In the Footsteps of Dr. Foster

Had a nice little Memorial Day weekend out here. We ate ribs not once, not twice, but thrice. We also did some masonic work necessitated by the excessive spring rainfall:

Who patched up this retaining wall?

Put cancer in Lance Armstrong's ball?

Wee Dooooo. Wee Dooooooo.

I probably shouldn't tell you this, but we also hid an ancient secret behind one of the stones that the world's most powerful entities would literally kill for. Which stone, you ask? Well, the trick is realizing that the stones follow a non-Euclidean geometric pattern superimposed over a Fibonacci grid corresponding to the chapter headings in Plato's Republic. Once you figure that out, it's pretty obvious. What secret, you ask? Oh, simply a collection of arcane documents that would blow the roof off of everything we think we know about God, the origins of the universe, secrets of the ancient Mayan calendar, the stock market, and Sasquatch. Fine, it's a complete set of 1989 Donruss baseball cards and a copy of that Playboy that has Shannen Doherty in it.

On Monday, we, like Dr. Foster before us, went to Gloucester. It was sunny despite some haze from those wildfires up in Quebec, so no puddles were encountered and if they had been, we would not have stepped in them since we were on bicycle rather than foot. Thus, I think we'll probably go there again.

Travellers From Multiple States Converge On The Very Heart Of Darkness

Minnesotans from as far away as Houston, Boston, Minnesota, and Manhattan converged on Manhattan last week for a journey into the Heart of Darkness: the Bronx, or more specifically the new Yankee Stadium.

Our Colonel Kurtzes were not rogue military officers, however, but rather A-rod, who loves steroids, and Jeter, who may or may not be a peter eater. And in this version it was the colonels who hacked us to death with their machete bats vicariously through our hometown nine. But I'm getting ahead of the story a bit. The Boston delegation of Liz and myself started our trip through the jungles of western Massachusetts via the river of the Mass turnpike, where we passed the highest point (1,724 feet) on I-90 until South Dakota en route to Schenectady, NY. It was also Liz's birthday. We went there to attend Liz's cousin Lauren's senior photography exhibit at Union College. Her work has been described as "gritty" and "in black and white" and "good." Her pics should be up here soon if you want to check them out.

I don't know if we were told any other tales of old Schenectady, although we found out that the Erie Canal used to run through it, and also that the Erie Canal had been moved. The next day we drove into the Finger Lakes region, so named due to giving someone the finger having been invented there. Or because they're long and narrow. Whatever. There are seven of them so that explanation doesn't make sense unless you're a super-Mennonite. The important thing is they make good wine there, especially Riesling since the climate is a lot like Germany's. We headed south along lake Seneca, stopping at several wineries recommended by Liz's uncle Dick, Riesling connoisseur and frequent visitor to the region. It was pretty country and we left with a trunkfull of tasty white.

The next leg of our journey involved an early morning drive to a commuter rail station about an hour outside of NYC. We took a train to Harlem, where we met Drew at Minnesota's own Missy and filthy Canadian Rob's deluxe apartment. NY governor David Paterson lives in their building, but apparently he has a hard time seeing the benefits of living there. We dropped off our bags, donned our Twins gear, and took the subway to the ballpark. The stadium itself was universally panned. It had zero character save for the picket fence arches or whatever they're called that were also present at the old park. It was a fitting venue for the best and most soulless team money can buy to play their home games (upon further thought I believe that only A-rod, Teixeira (a two-time violator of the I before E rule), Sabbathia, and Burnett fit the bought player stereotype, but I'm not one to let facts get in the way of some good Yankee bashing). Unfortunately, the stadium's lacklustitude was exceeded only by the level of play exhibited by the Twins, who failed to put together anything in the way of offense. It was hat day, so at least I did my share to bleed the beast.

After the game, we rendezvoused with the remaining members of our expedition party, Ross and Gina, who, having seen A-rod's grand slam sink the Twins the previous night, had spent the day visiting museums while we swilled 12$ beers. We then went on a whirlwind walking/eating/train riding/buzz management tour of NYC, which culminated in a late night all-access VIP trip up the Empire State Building made possible by the executive card Missy obtained while doing real estate business with the ESB folks. I believe she's trying to sell all or part of the landmark, but considering today's economy and the spate of giant gorilla attacks of late I see it sitting on the market for awhile. Anyways, the views were nice.

The next day we walked around the city some more, during which time Lady Liberty was viewed, Ground Zero was somberly noted, Times Square was pointed at, Central Park was partially walked through, Anthony Bourdain's restaurant Las Halles was sat in, and Glee's Jane Lynch was walked past but unfortunately not high-fived. After that we loaded up Drew and drove back to Boston for the 3rd and final leg of the journey. Once on our home turf, we golfed, visited Cheers and Old Ironsides, made Drew eat oysters, and witnessed another sad Twins loss to the slightly less evil Red Sox. Not knowing when to quit, Liz and I completed the trifecta of Twins suckage last night. On the bright side, the first Twins victory we witness live this season will have to be on our first visit to target Field.

Back in STL

A couple weekends ago Liz and I headed back to check on St. Louis, the Hennies', Soren, and the moral development of our Godson Oden. It was a perfect spring weekend in the Lou, sunny and seventyish. Mike rented me a sweet road bike and we got in good rides on Sat. and Sun., 60 or so miles total. There's a nice trail that starts by the arch and runs along the Mississippi, featuring underground railroad crossings, industrial wastelands, and some nice views of Old Muddy. We even got to see a special treat one day--a burnt out car near the statue of Lewis and Clark. Tourists were having their pictures taken with it.

Culinarily, things were hit and miss. Our first meal from Blues City Deli was great as always. The owner Vince knows his sandwiches. I've maybe had a few as good but probably none better. That night we hit Square One, the brewpub across the street from our old lofts. We got off to a bad start right away when our friendly neighborhood bartender Art didn't recognize us. To say we were regulars is a major understatement and I'd even given him a bunch of Simpsons loot when we moved. I wanted tickertape or at least a hug. The wings were solid although they were out of IPA, their best offering in my opinion. My burger came out well done and I sent it back. Hennies' fried flounder fish and chips, usually the best thing on the menu was over fried. And when Hennies tells you something about cooking oil and its proper use you can take it to the bank. Since we left they changed the law in MO to allow bars to distill their own spirits. I had a hop liqueur that was interesting and dang refreshing. The next day I had an awesome tongue torta from this Mexican place we used to go to a lot. Mmmmmmm, tongue. By far the worst experience we had was at Mosaic, an upscale tapas joint downtown. We waited 40 minutes for our first round of treats to come out. When we asked about it they told us a group of 40 had just put their order in before ours. I was unsure as to why they had to prepare that entire order before at least bringing us our damn cheese plate. We ended up leaving after a couple plates, walked down the street, and were face deep in excellent sushi within 10 minutes. Yelp was informed. Our final meal was breakfast at Rooster, our favorite crepe spot. They messed up my order there as well but it was still pretty OK.

Sunday we headed down to the Hennies ranch in the Ozarks. There, we burned a winter's worth of brush Mike had been saving. There are/were two other piles this size.

The inferno was pretty epic, nearing Texas A&M homecoming levels.

While we were hosing down the surrounding grass, I could see young Soren, or more specifically his lily white behind back by the cabin. "Hey Hennies, I think Soren's trying to take a dump," I said, expecting him to have a problem with it. Instead, he said, "Oh, is he over by his poopin' rock?" He was. When in the Ozarks...

Here's the pooper in question through the heat shimmer mirage thingy (is there an actual term for that?)

As many of you know Oden had a pretty rough first year due to lung issues and prematurity. When we were there last summer he was basically confined to his room due to the risk of infection and had to be on oxygen pretty much all the time. He's doing much better now and it was pretty neat to see him tearing around in the style accustomed to children. Basically, going outside is like Christmas and polka dancing all rolled into one for him after being cooped up and attached to machines his whole life. His Caring Bridge page is linked to the blog so we can keep up with the little tike.

Liz, Oden and Soren at the Botanical Garden

Oden starting to get a little tuckered out at the Botanical Garden.



Soren and Liz feeding the fish at the Garden.

It was a good weekend. I played my first softball game (scrimmage, actually) on Sunday. It's modified fastpitch which made it pretty interesting. I got on every time I was up but two of those were on errors and the third play could have been made. I wore my Monkey Knife Fight shirt. It was nice to give it some action, even if not on the team for which it was designed. We crushed an inferior team then went to the VFW (our sponsor) for beer. We played two dart tournaments and I was on the winning team both times, which netted me 40 bucks. Everyone on the team was super "nice" and unbelievably Bostonian.

Amicus Curiae

I had my first* run-in with the law yesterday when I had to go report to jury duty at Suffolk County Superior Court. Unlike Liz who recently got to sit on a cool criminal case involving illegal machine guns, I was being considered for a civil case involving some oldish guy who fell in the parking lot of a bar in 2005. Booooo-ring. "Do you feel there are too many frivolous personal injury lawsuits" was one of the questions they asked everyone to consider in order to determine who was impartial. I was thinking that if a lawsuit is truly frivolous, isn't one too many? In any case, I had a high enough number that I was never even subjected to the thumbs up or down process from the judge or attorneys. The plaintiff's counsel was the stereotypical slimy lawyer, all cheap suit and jowls and thin mustache and thinning, slicked-back hair.

The day wasn't a total waste, however. They had a nice display in waiting room showing famous cases that had taken place in MA. I knew about Lizzie Borden, the "Trial of the Century" which took place in New Bedford in 1893. According to wikipedia, Lizzie was acquitted based on the fact that no murder weapon was found and no blood evidence was noted just a few minutes after the second murder. But in truth, she was convicted of delivering 39 and 40 whacks, respectively, but since the 40th and 41st were determined to have caused the deaths of her father and mother, respectively, she was acquitted. Interestingly, there was substantial fingerprint evidence at the scene which would have removed any doubt as to Liz's innocence or guilt, but the judge didn't believe fingerprint evidence was reliable.

I didn't know that the Sacco and Vanzetti crime/trial was held in Dedham, MA, otherwise known as the city where we go to Costco. It was a pretty interesting trial; I'd forgotten most of the ins and outs of the case that we learned about in school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti

After my long, three hour day watching the sausage of justice get made I met Liz for a really good steak sandwich that had blue cheese baked right into the bread. Now there's a precedent I can get behind.

* Not including:
Speeding, disfiguring card board cutouts for the purpose of scaring the crap out of Anoka cinema employees after hours (never charged, also acquitted on the secondary charge of accessory to school jeans ruining), failure to affix a tag to a legally obtained deer (convicted), suing a landlord for damage deposit (successfully), answering the door when the cops show up at parties (apparently not a crime if you're not a jerk to them), accessory to driving a mini-van into a fireworks storage facility (I was acquitted but my co-defendant was not. I believe that one went all the way to the Kansas supreme court), parking sticker fraud, misrepresenting a fraternity as a debate club for the purpose of fooling an innkeeper, and being in a dorm room in which alcohol was present (the last three were handled by the Gustavus Judiciary Board and I and my co-defendants were exonerated on all counts).

Schussssssssss

We headed up to New Hampshire last weekend to ski the now tripod-free White Mountains. It was a pretty drive and took just over two hours to reach northern N.H. Our neighbors said "Wow, you guys are going way up there" when we told them where we were going. I think Minnesotans and east coasters have different ideas about what constitutes a long distance due to the large disparity in state sizes. We stayed in Lincoln which was about a 10 minute drive from Cannon Mountain where we skied.

We got up there too late to ski on Friday so we explored the area a bit. We were right by "The Old Man of the Mountain" which used to look like this:

but now looks like this:

Stupid erosion.

We found it funny that the image on N.H. license plates and highway signs is of something that no longer exists. We decided that their license plate slogan "Live Free or Die" is only slightly less negative than D.C.'s "Taxation Without Representation." We also saw an indian head:

and hiked to a "basin" over packed and melting snow trails in our street shoes. It was slippery. The basin turned out to be similar to a pothole, cool rounded shapes that get eroded out of rock by the long term swirling of smaller rocks.

That night we ate dinner at a local brew pub. The beer was decent but not awesome, same for the food. We sat at the bar which was pretty busy by the time we left. There had been two cougar-aged women hovering behind us for ~the last half hour we were there. I hadn't really noticed them but Liz said one of them was standing so close to her that she could feel her cougary booze and antelope meat scented breath on her neck. When we stood up to leave one of them said something like "You two go have fun by yourselves back in your hotel room." I said "You two have fun sitting on these bar stools." Only later did Liz explain to me that she was implying that we sat too long on said stools and/or they had more of a right to them than we did. So, philosophical question: if you are trying to be a smart ass but you are so bad at it that your target doesn't even realize you were trying to be, are you still an A-hole? Only a tree falling in an earless woods knows for sure.

I didn't take it too hard since if there's one thing I learned from Blue Crush, Dances With Wolves, Hostel, Doc Hollywood, and the Karate Kid Part 2, it's that locals don't like outsiders--especially city slicker outsiders--and if you want to gain their respect and get the town hottie to fall for you you must do so through:

1. Sports feats, possibly in head to head competition against the mean town champion who's skill level closely matches your own and is also vying for the affections of the aforementioned town hottie (chances are good, however, that he/she is actually a nice person and was only lashing out because he/she felt threatened by you. Alternately, their change of heart might be a ploy to get you to let your guard down so they can stick some sort of Oriental fan knife in your guts)

2. Killing buffaloes.

3. Walking pigs.

Also, if you don't somehow gain their respect they'll torture you to death. Also, sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and fall in love with NFL quarterback Jerry O'Connell.

Wait, where was I? Oh yes, skiing. I've been out west a handful of times, gone to the Porcupines in MI, and done most of the places in MN, but I didn't know what to expect from the east coast. Basically, I was impressed. It wasn't Whistler in size or height but it was better than MI and of course better than any place in MN. It had runs I was afraid to go down. Liz, skiing for her first time in 20 years (and she only went down the bunny hill once on that trip), did pretty well after an initial slow motion crash into a snow fence. By the end of the day she was turning quite well and doing hockey-style stops. More importantly, she had fun so we'll hopefully have a new winter activity to enjoy as a family. Here's video proof that she actually did it. We posted the video in 3/4 speed so you can actually see her technique.

kreusening

So Chris Choukalas, S.F. based former Gustie M.D., mentioned kreusening on Facebook the other day and it reminded me of the conversation we had on the subject a few years ago. We were in STL or Chicago where somebody or other was drinking an Old Style and I don't think any of us recalled having noticed the can's reassurance that the product had been "Fully Kreuzened." In any case nobody there knew what it meant and we wondered whether, it being Old Style, kreusening was just some B.S. thing that every beer does or if we should be outraged that other breweries were offering incompletely kreuzened beer. I've been on a few brewery tours and I've never heard the process mentioned, but either way I kind of spaced on calling my congressmen to demand legislation requiring that it be completed once started. Chris' status update on it reminded me again so I did a little wikipediaing.

Turns out kreusening is the same thing as bottle conditioning, adding a little active wort to the finished product which allows the fermentation process to continue after bottling and supposedly cleans up the flavor of the beer by reducing levels of diacetyl and acetaldehyde. I've never been on the G. Heileman tour so I don't know what what they mean by "fully." Kinda makes you wonder what Old Style would taste like normal. Apparently worse than mediocre.

On the home front, we had a new addition to our back yard menagerie. An opossum. Big one. It walked outside our office window the other evening and went under our deck. I went out and bravely confronted it and which apparently caused it to die of terror. I didn't want to examine the body too closely due to the fact that they can carry rabies, so I left it for the raccoons, confident that the problem was solved.

The dog days of winter

So AoL&R (yep, shorthand) reader and cancer battler Dave Strand was recently lamenting our lack of blog posts and so I explained to him that we've fallen into a a bit of a winter rut and haven't been doing anything interesting enough to warrant typing about it. Dave was having none of it and even provided the following suggestions for interesting activities in which we might participate: attend a Tea Party rally and get Sarah Palin's take on stem cell research and how Obama is the devil, set up a stand selling fake revolutionary war relics on the Freedom Trail, or stand on a peach crate at Copley Plaza and shout that Paul Revere was an alarmist.

All great suggestions, but not exacly our style. So rather than listen to any more of his new agey Carpe Diem B.S. or needy demands to be entertained during his recovery, I figured since it was 50 and sunny this weekend we'd go out and take a few pictures of some signs that I found mildly amusing and make them hilarious with zany captions.

You can take this road to Petco or else you can take the highway.

Whoever made this street a one way was a bit...wait for it...short sighted.



"Hello, 911? There's a huge fire in the orphanage downtown!"
"B.F.D."
"I knew you east coasters were a bit jaded but, damn."

Evelybody!

Oh sure, Wang is lawyer, Wang has a nicer sign--you think I don't know he's always been your favorite!? Nothing I do is ever good enough for you! Me so solly I couldn't go to law school like Wang. Well guess what mom and dad, I sell insurance and I'm damn good at it. That's right, his real name is Wang, and I'm Chong, but noooo, Wang said we needed American names so we turned our backs on our heritage! Well, my eyes are wide open for the first time and no, I will not sit down and I don't care if I'm ruining Chinese new year. And one more thing--Steven is not just my "butler." No, you're drunk!

Racsim: it's ALWAYS funny.