Incorrect Coding!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs lost my sense of belief as soon as they incremented the variable for toast, but placed it behind a // comment, and yet it still rained toast.

Siding

We're having our house resided. We put it off as long as we could, but bits and pieces were starting to fall off and it was looking a bit low rent. So when we received a check to fix one wall because of the hail damage we had, we opted to fix all four for twice the price (the easiest sort of math), and to use prepainted cement hardie board rather than dentable aluminum siding. They've been working on it for a week with a break when they ran out of the maroon edging, but it's coming along.

Front of the house. You can't see the garage where Pooteewheet scribbled "health care for everyone" on the wrapping. She's in the process of painting those wooden posts a matching maroon. The area around the bird bath is where we're going to put in a drop and some edging and wood chips and extend the cover a bit further out to eliminate a bit of mowing. The bird bath was Steve's before and he was nice enough to give it to us for yard decoration.


Back of the house. Unfortunately, the storm windows back here are pretty rotted out, so I have to order new ones.


Edge of the "Minnesota Room" where you can see some of the siding and trim. The color of the siding isn't that much different from what our house looked like before, but the maroon edging really adds a nice bit of color.

10 Lessons for Teabaggers

This reminds me I want to write about dogging and hogging, but I'll save that. Conner had a link over to Crooks and Liars, and I enjoyed it enough to want to share it. Minnesota has a starring role in #5. Republican States Have the Worst Health Care.

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/10-lessons-for-tea-baggers

Geocaching, Eagan Style

Eryn and I went geocaching yesterday and hit 7 geocaches (all found), as well as swinging by her geocache, I Have a Cachity, to place her tooth fairy geobug. We were out long enough that I scored a sunburn. There are some SPOILERS below if you're a local geocacher, so that's your warning not to look if you don't want to know.

This was the closest geocache to our house. See it? It's tricky. I almost gave up on this one as I looked and looked in this very spot and didn't notice it at first.


Ah...that bolt doesn't belong there.


Some perspective on the size of this nano. Love Eryn's shirt. Not sure why she has the serious face. She was having a great time.


Klund has been here. He forgot his pants while geocaching.


For CookieQueen and LissyJo. I suspect they know where to find this location.


Not sure if you can see the cache in this picture, but if you go to the big version, maybe you can spot it.


Out in the woods looking for the Girl's cache and Jackpot cache. We came away with a Pokemon card Eryn didn't own, and a few gems. We left behind zombies. After all, if you leave a girl zombie and her boyfriend, it's like mystery date, which is very much a girls' cache type item(s).


Me, sporting my geocaching gear.


Here's the tooth fairy geobug we put in Eryn's cache (and exchanged for a button from the Rainbow Coalition that says "Hug me, I'm a homo." Her goal is to hit all 50 states and the U.S. protectorates, visiting children and collecting teeth to bring back to Minnesota for cold storage.


A close up of the MN Geofairy.


Our last cache of the day. Heine. I'm backwards. Get it? It's HILARIOUS! Eryn rolled her eyes a lot, but took the picture anyway.

Last Hanging in Montana

My father once mentioned that he had witnessed a hanging while a boy in Montana. I've always suspected he witnessed a reenactment or that grandma took him off to see the gallows at some local fair and scared the little kid out of him. Given the last execution was 66 years ago and a semi-private affair, that would put him pretty close to 0 years old, so I suspect I'm right. But I like to do a bit of research, so I dug up the information below at the Missoula website, "Missoula County Sheriffs Buried in the Missoula Cemetery" (Mary Ellen Stubb, Sexton, MT). Presumably this sentence, "The specially made gallows for Coleman's hanging were eventually located in a dusty old section of the Missoula County fairgrounds," pertains to what scarred my Dad. He'll have to wrack his memory to see if he can remember the details. Hopefully I'm not taking away a cherished memory, but replacing it with a more calming version (and I really hope he didn't see a hanging unsanctioned by the state...e.g. lynching. But by the 1950s anti-lynching legislation should have pushed those to the south, such as Emmett Till's death, which was a precursor to the Civil Rights movement, was 1955).

It's interesting that the sheriff involved was a MacLean, as my family is supposedly related to them (Scottish clan-wise) if you go back far enough.

Last Legal Execution in Montana.

September 10, 1943, the last legal execution in state of Montana was overseen by Sheriff MacLean. Philip 'Slim Coleman Jr., 24 years old, was accused of viciously killing Carl and Roslyn Pearson at Lothrop, Montana. He had robbed them of $200. Coleman escaped in the Pearson family car which was later discovered abandoned in Drummond. A large manhunt was activated by Sheriff MacLean. From the time Coleman was apprehended, he had a need to brag about his dirty deeds. He showed no remorse, instead, he was extremely cheerful and commented how 'funny' the whole situation was. He became more serious the day before his scheduled hanging. At that time Coleman told of 23 other murders he had committed since he was 14 years old, growing up in the black ghettos of St. Louis, Illinois. In a dictated confession the night before he died, however, he only gave details of eight of those murders. The confession is said to still be in Missoula but inquiries have not found it. It is also believed that none of Coleman's confession was ever used to solve unsolved murder mysteries. Coleman had refused to be visited by the only local negro minister, Father Webster Williams. In the end, Coleman was baptized into the Catholic faith and accompanied to the gallows by Father Henry L. Sweeny. The gallows were specially built inside the jailhouse and the hanging was done in a very quiet, dignified manner with no news reporters and only a few invited guests. All former hangings had been conducted in the open jail yard with a stockade placed around the gallows and the infamous "Gallopin' Gertie‟ gallows used. The specially made gallows for Coleman's hanging were eventually located in a dusty old section of the Missoula County fairgrounds. They have since been re-located to the Fort Missoula Historical Museum.

Two Videos and a Bank

Two videos I saw recently that I like:

Weird Al sings "CNR" for JibJab.


Hey Alan. I hadn't seen the shark portion before. Very funny.


And I think I really need this:

Bike Classic 2009

It was a somewhat lonely St. Paul Bike Classic this year, relatively speaking. No LissyJo or Dad. No Mean Mr. Mustard (plantar fasciitis - but he did volunteer, so we stopped at the first rest stop for the first time ever to see him helping out and to ask him whether Eryn's snotty napkin belonged in the compost container...it did). No Kyle (elbow nerve). No Ming and Logan (work - unfortunate release). No Christy (unknown). No Sandy (no Christy, among other things). No Brady (probably hanging with Ming at the unfortunate release). No Erik (riding later with his new friends). No Doug (bike stolen after RAGBRAI). No Dan (he never rides with us, he does the 30+15). And a few others.

The sole attendees were Alan, Brian (new this year, works in the same row as me at work, and biked all the way up from Eagan and back), me and Eryn on the tagalong. The problem with that setup is that there was no one slow to regulate my speed, and I just try to keep up or set a brisk pace. So by the time we were done with the ride I had an average speed of 12.5 mph. If I was on a flat or slight downhill, that might be ok, but hauling a tagalong and six year old behind a mountain bike up the river bluffs of St. Paul, that's about 2.5 mph faster than is advisable. After breakfast at the St. Clair Broiler, I went home, inspected the heat rash developing on my arms and sides, and promptly fell asleep for two hours.

So this year, no pictures of people exiting toilets, no videos of crazy old dancing ladies, no stories about thongs. Just a few nice pictures of us on the ride.

Eryn at Indian Mound Park. She was excited to learn that the people way down on the road below us (where the river is) were bicycling where we had been before climbing up the ridge. She was more excited when we went down the big hill before the park, topping out at about 30 mph. She loves the speed.


Eryn and I at about the midway point.


Alan and Brian, probably waiting for me to get back on my bike.

St. Peter Geocaching

Over the long weekend, we spent two days in St. Peter, Minnesota, once again hosted by the Klunds and the Klund-ish grandparents. You'd think we'd see less of the Grandklunds now that two of them have moved into an RV, but they were all there. It makes for a kickin' Wii crowd and cards crowd most visits. And they were there to share the caramel apple pie we bought at Jim's Apple Orchard.

We'd gone past the big yellow signs for Jim's a few times, but never stopped because it was usually off season. But this time, both going down and coming back, there were dozens of cars. I recommend stopping. My apple caramel pie was hot when they handed it over. There are hundreds of kinds of honey and jam (beer and root beer) and apples. And there's something like 300 kinds of candy, which kept Eryn entranced for some time. If you've driven far enough south on 169 from the cities, you'll recognize the place from Eda Cherry's blog (via MNSpeak).

We spent the weekend eating, gaming, geocaching, and riding the Red Jacket Trail (named after a Seneca Indian chief). I've never met anyone other than Kevin who thinks a family ride with tagalongs involves an initial five miles of bicycling up hill. But it made for a lot of exercise in a short trip.

We found three geocaches in St. Peter. This is your spoiler warning if you like to geocache down that way. I'll be ruining some of the fun if you read on.

The location of the first cache. So cunningly hidden that you can't even see the Klunds milling about in the photo.


There they are! It's like they appeared out of nowhere right next to the cache. It looks hot and dry, but there were a startling number of mosquitoes hanging out just waiting for geocachers.


Cache #2 follows the geocaching rule, "If it looks out of place, suspect it." That goes double for chunks of cement in the woods. We flipped it over, and there was the micro.


The only cache that was really in the thick of it. And tricky to boot. Klund had the clue, but it's still hidden plainly in sight.


A few Klunds roll the dice on avian flu and bird mites.


Once it's ascertained it's a cache, the elder Klund is willing to touch it. I don't know why he's standing like that. It sort of reminds me of old movies where actors walked stiffly and carried both arms crooked and near their midsection. Like Charlie Chaplin. Which reminds me of a joke. What do you call Charlie Chaplin's horse? Snow Patrol. Or something like that. It was funnier in person.


Finally, unrelated to geocaching, a post for Mrs. Klund.


And, according to this post, watching someone else do it on YouTube is reason enough to try it yourself...


And in case you think only guys are that stupid, here's a woman doing the same thing. I think that's a copy of Contemporary Dentistry she's using. I think it's interesting that they're actually referred to as Bible Cysts because this is a traditional method of removing them.

Bee Car!

I could talk about what little I saw of the President's address between working and reading to Eryn, but instead I'm just going to mention that in the parking lot today, on my way home, I realized as I was walking to my car that the vehicle next to mine was covered in bees (but was not actually a bee, like this picture on Flickr). Then I realized it was worse! They were wasps! My allergies to bees are questionable. I believe I was stung during Elroy Sparta a little over a week ago and survived. And many years ago I was stung by three at once and didn't exhibit even a bit of puffiness. But the last two times I was stung by a wasp involved softball sized swellings and giant baby-looking appendages where my wrist or ankle vanished under the swelling. A car covered in them, immediately next to mine, is problematic, particularly as my car was on the flight path and they kept bouncing off the windows and roof.

There's no great ending where I'm texting this to blogger as I lie swollen in the company lot. I managed to sneak in between wasps and then sat there, observing them feasting on what seemed to be sap all over the neighboring car. I'm going to have to watch for that when I park tomorrow morning.

In the spirit of yesterday's post, I offer the collective nouns for bees, because there are so many of them, at least according to Wiktionary. I find it interesting that the collective noun can vary based on whether the bees are wild or domesticated, around the queen, or a secondary group, or in flight vs. not-necessarily-in-flight.

• bees: A bike of (wild) bees. ?
• bees: A byke of (wild) bees. ?
• bees: A cast of bees (a secondary swarm)
• bees: A cluster of bees (workers around queen).
• bees: A colony of bees
• bees: A drift of bees - in flight ?
• bees: An erst of bees.
• bees: A game of bees.
• bees: A grist of bees.
• bees: A hive of bees. (standard)
• bees: A rabble of bees.
• bees: A stand of bees.
• bees: A swarm of bees - in flight. (standard)

Collective Nouns

You'd think I'd blog more. I went from Elroy-Sparta to the State Fair to Valley Fair, to friends on Saturday, to St. Peter on Sunday and Monday. That's a lot of out-and-about for such a short time. Eryn loved Valleyfair, although she and I didn't go on any of the biggest rides. She was content to ride the monster (octopus) and mad mouse (four person roller coaster) and see the magician and Imax. I was content to do those things as long as there was a ride between each of the octopus rides.

Addendum: I was just watching Zimmern's Bizarre foods, and he was at a restaurant in Beijing that serves only penis dishes. He referred to a variety of penises and I thought, "Hey, I wonder if that's the collective noun?" But elsewhere on the web people refer to a knob of penises and a gaggle of penises, both of which are much funnier.

Kyle was pondering the collective noun for iPod over at Facebook, which had me looking around for a good list. Wikipedia keeps an A-K list and an L-Z list while yourdictionary breaks out some of the groups of people related collective nouns, which are the most interesting, like a disworship of Scots. As for iPods, I suggested an iBiquity - as in a group of sparrows - but it appears the collective noun for USB sticks may be "pod", so a pod of iPods is perhaps most appropriate.

I think what I really learned is that Pooteewheet's previous job involved her working with an anthology of prostitutes. That would have been fun to know at the time.

Gina's Pies Are Square - Elroy Sparta 2009

I was pretty much gone Saturday morning through Monday evening, between a guys' trip to the Elroy-Sparta Rail to Trail and the Minnesota State Fair (which is really when She Says should come to visit). The Elroy-Sparta trip, despite being a lot of work (46 miles on Saturday, 21 miles on Sunday, lots of climb and dirt trails the whole way), was a blast.

In the past, we've started near Winona and biked across the state to Reedsburg (WI that is). This year we just drove down 94 to Tomah and then went south until we hit the trail and the Tunnel Trail campground, just outside Wilton. It was a bit on the expensive side, as we found out we can stay in downtown Wilton for about half as much, but there were hot showers and it was plenty quiet. Except for the crow in the morning flying over the tents. And the coyotes in the corn field on the hill above us, that yipped until it sounded like some gibbering horror from Cthulu was lurking behind the rows.

Here's Ming at our campground. Inside this building was a scary woman who wanted to "break" Adam in. We weren't sure what that meant, but it was enough to make me nervous about sharing a tent with him.


The trail ran right through the campground. Day one we went left. Day two we went right.


Bike planter at the campground. One of the other nice things about our location was the bed and breakfast nearby that also had a restaurant - the Dorset Valley School Restaurant. Excellent food. We liked dinner so much, we went back for breakfast. And their pie was unbelievable. The owner talked to us for a while in the morning about the history behind the place, and that he'd gone to school in the old schoolhouse when he was younger. Just a great place.


The draw of the Elroy Sparta Trail is the tunnels. Here I am in the mouth of one.


And here's Adam and I posing. You'll note absolutely no pictures of Kyle whatsoever. He wasn't bicycling because of his elbow, but you'd think I'd still have a picture or two. Not sure how he avoided them. Then again, I don't have any picture of pie and I don't know how they avoided my camera either.


Adam, with arms wide open.


I like this picture because the flash activates the reflector.


And I don't know what to make of this. Adam looks like he's one of those old political photos, looking to the future, or like he's some sort of hero from an Ayn Rand book. I suspect he's ruminating on Ming's tone, or what Ming said he left in the trash bag.


Inside the tunnel. Very wet. This year I didn't flick Ming in the back with my water bottle. Instead, I threw a thistle-type thing at him that stuck to his shirt, and then exclaimed "What's That!?!" later. Not as good as the water bottle, but still funny.


Perhaps my favorite picture of the trip. Ming as Sparta's Ben Bikin. He gave the old lady at the depot a hard time about how his pin in Malaysia from 2008 was gone, until she explained they remove them every year and start anew.


In Wilton we followed a coworker's advice and had the Guinness Chocolate Pie at Gina's Pies Are Square. Currently for sale at $195,000. I believe Kyle is tempted. The pie was delicious, though not as good as the Black Cap or Triberry at Dorset. You could taste the Guinness in it, and it had oats or some such grain on the top to give it a crunchy taste.


Me, jazzed up after we turned back at 23 miles.


Right near Sparta, I felt wound up, so I shot up the backside of this cliff to pose, using my mountain bike as it was intended. 7 miles later I'd notice that I had a flat tire. I suspect it was here, where there was some wire on the hill, that I punctured it. Fortunately, I had my CO2 cartridge with, and inflation took about 3 seconds.


In the evening, despite being exhausted, we went to Tomah to see a movie. Ming and Adam went to District 9. Kyle and I went to Inglorious Basterds. I suspect Inglorious Basterds would have been better had I not been so tired. As it was, I fell asleep, and woke up seconds later to Kyle snoring. District 9 would have been a better choice, despite already seeing it once. Not because Inglorious Basterds was bad. It was just too slow for my mental state.

Day 2, Adam bailed, and Ming and I went up the Omaha Trail that heads north out of Elroy to Camp Douglas. It's a lot more Dellsy, with a climb to another tunnel (you can bike through it if no one is around as it's paved, unlike the others, but it's freaky without a headlight), and then a drop into Hustler, Wisconsin. I wanted to bike to the end and back, but my knee was having none of it (seems particular to my mountain bike).

The trail was a bit hard to find from the end of the Elroy Sparta. Although the lady in Elroy tried to explain it to us and charged us a dollar because it was a county trail and not a state trail. Here's Ming at the bridge to the trail.


Here I am. Same trail.


I show this bridge because on the left, near the bike, I took another picture, and as I walked away it felt like I'd walked into a thorn bush. By the time I got to the other side of the bridge, I couldn't locate a planty culprit, but I did see a swarm of small bees rising up out of the bridge where I'd been standing. I'm allergic to wasps, so I'm glad the bee didn't trigger a reaction. As we only saw 4 people on the whole trail (maybe 5...there was a motorized scooter), I wasn't close to medical help.


Where we stopped for the day. Hustler, Wisconsin. They were square in the middle of Hustlerfest! The tractor pull spilled onto the trail, and the ticket lady sort of gave Ming and I the eye because we didn't pay $5 to get in. Hey...we already paid $1 for the trail! The trail lady in Elroy had really talked up Hustlerfest, but it just wasn't as exciting as you'd be led to believe. I think the most amusing thing was when three kids (11-ish) walked by with big, blow up, plastic hammers, and the one with a pink hammer with a purple head held it up like a giant schlong. His friends screamed, "You are so f-ing gay!" and ran away from his adroit cocksmanship. That was Hustlerfest as far as I was concerned.


In case you want to go next year, aim for the end of August.