Horse Manure Park

I don't understand baseball. The teams play 162 games a year, which is ridiculous in itself. The ridiculous becomes absurd when they have to play an extra game to decide who goes to the playoffs. I am referring specifically to the Twins and White Sox. Why don't they just use their regular season series record to decide who goes to the playoffs? That way, the regular season would actually be meaningful. Just think, you play 162 regular season games for nothing. That is simply stupid.

Most of my friends and family know that Paul McCartney is my hero. To me, he is beyond a legendary musician. He’s a cultural icon, a humanitarian, a philanthropist and a very savvy businessman. I admit that when I saw him in concert on September 23, 2002, I was more than a little star struck. But the thing I most admire about him is that he does things his way and he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. And this includes laying his life on the line for something he believes in. Last Thursday, September 25th, McCartney played before 45,000 fans in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was the first concert by a major western artist in that country in nearly four decades. Other big stars have been invited to play in Israel over the years, but all of them have declined or canceled because of death threats. Indeed, McCartney received multiple death threats over the last two weeks. Radical Muslim cleric Omar Bakri vowed to kill McCartney if he stepped on stage in Israel. “Mr. McCartney will become

I started another work week last night. Back to the same old crap. We had just three patients in ICU and their diagnoses were: acute alcohol intoxication; intentional overdose with suicidal ideation; acute alcohol withdrawal. Not why I went into nursing, trust me. It is getting old. Very old. On Sunday, Scott T. came out and removed a light switch, which we needed to do to install the backsplash for the new counter tops. In the evening we went over to the Stokes's for Gabriel's first birthday party. We had burgers and brats, a couple cold beers and talked shop (i.e. football). We called it an early evening, though, as Ava started running out of gas and we were home by 9:30 p.m. Scott came back out on Monday and installed a switch for our new garbage disposal and got all of the wiring ready to go. Hopefully next week at this time we will be close to having our new counter tops installed (it's a relatively small job, so I don't think it will take very long). By

Gee, can you tell I have had a few days off? I actually can sit down and type something at the end of the day. Last night Beth and I went out to Maucieri's Italian Bistro in Crosslake for our belated anniversary dinner. The food there is amazing; authentic Italian stuff, owned by a genuine Italian from Chicago (click on the link to read more about it, even though it isn't very well written). Their onion soup is great: they add a splash of vinagrette to their beef bullion -- perhaps the difference between Italian onion soup and French onion soup? -- and it is unreal. Beth and I got there at 7 p.m. and we thought there might be a few people out and about, but since we are now in the "off-season/non-summer" hours, we thought there wouldn't be much of a crowd. Good heavens, we had to wait 20 minutes for a seat! The place was packed. Just goes to show, if you make great food with good service, word will get around. Today we kept working on our chores. I split a

I decided to do a little housekeeping this evening. I've always thought of my blog as a kind of story of my life (a very boring story, but a story nonetheless), so what better place to write in than a book? Or at least a virtual book. Or at least something that looks like a book of the virtual variety. Never mind. I haven't been doing anything exciting over the last few days, but I have been getting my list of chores gradually crossed off. I won't get it all done before heading back to work, but at least I will have made a nice little dent in it. I got "Phase 1" of our backyard landscaping project done yesterday. Almost. I needed 124 feet of stone edging and I ended up with 123 feet. Instead of squaring off the corners, I rounded them off, and it must have cost me three inches each corner. I am exactly one stone (12 inches) short. That's okay; very easily fixable, right? I think this is going to end up looking pretty nice when we're done. I met

I will update things here since it is still a little too early to start mowing my lawn. I have so much crap to do this week, I doubt I will get it all done. So many things that I have meaning to do before the snow flies... and suddenly I'm on the clock. These little projects seemed so far away back in May and June. Now there's a chill in the air and some of the leaves are starting to turn. Even Christmas items are starting to be displayed in stores (Fleet Farm and Menard's, to be exact). Yes, you read that right, Christmas in September. Beth and I celebrated our anniversary on Sunday. Well, I guess "celebrated" isn't the right word. She went shopping at WalMart and I watched football, then went to work. But at least we both remembered the date. We would like to go out for dinner later this week, if it's possible. Our preference is to go to the Pine Cove Inn in Wadena , which is where we had our wedding reception, but I'm not 100% sure that

It's 2 a.m. and I have decided to post a little something. As you have probably guessed, I am at home on-call again. Last night, I was called in at 12:30 a.m. and I made pretty good money. I am sitting waiting for the phone to ring again. I will write a little something to stay awake a little while longer. Kathy posted this on her blog, so she beat me to it... but I am going to say a little something about it too. The world's first "super collider" is about to be launched. It is called the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), located between France and Switzerland and scientists are trying to get a glimpse of what the universe looked like one nanosecond after the Big Bang (assuming that the Big Big theory -- keyword: THEORY -- is an accurate and correct working hypothesis of how the universe was created). These egg-head scientists are going to do this by whipping protons around a 17-mile long loop of underground magnets (cooled by liquid helium), accelerating the parti

The football season has officially kicked off, so I have been a bit preoccupied. Like my wife says, " Due to the start of football season, life as we know it has ceased ." That's pretty much true at 13266 Norway Drive. Last weekend I had my two fantasy football drafts, but it takes a lot out of me. I'm not the young stud I once was and two late nights, a dozen cigars and 24 gallons of beer later, I am ready for some detox time. Actually, I took vacation last night because it was the kick-off Monday night double-header and I watched the pathetic Vikings game. It was a good thing I did not go to work, because I was in a very foul mood after that game. Tonight, much to my pleasant surprise, I was called to stay home on-call at around 9:30 p.m. I think the last time I got to stay home on-call was over a year ago. I usually work charge nurse, so I am not able to stay home, so I take advantage of it the rare times I can. Of course, I slept in late today and took a n

I don't think things could get off to a rockier start for the RNC. First, Hurricane Gustav blows everything off course one entire day, taking much of the wind out of the Republicans' sails. Then, while the national spotlight is on the Gulf Coast, the McCain campaign quietly announces that Sarah Palin's 17 year-old daughter is knocked up (when you are married and pregnant, you are "expecting" -- when you are single and pregnant, you are "knocked up." These are my rules, folks. I make 'em up). I'm sure McCain and company thought the national media would minimize this story, since it was announced during the onslaught of another natural disaster, but the media is feasting on this like a fat man at the Ground Round. Palin herself says that she is "proud" that her daughter is keeping the baby, and she is "happy and looking forward" to becoming a grandma. Holy shit, is this ever the Polly Anna version of things! These upbeat, posi