I wrote out above, from everyone’s points of view.

After a little bit it was time for my second drink. I didn’t make the same mistake of not asking Tina what kind of drink she wanted and headed out to make the order. On my way back I ran into Dan Wisdom and Ryan Theissen, who I got to know pretty well my senior year. Dan had gone to school out in Bozeman for a couple of years so he was very excited to hear about my ski bumming days. Passing by we caught Teri Dale, who I worked at Best Buy with, and we did the whole thing again. Dan decided that one of her highlights was the best thing of the night. There is a highlight of her crashing a BMX bike that shows on ESPN some times. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen it, but I’m going to be looking for it. I don’t know many (any?) people who have highlights shown on ESPN, that’s pretty sweet.

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Let’s see, what have I done in the last 10 years?
A few selected highlights (mostly in the correct order):

I went to college.
I dated a girl from my high school (she was still in high school).
I got a job at one of the special collections in a library at college.
I dated my old girlfriend from 10th grade again in college.
I got a job at a campus computer helpline.
I got a job at a super computer lab.
I dated a girl from my classes at college.
I got a job at Honeywell.
I played some soccer with friends.
I dated a girl I met driving home for spring break who also played soccer.
I was an assistant coach on my girlfriend’s hockey team.
I got a job at SimonDelivers.com.
My girlfriend graduated and left for St. Louis.
9/11
I got laid off from SD.com.
I graduated from college. (in only 6 1/2 years with a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering)
With no girlfriend, no job and no school, I left for Montana.
I was a ski bum for a winter while living with my brother.
I decided to stay in Montana for the summer.
I got a job land surveying.
I decided to stay in Montana for one more winter.
I kept surveying.
I decided to stay in Montana for one more summer.
I kept surveying and started doing computer work.
I decided to stay in Montana for one more winter.
I started dating a college girl from Chicago.
I decided to stay in Montana for one more summer and maybe another winter.
My girlfriend graduated and left Montana
I only skied twice.
With no girlfriend and no snow, I decided to move back to Minnesota.
I got a job working for my dad at a custom cabinet shop.

Which pretty much brings us up to last weekend, when I went to my 10 year high school reunion.
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On Friday night Chey and I drove to the Italian Pie Shop in St. Paul. It seemed familiar, but I can’t remember if I had ever been there. There was a dude playing the keyboard all evening, which was nice for the ambiance. The deep dish pizza was excellent, if I do say. Every part was simply wonderful, the meat, the sauce, the cheese, and the crust. Much better than the frozen pizza I had for lunch Saturday afternoon.

We left in a hurry because we had a 9pm showing of Batman Begins to get to at the IMAX theater near the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley. Or so I thought. We bought the tickets in a rush and ran over to the door…where no one was in line and no one was taking tickets. Confused workers walked over and asked “Are you here for the 9:40 show?” I looked down at my ticket to see the awful truth–Time: 21:40. NOOOOO! We had left a piece of pizza at the restaurant for nothing. (these are the kind of crazy food-dominated thoughts that pass through my mind) Not to mention that I was a little embarrassed. Well, there was nothing to do but wander around a bit for the next 20-30 minutes and then we came back for the movie.

I had seen it already but was looking forward to another showing. The IMAX theater boasts a beautiful screen and projector and powerful sound system. All of which brought together a fantastic presentation, except in one key area: fast action. Fast action happens to be one of the cornerstones of the “action film” genre. There were many times where the projection system just couldn’t keep up with the fast paced fighting in the film. I still enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but I have to recommend seeing this film at a normal theater. Maybe the IMAX will be better suited to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when it comes out.

Oh, and another thing. The popcorn was not very good at all. Both of us are big popcorn fans, but even together we didn’t finish a medium size. And don’t think it was because of the 3 pieces of delicious deep dish pizza I had had earlier, I can usually find room for good popcorn. It just so happened that we were snacking on sub-par popcorn.

It was then a short drive back to St. Paul to drop Chey off and I was home not too long after that; it’s about a 45 minute drive after all.

My grandpa had quadrudple bypass surgery yesterday. It really hasn’t even set in how serious of a surgery that is, even though it can probably be called routine these days. Clinton had one last year and of course it was newsworthy. But this one was a little more important to me. He’s doing great. He’s sitting up in bed today and eating and generally feeling fine. I guess he’s going to be moved out of the ICU later today or tomorrow.

I can’t imagine if it hadn’t gone well. Thank goodness these types of things are so commonplace. Do people even realize what an age of wonder we live in? People can be sedated and have their chest opened up with their heart exposed and then have arteries moved around to improve blood flow. It boggles the mind. I’m just happy he’s okay and he’ll be in less pain or danger than he was before.

A Russion astrologer is suing NASA for $300 Million for sending the Deep Impact probe crashing into the comet Tempel 1. The damages are for her “moral sufferings” and claims that the experiment would “deform her horoscope”.

See, this is one of the reasons I’m not so sure that comets and stars control our lives. I’m thinking that astrology charts do not account for celestial bodies being destroyed or disturbed. If, for some strange reason, some crazy person decides to blow up a comet that you were counting on reading to tell the future, what do you do? Not to mention the fact that we pretty much know exactly where every known celestial body is going and how they move. But maybe I’m just overly skeptical.