March 2008 Archives

Today was our first anniversary. Missy and I are heading to Costa Rica tomorrow. I am so in love with that woman.

Filed my taxes; getting a refund. Had fun at SXSW. Had fun visiting The Boyz in Nashville. Still have a job. Golden Birthday is coming up next month. Choir is still awesome. Decided to go home for Xmas for the first time in four years; made my mom do that squeal she does when she's excited.

Life is good.

While I'm gone, tell me what's good.

I don't know why this tickles me so, but it does.

When you order online from Chipotle, this shows up on the confirmation screen. Also, they neglected to charge me for guacamole. Score! Unfortunately, they also put rice in it which I did not want. Do you know hard it is to pick around rice?

Got to talk to Future Tense's Jon Gordon while at SXSWi. Super nice guy! I've been listening to Future Tense since my early days of second shift when I'd be driving home from work at 10:30 pm and FT would come on at halftime of As It Happens on MPR. Jon chatted with us Minnesotans a bit and shot some video. Greg is my Metblogs co-captain and Gillian is one of my choir peeps (and SXSW roomie).

Since I need to fill this baby up, I'm resorting to responding to meme-tagging. Thanks (or not) to Ed Kohler, I give you the 123 meme.

Instructions!

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I started to do this at work. The only thing on my desk at work that's over 123 pages and not confidential is Validation Fundamentals and page 123 is actually an outline with no complete sentences in it so Lucky You.

So now that I'm at home, the nearest book is Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, which I am not reading but which M™ borrowed from the library.

Nearly a week later: They've brought in a polka band to play in the dining room of the "Mexican"-themed restaurant at Le Royale. Outside, on the pool deck, though the bar is unattended, where the bottles were they keep the radio cranked up to drown out the sounds of bombing--so as not to scare the kiddies. These days, we wake up to molar-vibrating percussions and go to sleep to distant thunder.

Some shit was going down in Beirut.

Tagged: 1. Do 2. It 3. If 4. You 5. Want (Has everyone else done this already? I think so.)

The Pew Research Center recently did a survey on News IQ and let's just say that the American public didn't do so well.

12 out of 12 correct answers puts you in the 97th percentile. Honestly, I happened to guess correctly on a couple of them. But it's multiple choice; it shouldn't be that difficult.

What's screwed up is that the question answered most correctly (by quite a bit) is about Barack Obama's most famous campaigner.

How'd you do?

(via News Cut)

For the longest, this was my favorite quote:

The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them.

And while I do still love it because that's just my sense of humor, it has been supplanted.

In February, I had one of the greatest experiences of my life in the best damn concert the Twin Cities Women's Choir has ever done. Joan Szymko put the words of Eleanor Roosevelt to music in The Beauty of Your Dreams. From that song, I learned this quote:

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

I want that on a giant poster in a really cool font. Well, maybe not, but it's a little big to go on a post-it on my monitor.

Makes me a little verklempt every time we sing it. You know how putting things to music makes them all the more powerful.

If I ever get a piece of our recording to share I will (in as legal a way as possible, of course, in case our Executive Director is reading this).

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

In the words of my new buddy Clarence, marinate.

Is Seattle in fact big enough for two huge family superstars, plus international woman of mystery Sue Bird?

Heh! Lauren Jackson and Sheryl Swoopes would be the two huge family superstars in question. (That's "family." You got that, right?) And they're under new "family" ownership, too? Seattle is gonna be my third favorite team after Minnesota and Detroit. I'm sad the Lynx let my girl Kristen Mann go, but that's okay. Manny, noooo! Boo.

Which reminds me I managed to lock myself out of my STH account and I need to call someone about getting back into it. I'm pretty sure I need to pay the balance on our tickets. After dragging M™ to damn near every game last summer, we just signed her up for her own season ticket.

I think a little taste of warmer weather in Austin reminded me of all those summer bus and bike rides to the Target Center. Well, that and all the free agency movement that's been ongoing for the last few weeks. Rookie draft is April 9th!

I'm a bad blog friend.

Srah was here in Minneapolis visiting last summer and I'm just now posting about it. It was great to finally meet Srah. She's one of the bloggers I've been reading since I first started blogging five years ago.

All that and more in my flickr stream. And by more I mean the 2007 TC 10, getting all my hair chopped off, my trip to Philadelphia, and my Super Tuesday caucus night experience (story here).

The 2008 SXSWi photos are going to come trickling in as well. This year I'm going strictly with the cameraphone. If I don't flickr on the fly, they don't get published.

I started a draft in December entitled "Just About Fed Up with Metroblogging". I had absolutely no intention of posting it, so I don't know why I chose to dump it there instead of any number of other places both online and off. But I did.

The tide has shifted a bit in the last three months so I'm revisiting the topic. The web these days is all about authenticity and transparency, right? Part of the reason I haven't blogged much here is because I spend so much time and mental energy on Metroblogging. I don't want to post there, and then come back here and keep talking about it. That and my pointless brain dumps go into Twitter.

You know, that Metblog is my baby. April will mark three years of posting there. I think May or June will be two years of captaining. I've watched it steadily grow. I've posted a shit-ton of content. Through it I've met a lot of people. I hope I personally inspired someone somewhere to read, to make a comment, to join up and post something themselves.

I never guessed when I signed up there what it would turn into for me. Nowadays, when I ponder over what other projects I'd like to get my fingers into, that style and that feel is what I lean towards. That first-person group blog style. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that I can't do it all. There's so much out there; I can't find it all. And what I keep saying is that the strength of blogs is that they help to personalize, humanize, and make relevant the news of the day.

My chief frustration with Metblog has been that not everyone is as excited about it as I am. I understand people have lives and jobs and other priorities. But what makes the site go is a steady stream of content. And I can't do it all. And people don't come to Metblog just to read what I have to say. Or maybe they do. But a variety of voice makes it a better site. My personal sense of success is some vague notion of whether I've posted enough. There are plenty of other metrics I can point to that demonstrate success, but this is the one that hangs around my neck.

I think M™ was digging around in her purse for chocolate. She came up with a tampon instead.

That's my girl, y'all!

I think Hillary Clinton would make a perfectly adequate, competent manager of our nation. Should she secure the Democratic nomination, I will have no qualms about voting for her.

I believe in Barack Obama to make change. I cast my vote for him in my first-ever caucus experience. I realize that he's got a clusterfuck of bureacracy to fight through, but the enthusiasm amongst people in this country is unbelievable. I was sorely disappointed in 2004. But if Kerry/Edwards had to lose in '04 for us to have the possibility of Barack Obama in '08, I'll take it.

I just gave the boy money. I've never done that in my life. (And if you do it by Tuesday, someone will match your donation. *high five* to Jenny C. in Illinois who matched mine.)

Professor Kim has a little more seasoned perspective on it all. I almost cried, too. Good marketing team, sure. But I want to be inspired and hopeful.