Just Plain Chips

So it has been two whole months since I’ve written in my “daily journal website” or “web log” or “blog”, if you will. That’s pretty pathetic even for me. To anyone who has tried to force themselves to keep up and check regularly, I apologize. I can’t promise I’m going to post tons now that I’ve posted once, but I’ll try.

Since my last post I’ve been to Texas three times; I bought a Nintendo DS Lite; my company has hired two new employees, one of which works under me; and my girlfriend has graduated from grad school and had a birthday. That’s a whole lot going on!

But instead of trying to recap everything I’m going to keep it simple with a little story from tonight.

My parents and I were out on the back porch having a delicious dinner of spinach ravioli and broccoli when we started to hear this popping noise in the woods behind us. We all looked up with confused looks on our faces wondering what it was. My mom thought that maybe it was some kids setting off some firecrackers. I thought that it sounded like something was happening to a tree.

The popping subsided and we resumed our dinner. But then the sound started up again. This time it kept on going and we got up to try and look for the source. Then we saw a big tree swaying a little. It was falling down! The thing was huge and with a number of giant heaves and pops it finally tumbled down back into the forest. And left in its place was a giant “hole” for more light to come in.

Our neighbor walked over into our yard to talk to us about it and we all headed down to see. Lo and behold was a giant oak tree, that could have been 100 or more years old. Broken off a ways up on its trunk and fallen to the ground. I had brought my camera along and here is what I saw, with my 5′ 9″ dad standing next to it for scale.

Pretty darn exciting and sad at the same time. The tree looked healthy and had tons of leaves on it. It didn’t look rotten where the trunk had split and there weren’t any bugs or termites pouring out of it. We thought that maybe it had been struck by lightning in one of the huge storms from last Friday, but there didn’t appear to be any burn marks. It may have just been it’s time to fall.

One of my coworker’s sisters just came by with a delivery. Their mom made a little Easter basket with “flowers” growing in it. They were cookies on sticks. Keeping in mind with my last post I had to take the one that looked most like a Peep. And thus I give you, cookie Peep on a stick:

It was dee-lish!

It was a little spooky out in the back yard today.

Okay, you wanted some pictures from the party. Unfortunately, due to the effects of alcohol and my wish to try and keep all of my guests entertained my pictures are concentrated towards the earlier portions of the night and thus on my first few guests. I had meant to at least take a picture of everyone as they came in but that didn’t happen either.

So I’ll just show you a few.

Here was the spread on the kitchen island. Almost anything you’d want to make pizzas.

Katie took some time out of the busy party to get some important work done at her leather topped desk in the leather ceiling-ed study.

Jim and Suzanne were looking quite swanky and just adorable, as always.

Did I say that this was a swanky party, or what? (thanks for classing the joint up Suzanne)

The shower in the master suite is larger than most of those ladies’ (Katie, Rachel, and Suzanne) bathrooms.

Like I said, it was a fun night. I wish I had more pictures from it. Steve posted a few, so go check them out.

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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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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I’m going to be house sitting at my godparents’ place for the next couple of weeks while they are on vacation. It’s a fairly nice place (pic taken in February, 2003) on Lake Minnetonka.

The sunrise I woke up to yesterday was pretty nice and so was the view out of the back of the house just a couple steps from my bedroom this morning.

Here are a couple of pictures.
The first is from game night on Saturday. We had finished playing a few rousing games of “Catch Phrase” (which Steve, Dan, and I cleaned up on) and had moved to dominos. Steve was shuffling before one round and I got this picture in the mirrored table. It turned out darker than I thought it would. But it’s still kind of neat, I think.

And this is what woke me up this morning. It is the view out my bedroom window.

It is snowing tonight. Oh, happy days!

Here’s a panoramic view of the Tetons from Grand Targhee Ski Resort in Wyoming from probably 2 or 3 winters ago.

The image was constructed from 14 pictures and stitched together with the way-to-simple to use AutoStitch software.

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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Okay, so the game sucked but the trip was fun. Here are a few pictures from the weekend (click on the thumbs to get a closer look).

This is looking from the upper deck on the North end towards the South end of the stadium before game time.

Here is a view of the visitor’s section where most of the Gopher fans were seated. Not too many compared to the announced crowd of 106,000+.

Here’s the West side of the stadium during the game. So full of people.

The game was on ABC, so we had the Good Year Blimp overhead.

Here was something cool that the student section did. The Lions had just punted and pinned the Gophs on the 2 yard line (if you look at the scoreboard, they are now on the 4 after gaining 2 on 1st down) with their backs to the band and the student section. The student section went nuts and every one of them put up the signal for a safety. I thought it was sweet.

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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I turned 29 years old yesterday. The number only sounds big and old because I just don’t feel that old. It is a number, when applied to my parents’ generation, that conjures up images of a few kids and a life of responsibility. Not so when I think about my life. I’ve had it pretty easy, which is nice when you consider how easy-going I am. No house payments. No kids and no prospect of kids for years. But luckily, no hurry to get in that position either. I’m content and happy with how things are progressing.

So anyway, enough waxing philosophically. How did the birthday weekend go? I’ll work backwards.

Yesterday was a nice low key kind of day. Matt and Jenny came out to the house, the kids were already there, to hang out. We watched the Vikings get pounded by the Bengals (the Bengals!) and had a delicious lunch prepared by my mom. Pork tenderloin, potatoes au gratin, spinach salad, and baked beans. Yum yum. Matt and I played a game of chess during the football game as well. He played very well and had me a little worried at a few points, but I was able to pull out the win after chasing his king to the middle of the board and exposing him to all sorts of attacks. A couple times during the day I even got a couple of calls from friends in distant states wishing me Happy Birthday, which was very nice and unexpected.

Next it was cake and ice cream time.

And after that picture it was time for me to blow the candles out. As far as I know, I have never blown all of the candles out on my birthday cake since my first birthday. Except for last year when my girlfriend felt sorry for me and put two candles on instead of 28, one in the shape of a ‘2′ and one in the shape of an ‘8′. I managed to get both of those out. Well, this year my mom put 8 candles on the cake. I don’t know why, but that’s how many there were. So I huffed, and I puffed, and I blew the candles out…

…most of them. My whole family was making fun of me for standing up and getting in position to try and do it, but I couldn’t even get 8 out, what’s wrong with me? I left 3 going, which of course means I have 3 girlfriends. Yikes, zero girlfriends has been interesting enough lately. The cake was tasty and I can’t wait to have more tonight.

So that was Sunday. I think I’ll be a little flaky and write up Saturday, the actual BBBBB, in another post.

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.

Holy crap. I know professional cyclists wear crazy uniforms sometimes, but this is rediculous. Of course, this is just hilarious.

If you’re a fan of The Legend of Zelda series of video games and you like sushi, then this might be the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. If not, it might be one of the scariest things you’ve ever seen.

Edit (4:51pm): The site I got this link from, kotaku.com, posted a correction about the picture saying that someone who could read Japanese said that the dish is supposed to look like Peter Pan and Wendy, which I will admit it does. But I think it still kind of looks like Link and Zelda as well.

Picture from Ricoco Blog (in Japanese)

Okay, a little meta-blogging here.

For those of you who are new here, you may not know that this isn’t my original blog. I was on blogger for a few days less than one year before I moved over to the WordPress goodness of blogsome.

But some days I get more hits on my old site, which I haven’t posted on since early May, than my new site here. And it all seems to be because of one picture that I posted from last Halloween. A group of my friends dressed up as old, retired Hooter’s girls. I took a picture before going out and posted it on my blog and called it “HotWings”. Somehow people find this picture searching on Google Images and to look at the picture end up visiting my site for one second. But I don’t know what search terms they use. (I wouldn’t necessarily recommend searching for “hooters hot wings” while at work or anything) Anyway, I thought I’d post the famous picture here for everyone’s enjoyment.

Here are the five fine ladies, showing off their backsides.

I bought new glasses earlier this week. I’m not feeling ultra photogenic but I thought I’d at least give you a glimpse at what the new setup looks like. They’re way different than my old glasses and I like them. (For comparison look at the head shot to the right–if it’s not a good comparison picture either reload the page for a new shot or click on the picture for a mosaic of all of the head shots)

So here they are; my new eyes. I did get a compliment on them from a girl I don’t even know the other night, so they can’t be that bad.

As I downloaded the pictures I took for my last post I noticed I had some pictures from March in my camera. What could those be?

Well, they turned out to be from my last day in Montana. Emily and I went on a hike up the Storm Castle, or Castle Rock. It was a beautiful day and we talked about all sorts of stuff. A perfect send off for me. I had the camera along and took a few pictures, and here are a couple of them.

This is a view from the top facing East South East. There’s lots of mountains around there.

Here’s me, standing atop my last mountain for a while.