Life in Sota...

The Past 16 Months in 16 Points

2009-03-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

What can I say, it's been over a year since I've written. Let me explain what has gone on since then. No, there is no time. Let me sum up. (Excuse blatant Princess Bride reference).

1) I'm continuing to throw things farther. 63.79m in the hammer in 2008. Hopefully more in 2009.
2) Through an odd sequence of events, I'm a photographer for Eishockey News Magazine, a German (yes) hockey magazine. I get to take pictures of the Minnesota Wild (NHL) and have had some pretty kickass experiences doing it, like shooting from the bench 3 feet away from the players and coaches.
3) Cause of #2, I bought a really expensive lens for my camera. The one that I said I couldn't afford, oh, like 3 posts ago. I still couldn't afford it.
4) I got invited to an "Emerging Elite Coach's Clinic" (expenses paid) at the US Olympic Training Center in sunny Chula Vista, CA. I met and learned from some olympic gold medalists. You know, no big deal.
5) My buddy St. G got married in the Prov(idence) in the summer of 2008. Out of my group of friends from camp, 2 are now married. Coincidentally, the last two that any of us expected to get married. No offense guys.
6) I started grad school in the fall of 2008 at the University of Minnesota for a MS in Water Resources. 2 more years of college, woo!! Unfortunately, it's not the same as undergrad...
7) I started my 5th year coaching the throwers at Macalester College and College of St. Catherine. My throwers are tearing it up this year.
8) I became an unofficial photographer for the St. Kate's athletic department. I shoot their games, give them my pictures for the website, and then they plug my website for parents to buy pictures. Quality gig.
9) I set up a website to attempt to make photography a self funding hobby. Easier said than done. But after 4 months I'm out of the red! At least as far as website setup goes...
10) I threw at the US Indoor Track and Field Championships in Feb 2009, my 3rd year in a row. Got 8th. Competed OK, but wish I got a better mark.
11) I saw most of my extended family for the first time in ages over the summer of 2008 in Lake George. It was great to reconnect, especially with the younger cousins who actually are their own people now and pretty cool to talk to.
12) I spent Christmas/New Years 2009 bouncing between Albany and New York City (ok Jersey City) and I wish I could spend more time with my friends out east.
13) I got addicted to Battlestar Galactica cause of my sister. There's 2 episodes left in the entire show! Great show, it'll be sad to see it go but a relief now that I don't have to spend time watching it anymore.
14) My roommate/land lady has spent the past month redoing her bathroom, which is about, oh, 12 inches from my bedroom door. Almost done! And I don't get to use it...
15) Backing up a bit...went skiing up at Lutsen Mountain last year. Yes, they have skiing in Minnesota, but the double black diamond trails here are equal to about a purple squares in NY, which are probably like the green circles out west.
16) I'm on spring break!! Which is probably why I'm spending time posting. See you next time...as always, no promises. :-)

Happy Christmas!

2007-12-26T21:18:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posting. I've got a lot going in the winter time. Work is still work. Track is going very well. I've got some pretty promising athletes who have been working really hard and I'm excited to see what kind of results they produce. I opened up my season with an OK mark, considering that the circle I was throwing out of felt like glass. That, and everybody put chalk on their weights to make the mark easier to see. I understand the point in doing that, but people, please, you don't need to cover the thing entirely. And if you do, you can hit it on the ground once to get the excess off. So the circle ended up being glass with chalk in it. Slippery? Nah... Anyways, next meet in a few weeks at the U of MN. Hopefully it'll be more fun...

My sister convinced me to update cause I haven't done it in, oh, 6 months. So that's that. See you in another bit of long time.

IAAF World Championships

2007-08-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

So I've come across something that will make the next 10 days of my life incredibly useless. Well, there are several things, actually. Firstly, and this has contributed to making the past two weeks of my life somewhat useless, is Scrabulous. It's a way to play Scrabble online. And on Facebook you can have multiple games going at once. Currently I'm 20-3. Not bad for somebody whose family still thinks he has a 4th grade reading level (except his sister, who he beat thrice already :-P). Or maybe she still thinks this, but hey...I'm over it.

So the bad news is www.wcsn.com. It's a website that broadcasts sporting events that don't get mainstream coverage on network channels. It shows gymnastics, international basketball, swimming, etc....AND track and field. The IAAF World Championships (track and field = 'athletics' in the rest of the world - kinda like the metric system, I guess) started yesterday. I paid 4.95 to get the web broadcast for the whole month...what a deal! They broadcast live and then put their whole live feed online so you can watch it later too. Unfortunately, broadcasting live means live from Osaka, Japan. Osaka is 14 hours ahead of me currently. This morning I woke up at 5:45am to watch the hammer throw qualifying rounds. Then fell back asleep for too long. It's awesome....on weekends. What happens when something I really want to watch is on at 8am when I am working? I won't be able to keep myself from looking at the results, plus the USATF sends me really useful daily updates (OK I got 4 today, perhaps more than daily) but they have the results in the subject line of the e-mail!! So if I don't watch it live it'll get spoiled. Grr...Oh well. They actually show more of the throws than I expected, but they did deviate from the final 4 throws in a really good shot put competition to show the 5th heat of the heptathlon 200. Even the announcers kept saying, "I don't know why our directors are showing this. This heat is inconsequential, and Adam Nelson is stepping into the circle for his final attempt!" Argh. Throws get no justice. What else is new.

I also got in on the FANTASY TRACK AND FIELD for the Worlds. It's like fantasy baseball, but with far less appeal and excitement (for most, I'm pretty pumped). You get 20 athletes on your team, 10 per gender, and they all have to be from a different country. That's the part that makes it interesting. I'm currently tied for last with a bunch of other people right now, but none of my people are out and I think I've got some really good picks. Anyways...that's that for now.

Oops....

2007-08-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Wow, last post June 4. I guess it's now into August. Oops. Sorry everybody. I know there are people who check this thing routinely, so I just wanted to write something quick (I promise) to let you all know that I am still alive. Here's what's going on.

My summer so far has consisted of the following:
1) Little field work so far.
2) Lots of writing permits.
3) Visiting my old roommate Mike in NYC.
4) Dano's wedding at RSR....something about a bouncy bounce?
5) Running more instead of lifting lots (killer 8 mile weeks!)
6) Scrabulous!!
7) General hanging out...
8) Society of Engineering Companies Softball Tournament
9) and, as a result of #8, the company softball team.
10) USATF Level 2 Coaching Education - 1 week long. Just like college again. But learning track!

So that's that. Doesn't seem like much, but I still can't seem to find lots of time on my plate. Oh well. Pre-season for me for track starts in a few weeks so that should keep me busy. Bye for now everybody....

Excessive Orchid De Jour

2007-06-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

"Excuse me, what is the soup de jour?"
-"It's the soup of the day"
"Mmm...that sound good. I'll have that."

Dumb and Dumber. Man, what a great freaking movie. Anyways, here's the orchid de jour. It's not really de jour cause you know as well as I do I will not post anything tomorrow, so don't get excited. This one's a pink lady slipper. I was driving back the DIII Track and Field National Championships (where I saw some old SLU/NYSCTC throwing buddies which was awesome) in Oshkosh, MN. I left Oshkosh at 7am, cause the SLU team had to catch a plane early that day, so I left at the same time. At 7:15am I got a warning for doing 65 in a 55 outside of Oshkosh. I guess there's nothing better to do at 7:15am on a Sunday in Oshkosh. Oh well, at least it was just a warning. So then I decided I had to do something cool, so I set out on my trip home on a course that would take me through Chequamegon (pronounced Che-wom-e-gon, I later found out) National Forest in north central Wisconsin. I stopped at a nice little recreation area/campsite that I thought would be a good place to meander through the woods and look for wildflowers to take pictures of. I got lucky when I happened across a really nice spruce bog. Well, "happened" is misleading. It's kinda my job to find bogs, so you could say I'm naturally attracted to them now. Regardless, I wandered around in the bog for a bit and found some really cool stuff. Bog walking, as it's known, takes some technique to a) not fall down b) not drop your camera or - perhaps most important- c) not manage to break through the moss layer and disappear into the bog, which, I imagine, would be a big drag. On a random side note, I kinda hadn't planned on this so I wore sneakers. Surprisingly bog water is very clean, and as an added perk I got clean sneakers out of the deal. So, to make a long story short (too late), here's my orchid de jour. Pink Lady's Slipper. Enjoy. Quick plug, I started a new online gallery at Artist Rising.com. There's a few other pictures on there, more to come I promise. :-)

Pink Lady's Slipper - Cypripedium acaule

Uh oh....I got a new toy.

2007-05-18T23:24:00.001-07:00

So my toy about this time of year last year was to buy myself a nice digital SLR. I ended up taking a bunch of pictures of plants as I wandered around Minnesota for work over the summer of 2006. They came out pretty well, but taking pictures in the shaded woods became an issue. This summer my company proposed on some really huge T/E (Threatened and Endangered) species surveys way up north in the bog and peatlands. I was so pumped for this, cause literally all you do is wander around for 6 weeks looking for plants. I called the photographing part of it. I knew if we got it I would be in some really cool areas, and obviously looking for really cool plants. I decided I was goint to buy a nice macro lens for my camera that has a wider aperature so I can take pictures in darker areas. Turns out we didn't get any of the really cool jobs, but because I was so pumped to get my new lens (and also frustrated for not getting the work) that I bought it anyways. The thing is awesome, I love it. So much so that I forsee this becoming a problem for several reasons. First, that I will now take pictures on my job sites instead of working in a timely manner. I mean, taking pictures of stuff I see is part of the job. But is it excessive to spend 15 minutes taking pictures of a rare buttercup? Suffice it to say I am really good at rationalizing. :-) The other reason why this is bad is because now I can see how much difference it makes having a good lens. 99.9% of the time in photography you pay for what you get, and good equals expensive. So as much as I like the setup I have now and it works really well for me, I can now see how nice it would be to own one of these. That would be more for sports photography. I know I can't spend that much on a camera lens, so I've decided I have to make at least half whatever the lens costs by selling pictures before I get one. I've got a ways to go. So...you know....if you want to help go here. Shameless plug.

Anyways, summer is pretty much here (at least the weather thinks so) and along with it come the trilliums. My sister and I have a sailboat that we named Trillium. And I rememer going through the flower book to find a flower we thought looked pretty. So, in honor of Trillium...here you go.

Just a little bit of irony?

2007-04-07T18:32:00.000-07:00

OK so I was watching the news last night and they started out with a story about global warming. Apparently the world's leading scientists (According to whom? You mean the leading scientists with your opinion?) released another report detailing the effects of global warming (again). Polar ice caps melt, coastal water levels will rise, and ocean temperature fluctuations will cause the poor little penguins and dolphins to relocate to new places. Can't you just hear Morgan Freeman's voice in the background? "There will be no offspring for this mother penguin this year. She begins the long, toilsome journey back home, her three hard weeks worth of work wasted..." Sob sob.
Anyways, they followed this story with the first look at the weather where they talked about record low temperatures across the U.S. for Easter weekend. I just had to laugh out loud, as not 30 seconds earlier they were talking about how we can't stop this global warming juggernaut and all hell will break loose very very soon. Come on now kids, isn't that just a little bit ironic?

....and it's been a while.

2007-03-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while since I last posted here. Just over 2 months, actually. Some stuff has happened over the last 2 months. So, to make this a short(er) than usual, I think I'll give a list of what is going on because I know several people consistently read this (oddly enough). I also know several other people consistently read this, but don't know who they area. Sketchy, but I suppose cool in the internet world. Anyways...

Track - Coaching
Since I last posted the indoor track season has come and gone. All of my throwers improved upon their bests from last year, which is great. Strength is improving. We're also growing in numbers with some talented youngins, so that's good news. Outdoor season just started as we just had a blast three 60 degree days in a row to melt the 16 or so inches of snow that fell 10 or so days ago. Circles are mostly clear, but it's still wet with really cold water so my feet were numb at the end of practice the first day. But that's cool....because we're outside throwing stuff. Off to St. Louis next weekend for the first outdoor meet. Should be fun.

Track - Throwing
Well I previously wrote about how well my season was going. It continued to go pretty well, throwing consistently around my best all year. I went to Boston to throw in the USATF Indoor National Championships and got 11/12. I know I could've thrown better, but for me it was a very humbling experience to even be in the presence of, let alone throw against, people who have gone to the Olympics for what I do. I spent a little too much time watching other people rather than focusing on the task at hand, and never really got into it myself. But watching everybody else throw, and do everything else, was awesome! All in all a very motivating experience, so I hope outdoor will come with as much success as indoor did. Actually, I'll take half the success. That'll be satisfying.

Job - Winter Biologizing
I think I just made up a word. Anyways being a biologist in winter means lots of report writing and dealing with government agencies as they give me the run around. The most frustrating experience of my professional career, short as it may be, involved a letter from the DNR citing my client for a wetland violation and requesting a permit. Then another letter saying thanks for giving us that permit, but we really didn't need it in the first place we just wanted some general info to have on file. And there's a little more than two thousand dollars worth of my work in between. The second letter was copied to many other government agencies, so now they're all pestering me for permits too. Not to mention the pissed off central Minnesotan farmer who is going to want to know why he's wasting his money for nothing. Not looking forward to that phone call...

Otherwise work is going well. We're gearing up for the upcoming field season to start late April. In other news my company is "restructuring." Whatever that means, it's causing lots of people to talk about whatever they don't know about. Lots of speculation, little facts. Anyways there's a company-wide webcast tomorrow to discuss the real deal. Oh, and tomorrow is our annual HAZWPR safety refresher in Wisconsin. Even though I don't hav emy 40-hour HAZWPR, I need 8 hours of "safety training" annually so I can work in the field. This basically turns into a drunken party afterwards when we have an environmental market center poster session and all my bosses bring in pitchers of beer. I did a poster on my MinnCan experiences. See previous posts. This year we're calling it The Last Hurrah because after said restructuring there will not be an Environmental market center anymore. Oh well. One less boss to worry about. Sorry Al.

Other
I've been re-addicted to Minesweeper again. Haven't played seriously (whatever that means) for a long long time. My bests are down to 3 in beginner, 29 in intermediate, and 94 in expert for a composite score of 126. You get ranked in the world if your composite is under 100. My friend Adam, who I'm blaming this on, has a composite time of 84 seconds. But he's an engineer, and once submitted a Chip's Challenge walkthrough to a website, so it's OK. At least my beginner score is as good as his. That alone makes me OK with my Minesweeper experience. When I start playing in my sleep, then I might get addicted to Chip's Challenge again. Then Pipe Dream. What great games...

So there you have it. Track, work, and other. That's pretty much about it right now. But I'm OK with that.

Quickie....

2007-01-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

Although I seriously doubt there are any readers of my blog that are not readers of hers, I decided to plug my sister, Sarah, tonight. She has recently posted on her nationally known (it was mentioned in the Boston Globe Blog) blog 'Still Life with a Soup Can' regarding all those 'This is Our Country' Chevy truck commercials. Her post will far outdo anything I can come up with here, but be sure to read her comments to get my input. In my search to find these commercials (now would be a good idea to read her post, if you haven't yet) I came across several other blogs about the same thing. Kinda interesting, and most have discussions that have drawn on for several weeks now which include all sorts of racist arguments between left wing hippies and right wing gun-toting cowboy hat wearing "our country" boys which have pretty much degenerated to "You're gay." "No, you're gay." "Your mom is gay." You get the idea. Anyways,just in case you're bored...oh and thanks Chevy for fueling me even more to carry on my mission, I am definitely throwing in my 'ReNew Orleans' shirt this weekend. Black on black..."that guy". (see previous post) Now it's fair because Chevy pisses me off. We'll see how that goes.

As for me, I am not bored. I am currently sitting in my bed, falling asleep to the 30 page appendices of the Wetland Management Plan Update for the City of Burnsville, Minnesota. If it's anything like the 50 page body of the document, it's gonna be an exciting piece of literature, let me tell ya. (Note the sarcasm here.) 2 of these 50 pages I wrote, so I got to skip editing them. If you're so inclined to know, my 2 pages are the results of a MnRAM 3.0 analysis of a random sample of 10 different wetlands in each of the 3 proposed management classes for the City's 2006 Plan update to determine if the proposed classes are comparable to the previously used 4 class system. The abbreviated answer to the long-winded effort (I spent 4 days driving around the city running into all sorts of interesting locals - despite this being the metro area, they're still the dreaded 'locals'. Did I blog months ago about Anna Banana? If not you'll have to catch me and ask me about it sometime) is yes. And if you want to read the long-winded report on said long-winded effort then it'll be available on the City's website sometime. Just keep checking it over the next 2 months. You guys can even comment! And the City is required by law to address every public comment and then publish that response. So you can see your comment on the response online after. Of course the draft for comment will be put online after the natural resource people at the City review it and rip it apart, then the city council rips it apart, then the local government agencies - all 4 watershed districts, the city, county, state, DNR, Army Corps of Engineers, and the county soil and water conservation district - all weigh in and rip it apart, then we make edits and THEN it goes out for public comment. So it might be a while. Check back though! After that excessive post under the title 'Quickie', which was the intention - honestly, I should probably get to work. But I'll probably charge time to the city for writing about it. I mean...no I won't...Mr. City Guy reading this.....uh....ah...ahskhskfs Yes I'm awesome....

Lycopodium Powder!

2006-12-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

OK. Everybody knows the coolest part of chemistry in high school was when your teacher stood at the front of the classroom and dropped solid sodium into water and you watched it explode, right? Right. So now about this? We (somehow) managed to stumble across this at work today. Lycopodium Powder. For the less botanically inclined that read this, the Lycopodiums are a Class (King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti, remember) of club mosses. Club mosses are between moss and ferns, evolutionarily speaking. Some people call them mini-evergreens. They literally look like a little club, like 6 inches high, that's green and mossy. Hence, club moss. So...apparently people collect the spores of club moss and sell it as Lycopodium Powder. Good for what? Who knows...but it has a MSDS sheet. MSDS = Material Safety Data Sheet. If you've ever had to work somewhere in the public service industry, your establishement was required to have MSDS sheets for each chemical on its premisis, and you (as an employee) were required by law to know where your MSDS sheets were kept. Whether or not you did, well...different story. See the Lycopodium Powder MSDS here...
Hummadah what? Flammable? Spores are flammable? Well, kinda. I guess the real topic of conversation at work was grain silos. They're demolishing one for the new MN Gopher football stadium (my company did the environmental permitting for it). Which got us on the topic of grain silos exploding because they literally have enough dust in the air which makes the air so dense with carbon in a quasi-pressurized environment that a little spark from loose wiring inside (or a farmer's cigarette) makes the air flammable. From there it's like gunpowder exploding inside a shell, and sometimes the roofs of these exploded silos are propelled some hundreds of feet away. Anyways...despite the advanced ventilation systems these things have nowadays, they still tend to go boom. The MN locals tell me you see one on the news every 5 years or so. What does this have to do with club moss, you ask? Well check out this experiment. This is so badass...If I was a kid and saw this I would idolize whichever teacher performed this experiment in a classroom. Makes you wonder whether this kind of thing can be done with other things...flour, for example. Don't think I've ever seen an MSDS for flour. But then again, I'd never seen one for Lycopodium Powder either...

So goes the throwing...

2006-12-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

So I've been lifting pretty hard since August, and throwing the 35# weight (I lost count of the times I've had the following conversation with less than intelligent onlookers: 'What is that?' 'A 35# weight. It's the indoor version of the hammer throw.' 'Cool. Can I hold it?' 'Sure.' 'It's heavy. How much does it weigh?' Riiiiight. One of these conversations was at Rochester Airport when I flew to nationals in Wisconsin my senior year of college. I had to convince they guy that it was less than 50lbs and I shouldn't have to pay more to check it. End aside.) since the beginning of November. I've met some people out here who are training for the Olympics in hammer, and we threw together a few times last season. I picked up some new tips, and really tried to work on them over the fall. Longer double support phase, if you really wanted to know. Anyways, I've been throwing pretty well in practice but I never like to measure so I don't know exactly how far they were going. I also have a tendency not to throw far in practice just because. It's not that I don't try, I just don't really get as psyched up as I do for meets. Speaking of...

I went to my first competition on Saturday. Throwing unattached (as in not for a team and not affiliated with a sponsor) makes you actually think about what you want to wear to compete. In college they give you a uniform. Now I have to come up with something on my own. It can pretty much be whatever I want, but it can't imply any affiliation so I couldn't wear my red SLU shorts....either pair. So that leaves black shorts, or navy blue. Both knee length, come on now, I'm no short shorts thigh showing runner. I like black. Issue though, cause I wanted to wear my new 'ReNew Orleans' shirt. Call it a statement. Whatever. But it's black too. The problem here is you never want to be that guy in black. You just don't do it. Cause then people are like, whoa...he must be NASTY (nasty is good). And I'm not nasty. Same thing with crazy long socks. You can't wear knee high soccer or rugby socks when you're throwing or running. Also implies nastiness. And for women, whatever your event, and stomach baring top means nasty. I saw a women throw in a quasi-sports bra once. But she was nasty. And went to the Olympics a few years later. It was OK for her. The moral is to go plain. But I can't wear navy blue shorts and a black shirt, cause then you're a walking bruise. Oh well, in the end I thought I'd just put off the nasty vibe. I gotta find a pair of maroon shorts though, cause I like my ReNew Orleans shirt.

In the end I drove 2 hours to throw, and did really well. I threw my best by a little more than 5 feet, which isn't really supposed to happen in this event. It was a flow experience. What is flow? Call it getting in the groove. Want to read about it? Here you go...It's a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He's got to be smart with a last name like that. We learned about him in a sports psych class I took at SLU, and I remember it goes "Shick-Zent-Me-High-L-Yee." End coach/nerd talk. So my new technical efforts paid off. Good. I'm also still in the volume part of my lifting, and haven't peaked yet. I hope. So as long as I get through Christmas break - when lifting becomes a little harder - without losing much I think I'll be OK. Then I have to do it again. My throw was on the bubble for the US Championships, so if I can throw a bit farther consistently I will probably get in. Well, the mark will likely get me in (knock on wood) but the consistency is the tough part. You see guys who get lucky and hit one who go and get embarassed by the people who really know what they're doing. I'm not convinced yet, it's still a fluke in my mind. So we'll see. But then I have to buy a plane ticket to Boston...

So after all this I sat around and watched another girl I coach with run the 2 and 400, watched some women throw weight, watched some shot put, and suddenly it's two hours later. You know what happens when you let your body go nuts for a bit (ie. swinging a 35# weight around a bunch of times) but then sit around and do nothing? Oh yeah...legs, back, shoulders stiff as a board. Suffice to say that the 2 hour drive home was less than fun. After a great Saturday I went to lift on Sunday with some of my throwers. We warmed up, then somebody suggested that we play 21 (the 3 person basketball game) for a bit. Because we all had pretty much the same ability level, the game took an hour. During the game I rolled my ankle but just kept playing....adrenaline, you know. Coach triumphs in the end...muahaha. So we go lift, which for me Sunday was mostly just squating 275 as many times as I could. I guess you could call that an off day. Less intense, anyways. I get home and while I'm enjoying Subway Sunday (2 footlongs for 8.99 = fantastic) I kinda realize that my ankle hurts. Then I wake up this morning and can barely move it. It didn't hurt at all during basketball or afterwards while lifting. I don't think the squating helped down there. Poor ankle. Oh well...At least I didn't hit it with a hammer like I did freshman year. I won't be on crutches for 2 weeks from this. Guess I'm taking an off week this week.

So yeah...enough writing to keep you (few) readers good for another long time until I post again.

Ouch....

2006-11-16T19:48:00.000-08:00

I think there's something to be said for living in a perpetual state of soreness. It's a good feeling, every day waking up and being sore. It kinda turns into a way of being. And if you don't feel sore, it's weird. I guess that's the point. Finally when you're not sore it's a special day. A day to throw far. I've been lifting pretty heavy since about September, pardon the field trip here and there for work, and I'm getting stronger. Stronger than I was in college, which is promising. Started technique work in practice a little bit too. There's a meet December 9th that I want to throw at, and I'm trying to get some throwing comrades to go there too. We'll see, should be fun. It'll be interesting to see how the preseason will pay off. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about...I like to throw stuff. See below. This is outdoor, but indoor it's the weight throw. Kinda the same but not really. Close enough.

Go time...

2006-11-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

What news? Well I've recently moved into my new abode - a coworker's house in which I am renting a room. It's pretty sweet, and a much better commute to work (7 minutes). The den in which I am typing is an old kids room, but somebody professionally painted 'Red Fish Blue Fish' and 'Hop on Pop' on the wall complete with pictures. My roommate didn't have the heart to paint over it, and has since dubbed it the 'Dr. Suess Room.' So...we have a Dr. Suess room. Bet you're jealous. She also has a cat, Amelia. She doesn't like me yet, but I have an in. My roommate's a vegetarian (I most certainly am not). The in is giving the tuna fish water to the cat like my dad used to do to our cats. So she likes me for like 5 minutes afterwards, and then forgets I exist. But we have a yard. And I got to do yardwork for the first time in forever. I say 'got' rather than 'had' because it's been a while and I think there's something to be said for honest leaf raking. Now we'll just see about the snow in winter. Although I leave for work first...but I have the SUV HA!
Track started last week and is getting to be in full swing. Kickass...it's good to finally get going with the group. I have to wait for my football players to be done with their season, but I have a good batch to work with till then. Work is, well work. The field season is mostly done, pending some reviews with various governments. Speaking of, I got ripped a new one on a review of a delineation I did last week near St. Cloud. Hillside seeps and peatfarms? What the hell is that? Whatever. Anyways...time to go watch election TV. And listen to my new Dave Matthews CDs. Even though it's a 'Best Of' (though I hear there was some contract issues with the record company and they were kinda forced to do it) they have some pretty kickass live songs on there too, one of which I saw live - so that's cool. And people I voted for are actually...like...winning. Imagine that. Didn't happen in 2004.

Back to the grind

2006-10-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

Well...after another month-ish of nothing here (sorry to you daily viewers...oh wait...), I am back in action. I've been internet-less for the past few days while moving across the Twin Cities from a southern suburb to a northern suburb. I moved in with a coworker of mine who owns a house, so it should be good. This Friday is the moving in/birthday/Halloween keg party. Also should be fun. Except the part where my coworkers are trying to set me up with their friends and/or sisters...well, maybe that could be fun too, but likely not. (no offense to the coworkers or their respective friends and/or sisters, of course)
Field work for the summer is pretty much done. The pipeline project ended in a cruel twist that involved us having to redo 10 miles of the corridor because they 'changed their minds' and decided to put the pipe on the west side of the existing one, but before they had told us to survey the east. Argh. But it did give me a chance to earn more per diem, play more trivia, and enjoy Wing It! Wednesdays. (the whole 2lbs of wings, pitcher of beer, 10.99 thing) So I'm actually looking forward to the office life for a bit. And track starts next week so there's something to keep me busy. I can't wait to throw stuff. Things are lookin good. :-)

Ironic Post in July

2006-09-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

So...in the Gratuitously Large Photo post (which turned out to be not gratuitously large because Blogger didn't upload it at its real size) I asked if anybody wanted to buy it. Kidding of course. About that time I was bored and started a CafePress website for S's and G's. My site is called Designs By Bryan (bored and not feeling very creative. Though creative enough to make my squirrel logo :-P )
Anyways I had just come from home in NY watching my mom row at a regatta in Philly. I took pictures and made her team a CD for their own fun/advertising/whatever. I got to playing around with one of them in Photoshop and came up with a pretty cool (at least I think) silhouette of their men's Four. So I threw it up there to see what would happen. Well that was like 2 months ago. I log in again for the first time in a month yesterday to find, Lo and Behold!, two people bought it! Yay! Commission! Cool. I just hope it comes out nice in print. They have a 30 day guarantee, so that's comforting for me but I still hope it's nice enough to keep and hang in a living room or boathouse or wherever. So yeah...shameless plug...for me. Go there. Buy stuff. :-) If you have any ideas for stuff too, let me know. Then I'll give you a discount. :-) Or! If you want to sign up and sell your own stuff you can do that too. Then you can be my Affiliate (sounds official) and I get a kickback from your sales. Then you blog about your site and get affiliates, and kickbacks. Sounds kind of pyramid-ish, but hey, it's all good.

How now...

2006-09-14T16:57:00.000-07:00

Well, how's that for a break of a few months? Honestly I haven't been all that bored on the pipeline recently, so I haven't had much random downtime away from home. Of course now's the time of year where people are like, ooh...I better get this work done before winter, can you delineate my 80 acre parcel tomorrow? Yeah, you and everybody else who's asked. Anyways, in other news my girlfriend and I broke up. It's kind of given me lots of time to write here, but also not a lot of motivation. Anyways...What else is new?
How about random blog hits? Somebody Googled "Photodermatitis and beer" and got my blog. Odd. I thought so at the time so put up an away message on AIM exclaiming how odd that was, at which point somebody else (no doubt looking for my 'news' blog after seeing my away message) Googled "Photodermatitis and beer" and also got my blog. Now that two people have done it, it's officially a way to find my blog. Although, you're already here. So why am I talking to you about this? A few more searches and it'll be like Google-Bombing. You know, Google "miserable failure" and you get GDubs' bio on the White House website. It's a trick on how Google works to calculate which hits appear first. Other searches yielding my website include "Haggis order mn meat" and "Star Tribune wild parsnip". Mmmmm....meat.

Random Gratuitously Large Photo

2006-07-19T19:57:00.000-07:00

I've always been into photography, and recently I acquired a job that pays more than 7.98 an hour. Since I have this job, I got into a little toy phase. I got a computer, car, and a new digital SLR camera. So here I shamelessly present a photo taken a few weeks ago on the pipeline (where else do I spend my time?). It was in the morning and this dude's wings hadn't dried out yet so he could fly away from really big scary guy getting in his face. I took advantage of the situation, and here you go. You know, on the very off chance that somebody finds this and thinks it's good enough to pay me for, well...sweet. I should add that despite what you see here, it is 3504 x 2336 pixels. For the lay, it can be printed in near perfect quality in a 16 x 20 photo or in good quality even larger...

White Admiral - Limenitis camilla

Scottish Games!

2006-07-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

So there's a Scottish Games events in NY that I've been to a few times with the family. Looking for something to do, and not knowing it was going to be 95 degrees in Minnesota that day, Becky and I decided to try the MN Scottish Games out here. We mainly went to see the huge dudes compete in the heavy events (caber toss, 18lb stone throw, 56lb weight throw, etc). Becky brought along a coworker and her fiance, Crixell and Bob. Bob also threw in college, so they were interested in seeing the throwers too. When we got there they announced an open Haggis Hurling competition for the women. We were like, uh...OK. Whatever. Then they announced kids a little later, so we went to watch. Basically, you stand on half a whiskey keg and hurl this piece of meat as far as you can. The kids' is 1 pound, and the adults' is 1.5 pounds. Since the ladies had missed their competition and had nothing to lose, they bet the men to throw the haggis. So we did.

All you do is throw it, there's not really any technique or anything. The trick is staying on top of this whiskey keg without falling off during your follow through. If you do, they honk a horn at you. You only get one try. I'm a big dude, see pictures, so this was my biggest worry. That and what does this thing feel like. A haggis? What is a haggis? Well, traditionally a haggis is oatmeal, meat (or whatever kinds of animal insides are leftover - use your imagination), and spices, all ground and smashed into a sheep's stomach. There's more on history of haggis and haggis hurling at the Official Website of The Association for Scottish Haggis Hurling (apparently this is a big deal). We're throwing a frozen haggis wrapped up in plastic so it's about 8 inches long and 4 inches in diameter. I'm thinking is it wet, slippery, frozen solid, who knows? They had a bag of dry peat we could dip our hands into for grip (kinda like chalk, but not as effective). You also think about how to throw it. Overhand? Underhand? Like a discus? Like a football with a spiral? I was seriously considering the discus style, but a whiskey keg is not big enough to comfortably land on when I'd jump in the air (a reverse, for throwers).

Bob's turn comes and he hurls it out there overhand to 100' 11", good enough for 2nd at the time. My turn comes, and Bob gives me great advice to put your hand around the back of it for a flick at the end, more or less. So I pick up the thing and it's not wet or slippery, or even frozen for that matter. Kinda like spam in a plastic bag, but hefty. Anyways, from my throwing days I know to drive with the right leg as much as you can and move the haggis as fast as you can from behind you to the front. Also get good height on the haggis, so many people throw it harder than me but straight into the ground. My javelin throwers would've been proud. I threw through the point of the haggis!! Look at the picture.

Chest and eyes up, nice block, nice follow through (nice gut). 114' even!!! First place for the moment. The competition had a crowd of a hundred or so random people looking on, and I'd say there were 30 or 40 people who threw it. Now it was nearing the end of the day and the heavy events just finished up. So they announced the men's haggis throw to these dudes and they all came strutting over laughing at the 1.5 pound haggis (one of these guys just threw 56lbs over a 14' bar with one hand). Great. So over come all these huge dudes to kick my ass in haggis hurling. Well, as it turns out all these guys would make really nasty shot putters but really bad javelin throwers (not that I would make a good jav thrower) and they all pretty much gunned the thing straight into the ground too, all around 100 feet. All of them easily had enough power to destroy my throw, but they all sucked it up! One dude threw 110, which was a worry for me while the measured it. But then all the big guys finished up, and it was over! I WON!! This is now the blog of the First Annual Minnesota Scottish Fair and Highland Games Haggis Hurling Champion!! Since it was the first annual competition, I'm the record holder. Apparently the North American record was 120' which was recently broken with a 140'. I found out the world record is 180' set 20 years ago. I think I did fairly well for myself, but get any strong baseball player or jav thrower up there and my record won't stand a chance. Who knows, maybe I'll practice in the off season and come back to defend it next year! But for now, I'm content. I won a can of sirloin haggis, a huge can of single malt whiskey cake, and a 3XL (rather than the other option - medium) t-shirt seen below. I wear it proudly.

Photoshop Master!

2006-07-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

Oh look, I have a header graphic! So I took the picture of the loon from a random lakeshore that I was delineating in Pequot Lakes, MN, played with it a little in photoshop, slapped a cool lookin title on there (much more fun with PS), grabbed a Dave Matthews lyric and a new font from 1001freefonts.com and eureka! a header. I also stole some of my sister's HTML from her blog to get it to fit right, so thanks Sarah. :-) So after a few wasted hours, I'm off to bed.

Little Freakin' Insects (and other annoying creepy crawly things)

2006-07-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

So today we were pipelining again. Yesterday was about 93 degrees, today was supposed to be hotter. Turns out it wasn't, but what was the killer were the damn bugs. So, I've decided to give the lowdown on nasty critters I deal with on a daily basis. Most of these guys (deerflies and mosquitos) tend to prefer moist or wet areas. Unfortunately, since these are the very things I get paid to look for, sucks to be me. Today, the deerflies were the worst, so we'll start there....

Tabanidae.The horsefly and deerfly family. Today brought new meaning to the awfulness of deerflies. My shoulders are sore today from swatting deerflies on my head and forearms. So we were out in the field for 9 hours. I don't remember a period of more than 2 minutes when I wasn't swatting at a deerfly. I became pretty proficient with the swat and rub technique because deerflies have this thing about getting hit really hard and falling off, only to regain consciousness (or whatever they have) half way to the ground and fly away again. The swat and rub allows for maximum friction and deerfly death. I'd say at least, AT LEAST I was swatting and killing 2-4 deerflies a minute. At least. Sometimes I would swat one on my head, pull it off to kill it (the squish till they pop technique) and another one would land on my hand at the same time! Stupid flies! So kill that one too. So....2 flies per minute times 60 minutes in an hour times 9 hours....I'll let you do the math. The answer: depressing. Let me tell you something else about deerflies. When they land they don't inject a sucker or something like mosquitos do. No, they use their saw like mouth parts to slice a gash in your skin and then lick up the blood pool that forms. Then they bounce (or die). So instead of secretion infested bumps, I ended up with hundreds of little tiny slices and bruises. Not sure which is worse...While I was walking I was thinking that a fantastic way to torture somebody would be to handcuff them and make them walk into a room full of deerflies and mosquitos so they can't swat them. I'm cruel...

How about mosquitos? Well, there were those too. Not as bad as deerflies though. I recall one particular incident, feeling a mosquito land on my forearm. As I looked to see it and swat it, and thought, "Hmm...it looks like a mosquito. I've never seen a mosquito with a red abdomen before." Of course, as this thought is occurring the "oh look a mosquito KILL IT" reaction is also occurring. So I do. And the little fucker juices out in, no lie, a puddle of something's blood no smaller than the size of a dime. And we're not talking smeared blood. I meant puddle when I wrote it. Ugh....

How about ticks? Those too. I figured out to wear those zipoff pants. Not for style, or even practicallity as they're supposed to be used. I've come to call the zipper joint and cloth covering there "Tick Traps". Ticks crawl up your pants and then get stuck there, and only once in a while do they get higher. Then, at the end of the day, you check your tick traps and dispose of any ticks you find. It's tricky, because once you flip up the tick traps, the ticks are no longer fooled and then proceed to all crawl up your thighs at once. Once they get to your upper body your chances of finding them unattached lessen significantly. I liken it to the old windows game where you are a little city and missiles are all coming down on you at once, and you have to shoot them out of the air before they flow up your little city. Anyways, the squish till they pop technique is much harder with ticks. They tend to be very resilient little fuckers. Today I probably pulled 20 off both legs, which is unusually high. But these guys always find a way to come back if you don't kill them so popping and seeing ooze is necessary. The worst is when you're driving and you find one. You have to pull it off, kill it, and then get it out the window without crashing. It must be killed because if you only put it out the window then it may blow back into the truck and now you don't know where it is. It'll only come get you later, and you might not feel it next time. I learn from experience. Afterwards you get the creepy crawlies (especially in bed that night) where you start feeling ticks crawling all over your body but then you look and nothing's there. Awful.

My hands and forearms are in a perpetual state of numbness from all the bites. It's this weird kind of feeling where they don't itch persay, but are all at the same time. So yeah, today was a good day. Deer flies from hell. Oh yeah I also got stung by something nasty (didn't see what, the hit, rub, and throw instinct was too quick cause this one really hurt) on the back of the neck. Now it's kinda big and puffy. I also got dehydrated even though I drank 4 liters of gatorate and a gallon of water. I also got cut on the finger by a sedge leaf. Which sedge? Who knows, there are over 200 of them. But it was sharp. And it cut me in like 3 places. Paper cut like, so now it stings. It would also sting when I'd try to swat the flies off my sweaty head and salt from sweat nastiness would get in it. I'm going to stop typing now...

Wings by the Pound and Trivia!

2006-07-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

So I'm back on the pipeline this week in Baxter, MN, working and also continuing the northern Minnesota dinner tour. Deric (partner in pipeline crime) and I went to this place called Grizzly's Bar and Grille on Monday night. They had a beer glass special where you pay 3.75 and get a 16 oz beer along with a Grizzly's Bar and Grille beer glass! Then each additional drink you get is 1.75. This is what it's like to drink in Baxter, MN. Cheap! Anyways while we were sitting there we were looking at the weekly specials. Tuesday was buy one burger, get one free (seems to be a theme here - The Uptown restaurant in Wadena also has this deal. I mean we're talking half pound burger and fries here, a whole plate not just a little burger. The Uptown also has all you can eat ribs on Tuesdays which, I might add, is amazing...they also taste good.) Anyways Wednesday night was the wing special. You get 2 pounds of wings and 60 oz of beer for 10.99. Only in northern MN. When a deal like this comes up, you take it. So tonight we went back to Grizzly's and ordered. Our waitress was a little confused at first, assuming that we'd split 2 lbs of wings. No, no....each. And the pitchers of beer? Each...but we shared as to not have a pitcher at the table for both of us. Now let me tell you, 2 pounds of meat is a lot. I probably had 24 wings. But these are not normal wings, no. These are probably twice the size of a regular "let's go out for wings" wing. Huge. I almost prefer them because you can eat them easier and while only paying half attention. Why was I only paying half attention? Because I was playing Buzztime!!

I'm sure you've all been to a bar and grille before where they have those trivia games that you follow along with on a TV. They ask a question and then the timer starts for you to buzz in on your own little pad which you have at your table and answer. The faster you get it, the more points you get. As time passes, they give clues and eventually pretty much flat out give the answer. There are 15 questions. The points start at 1,000 if you get it in the first 5 seconds or so. By the 3rd clue, the dead give away clue, the points are like 280 or so if you've got quick fingers on your keypad. So what do two nerdy biologist do when they're getting paid to eat wings and drink beer? Play trivia. So the first game we play was a Topix game, all questions relate to one particular topic. In this case, Famous Artists. Awesome. Why don't we ever get a "plants" category? Anyways, turns out Deric's dad was an art teacher for a while and he got guilted into taking an art appreciation class in college. He rocked on that one. My input was that I put two and two together and assumed Van Gogh died by committing suidice because he was crazy enough to cut off his own ear. Barely broke 8,000. The next one was also Topix, Science Fiction. Sweet! Star Wars, Star Trek, maybe some Asimov in there...should be good for both of us. Well. Not quite. We got like 5,000 points. Movies and TV series from the 1950's that were cancelled after one season. Sure...we know that. Ugly. Anyways, the next game was just random trivia and, as it turns out, our time to shine. We got the first 5 right for 1,000 each. Amazing start! Then we dropped to 986 or something. Quick hands, Deric! Then 999. We end up with 14,202 out of 15,000!! Of course since this thing is all networked, they show you how you did out of everybody playing at that time. Out of 12,000+ teams playing in the country, we got 10TH!!! 10TH!!! That's the top 0.1%!! Sweet! Anyways, we felt good about ourselves so we left on a high note. I'll admit though, that we'd have gotten 4th if I knew that it was Catherine Zeta Jones who won best supporting actress for Chicago and not Renee Zellweger. Damn!! We also have the top establishment record for the month. So if anybody reading this wants to best us, go to Grizzly's in Baxter, MN before July ends and beat 'Bryan'. (Deric decided our team name, not me). Now I'll go shrink into my bed and go from trivia king to oil pipeline peon tomorrow...

Happy 4th

2006-07-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July. To celebrate my girlfriend, Becky, and I went to see Dave Matthews Band on Sunday at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wi. It's about a 5 hour drive or so from St Paul, but well worth it. Even the 2 and a half hour wait to get out of the horribly organized parking lot after the show was worth it. This picture is actually from last year's concert (which we went to as well).

If you read about the concert people say that the setlist was awesome (it was). You can go here for the setlist. Actually, if you want to, you can even download the concert (it's legal, Dave's cool like that)...It's a torrent in FLAC, a lossless file format, but you can play it in WinAmp if you download the right plugin. The show is about a gig, and I'm not about to become tech support for FLAC or for torrents, so please try to figure it out on your own. Start with reading about it. Not like anybody will read this and actually want to download the concert, but it was pretty kickass so just in case...

Random thought of the day: Maybe I'll come up with a little graphic or something for each random thought of the day that I post. Oh, just FYI they won't be everyday. Thought of the day sounds good, and I won't make it thought of the week so I can give myself room to put up more than 1 a week. Anyways, here's today's. Avoid wild parsnip. (Pastinaca sativa) It's this nasty plant that has juices that cause photodermatitis. If you cut these guys down in the dark and got the juices all over you nothing would happen...until you went in the sun. Basically the chemicals make your skin less resistant to UV rays, so you get a really nasty 2nd degree sunburn wherever the juices got you. Though instead of being tanned after it goes away, mine looks like it's going to turn into a pretty nasty scar (cool!), so I don't suggust dousing yourself in it for a quick solution to pasty whiteness. In my particular case, I thought I had a mosquito bite under my watch band, so I didn't wear it it for a few days. Two days later I got a sweet lookin blister bubbling up, and it felt like a burn, which clued me into the parsnip. Don't even remember touching it. But anyways, avoid it if you can. Longwinded thought....

The Big Spill - Part II

2006-06-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

OK so if you haven't read the last post here then you should do so now. Here's an update about the day after on the pipeline.

So we're out on the north side of the Partridge River doing our thing, and I start digging with my soil auger. It's kinda flood plainish, and a remnant of melting from the last glaciation. Lots of sand surrounding the river. I get through about 18 inches of light brown sand and then pull out some black sandy loam. This is unusual, especially in a floodplain. I take a piece to see what it feels like. Feels sticky. Hrm...smells like petroleum. Hrm...sand is not supposed to be sticky and smell like petroleum.

Since this is mostly nerd talk anyways, I'll go ahead and say to any soil scientist that that's no B horizon. (Now I'll go twitch in the corner after realizing I said that) So we reported that we found an oil leak. We don't know the history of the area, maybe it was an old spill that they covered up years ago, who knows. But oil outside of the pipe where it's supposed to be seems to be becoming a trend these days...I'll keep everybody posted about the outcome.

The Big Spill

2006-06-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Something came about which gives me a good opportunity to explain a little bit about what I do. My title is "scientist", my business card says "biologist", and I like to say I'm a "wetland ecologist". I actually work for a consulting firm in the Twin Cities. We have a bunch of offices all over the midwest and western US, about 800 employees strong, and do mostly civil engineering. I work in the Natural Resources Group as a part of the Environmental Market Center. I mostly do wetland delineations. Think of a wetland as a swamp, bog, marsh, pond, whatever. I won't get into the technical definition, but what is important is that wetlands are regulated by the federal government (Executive Order #11990, Clean Water Act, amongst others) and by the state government in Minnesota. Most states have their own wetland protection laws now, differing slightly from the federal laws. So anyways, Joe Homeowner wants to build a shed on his property, but the place he wants to put it floods every spring (for at least 14 days). Well he can't build it in a wetland, but he needs to know where exactly this wetland is so he knows where he can build his shed. This is where I come in. I go out to the site to look at plants and dig holes to figure out exactly where the wetland boundary is. I put flags in the ground, then GPS a line around the wetland. Now Joe Homeowner knows where he can build his shed as to not get fined hugely. Anyways...short (kinda) explanation of what I do. So here's the story...
The Minnesota Pipeline Company wants to build a new pipeline from Canada to the Twin Cities oil refineries to meet increasing demand for oil. A big project, so they hire out another company to do the environmental work. This other company (to remain nameless) hires us to do a fourth of the wetland delineations for this pipeline. Our segment is 65 miles long through north/central Minnesota and parallels Minnesota Pipeline's existing pipeline. At the beginning of the project, we had to go to an 8 hour safety meeting explaining things like why not to dig holes on top of the pipe with millions of gallons of crude oil flowing through it. They are all about safety and how safety is their number one concern and there has only been one oil leak in like 60 years on their pipeline or whatever. They care about safety so much that we have to carry a "blunt tipped soil probe" (similar to this) to probe for pipes before we actually use a hand auger to dig 18 inches in the ground to see what the soils are like (this is part of the delineation process). We are mandated to carry this thing and can get in trouble if we don't have it. Ironic that the existing pipe is buried about 4 feet down, that our delineation requires us to dig to 18 inches max, and that our soil probe is only 24 inches long. Doesn't make sense to me. Hard hats too. I have a hard hat to protect me from things that may fall on my head while walking 65 miles through a cleared path 100 feet wide. Thank God I don't actually have to wear it, just strap it to my pack. Pain in the ass. Actually, we named our soil probe 'Paris' after a popular celebrity (also to remain nameless) because it's short, skinny, and useless. Anyways...we here's the juicy news. We didn't hear anything about it until my coworker's wife called and asked us about it. We had no idea. The pipeline ruptured!! About 20 miles southeast of where we were working. 67,000 gallons of oil were spilled from the pipe as it shot a geyser of crude oil 30 feet in the air. This photo is form the Brainerd Dispatch, a local paper which I conveniently picked up at my hotel where I'm staying this week.

See the article from the Minneapoils - St Paul paper, the Star Tribune, here...no word as to what caused it, but very interesting. Anyways, that's what I really wanted to write about. But I felt backstory was needed. So...there you have it. I'll try not to burst any pipes while I'm working...

Back in Action!!

2006-06-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

OK, so I got a blog ages ago when my sister, Sarah, really started getting into hers but I really haven't posted anything at all. Three words, that's it. Anyways, now that the summer is in full swing and I am off in the middle of nowhere working (I'll get to that sometime in the future) I guess I get bored, so here I am.
So I suppose the other reason I am writing here is that I got a new car. It's probably very cliche for a guy to make a first post with typical guy in car pictures, but we've already been over the point that this is, in fact, my second post. So there. Anyways, I inherited my dad's red 1992 Saab 900 2 door hatchback in 2003 when I went away for my senior year of college.

At that point it had about 146,000 miles on it, and it was still going. My friends at a Boy Scout camp where I went for 5 years and then worked for 6 after that affectionately named it the yuppi Nazi mobile, or YNM for short. It was only after that that they found out that Saab is a Swedish company, not German, but the name stuck. It's now up to 167k or so, including making a 1200 mile trip half way across the country from NY to MN, where I currently live. I've been putting money into the YNM here and there for the past several years, and about this time last year I decided to put a limit on my repairs: Anything requiring over 400-500 dollars in repairs would be cause for a new car. So a year went by and then I took it in for a new battery and oil change, at which point I was informed that my axle boots were worn to nothing and once I started hearing noises when I turn I have about 10 hours of driving time before my car could potentially fall apart doing 70mph. Of course, this could be fixed for 385 dollars....for the drivers side. The passenger side would be another 350. Poor YNM. So I had to hunt for a car. I was hoping for more notice than 10 hours. After a few test drives and visits with typical care salesmen, I settled on a Honda CRV. Color? Black, of course. Sadly I cleaned out the YNM. It was a good car.

Hanging in 'Sota...

2005-09-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

First (lame) attempt...