This is a Doozie!

I have always been a jigsaw puzzle fan but this puzzle, I don't know about. At 5000 pieces it is BIG but it is also a very challenging puzzle. After 3 months we only have a couple hundred pieces together but still I am hoping we can finish it by Fall. If we miss the deadline we might have to have a puzzle burning party. If we finish it I think we should glue it together and give it as wedding gift. I mean seriously what could be more meaningful than a gift you spent 500 hours on?

I found a famous landowner!

So my quest to find a famous landowner is over. If my co-workers had a dollar for everytime they had to tell me that no, SD landowner Dale Murphy, did not play baseball for the Braves and no, ND landowner Kevin Brokaw, is not Tom Brokaw's brother, they would not work here anymore.

The good news came in today that the Timberwolve's owner Glen Taylor owns land in one of our Iowa windsites. According to Forbes, Glen Taylor is worth 1.8 billion dollars, is # 59 on the Forbes 400 List and is from Comfrey MN. This guys seems like a gem, I guess he owns over 7000 acres of land which he donates to small farms to keep the small farm thriving. Glen that is awesome! Now if he could just make the Timberwolves thrive he would be a hero.

Hey what's on your upper lip?

Looks like moustache on the left and strawberry margarita on the right.

Ben and I hosted a party at his place Saturday night. We had a good turnout, a good time, and a good fire but something was missing. Only old people came, seriously everyone was gone by 1 am, nobody had to stay over because they couldn't drive and the day after we still had a fridge plump full of beer. Hello people are you 25 or 60?

March Madness

or sadness, depending on what side of the coin you fall on. Ben and I snuck out of work on Wednesday morning to see the Willmar High School girls basketball team play in the state tourney. Unfortunately they lost to a private metro team, but hey at least they made the dance.
There is basketball all around right now, which is very cool. I am hoping to snag tickets to a couple of NCAA games but tickets are scarce and prices are high so we will probably just watch on TV like everyone else. We are doing brackets at work and one co-worker, who is not a b-ball fan, has all the picks correct after Thursday's game. I am amazed, I only got about half right with all the first round upsets.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys.

I found this on Jason Mulgrew's blog and it is seriously the biggest time killer ever, but funny. Real funny.

Come on curling is cool

We went and checked out some curling last night in St. Paul. I won't lie and say it was fast paced and exciting nor will I tell you that the participants were particularly athletic or attractive but it was fun. I think it is fun learning something new and trying to figure out the rules and strategy of curling was enjoyable. Plus all the people who work there are all real nice and welcoming to visitors.

I guess with all the Minnesota Olympic hype, curling is the THING to do so of course we are going to give it a go. The St. Paul Curling Club offers a 2 hour clinic for people who are curious and they loan you all the equipment you need. How sweet for only $10.

The scoring is a little confusing, but once you get it is really simple, like horseshoes. What is the score of this end?

So how come I have never heard of this?

So apparently today is International Women's Day. It was on my one a day comic calendar so I looked it up. It is legit so why have I never heard of it? Here are some more holidays, I am not so familiar with...

-March 14 - Purim, must be Jewish or something?
-April 20 - Admin Professionals Day -
-May 20 - Armed Forces Day
-October 3 - Yom Kippur - Jewish again, I think
-October 16 - National Boss Day
-October 24 - United Nations Day

Hmm this post is going nowhere, I gotta stop. I did read that if you have a blog that was once easy to post on but you suddenly find yourself with nothing to write about you must be happy.....or maybe bored.

Good Advice

Oh and don't cross your eyes either, you know what happens then. This picture is not from Kentucky, it is from Virginia, MN. Believe what you see in North Country.

Funny Money

Wow the new $10 bill is odd looking. I don't think it looks fake like Monopoly money but more like someone spilled Tang on it. Seriously who chose the orange colored back?

Ode to Anton

Today's is my co-worker Anton's last day on the job. Here's to you, bearded one. Anton is leaving the world of wind to travel the world. He says he may come back to work here someday but who knows, once you leave the desk and office you may never return. Anyways I wish him luck and will miss him and his extreme green ways. On the bonus side I am moving my desk to his window. Yeah I get a window and a whole bunch more work...............pfft!

Goodbye Olympics

So the Olympics have come and gone again, oh sad day. I do think there is room in this world for an all Olympic all the time sports channel. That would be so sweet. Of course with internet video streaming getting so big word is the next Olympics will make much more stuff available than can be seen on NBC. That would be pretty sweet but come on, bring on the 72 Olympics in Munich, I swear I would watch!

Oh Man

These riverfront high rises are literally across the street from my apartment building. I never thought they would get approved, I mean this is the most historic part of Mpls. The ongoing construction is going to make the peaceful neighborhood not so peaceful. What a bummer, maybe it is time to move..............

I wish I would have downloaded some music off of i-tunes on Wednesday night. Apparently the one-billionth song was downloaded and the lucky person won an i-Mac, 10 i-pods and and $10,000 to spend on i-tunes. Jeez that would be a full time job downloading 10,000 tunes.

Happy President's Day

What a dumb holiday, but hey I got the day off. We were going to go snowshoeing at the nearby state park on Saturday but the event was canceled due to the frigid temps. It was pretty cold, but I think we would have been able to handle it. I did throw the shoes on my mom and send her to the backyard to try it out. I guess she was imagining snowshoeing to be something like skiing because she tried sliding her feet across the snow. All I said was "Mom you just gotta walk", and after that she had it down. Here she is impersonating the Abominable Snowman.
I also got a nice drive by photo of some bad luck with a window, a broken water pipe and the frigid temperatures. I tell you some cool stuff happens in Willmar

Monday afternoon I headed to St. Cloud to visit some family including my godson Soren. Apparently there have been some water problems (E. coli) in St. Cloud which I found out about after having some water with dinner. Thank goodness the water didn't make me sick and as far as I know my family is all okay, even the little guy.

Why meth sucks

and the people who use it do too. Yeah now you know what I think about illegal drugs. Check out this PBS website for a bunch of interesting information and some nasty pictures of the effects of meth.

Here's my Valentine....

a guy with no shirt, a mohawk and a calculator.

Awesome you say? I hear you, Ben is my awesome guy!

Happy V-Day

If you have a sweetheart, whatever you do don't buy them Strawberry Hershey Kisses. They smell horrible and taste worse. We had a basket of candy delivered to the office which included these strawberry things and the smell is overwhelming. Good grief, I can hardly smell with my sinus issues and it is still this bad?

This is just a warning, a piece of friendly valentine advice, stay AWAY from these candies. The smell totally reminds me of the strawberries and cream air freshener spray that was in the bathroom of my sophomore year dorm that I shared with 5 other people. Any candy that reminds you of poo should be banned, gross.

Even grosser, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Word on the street is they are no longer. Maybe he gave her some of that crappy candy or wait maybe she finally realized she is dating a crazy freak. That seems more like it to me.

Thanks for the snow

The snow and trails at Mora were great for this weekend's Vasaloppet. We had 9 skiers in our group that completed either the 13, 35 or 42 km course. That is a long ways on skis people. It has been so nice to get some cold weather and a little snow and ice but of course the second it gets cold enough to snow I get a sinus infection, what luck.

Well the Winter Olympics are in full swing and of what I have seen it has been pretty good. I don't really have cable TV but do get the USA network which has better coverage than the gloss-overed glam that is NBC. Unfortunately USA's prime time coverage is from 2 to 10, in the morning. If only I had TiVo instead of a 10 year old finicky VCR.

The Winter Olympics are here!

And as you may already know, I am a huge fan. There has been alot of confusion in regards to the host city, is it Turin or Torino? Personally I could care less how it is pronounced, could we just get some timely coverage of the games? At the 04 games in Greece half the results were posted all over the internet and television news before the events were even televised. I want some excitement like Atlanta in 96 when the women's gymnastics team won on a broken ankle. Nobody knew the results early because it was televised LIVE! Now that was cool but this is not.

Local Olympian Maria Lamb knits and sews civil war costumes in her spare time? Dude you are 19 and a world class speed skater not 75 with cataracts and swollen ankles, what in the world. Poor girl must have been home schooled, oh yep she was. Home schooled and no braces for those bucky toothers, that girl is moving home after the Olympics and will never leave. Please cheer Maria on as these Olympic games are going to be the highlight of her life. Like I should talk, making the Olympics would be the highlight of my life, without a doubt.

Hah, I knew he would wise up!

Now if he would just come out of retirement and I would get to see him ride, 2006 could be the best year ever.
Thanks to Munce for tipping me off on this exciting development.

WHAT?

Wow that really stinks.