02-Aug-2009 11:16 PM
Man do we ever hate to fly. There is no worse mode of transportation to travel in. Granted you just don’t have a choice sometimes, but if we have the choice of driving 2000 miles or flying we’ll be hitting the road. Our flight from England started out well enough. We got pretty worked up over all the security nonsense. I could get really long-winded about that but let’s face it, who hasn’t flown in the past few years and had all the same crappy experiences with “security”? Personally I would go back to the old days and take my chances on the terror front any day of the week. The part I don’t get is that there must be a million ways for a terrorist to make an attack on a couple hundred innocent civilians that wouldn’t require nearly as much work as hijacking a plane. Anyway.

So we landed in Philadelphia to change planes. A few hours later our flight was canceled. We got to our complimentary hotel at eleven p.m. and were back at the airport five hours later for our rescheduled flight. Three connections and forty hours after setting out we landed in Minneapolis. Unfortunately not one of our four checked bags did. Zero. Nada. Keep in mind one of these was a seven foot six inch surfboard. Back in Philly the lady that had rescheduled our flight told us that our luggage would be on a different flight and assured us that, “Your bags will be there before you are.” Famous last words.

But hey, we made it and everybody was just happy about that. Within a couple of hours Ali and I had satisfied our mad Taco Bell cravings. And lo and behold our bags were miraculously delivered to our front step in the middle of the night. All was right in the world.

Tonight we went with our niece and nephew to Nelson’s Ice Cream shop in Stillwater. This must be one of the last surviving real hard ice cream shops in the States. For three bucks you get a child’s size cup or cone that is so big hardly any adult can finish it. There is always a line at this place. To keep yourself entertained you watch as first timers walk up and confidently order a double scoop. A double is an impossibly huge mountain of ice cream that makes people trying to eat it look like a complete doofus. Curt ordered up the Superman and Cotton Candy combination. Pure sugar disgustingness.

On the baby front, Ali is really starting to show now and I must say it makes me that much more excited. Her family had presents waiting for her when we arrived, one of which were a pair of those pregnancy pants with the stretchy waist. I would have never expected to find a woman so cute in pants made to fluctuate with her expanding waistline.

04-Aug-2009 10:34 AM
Ali was talking with my mom today when she received the horrifying news that when I was born I weighed in at 9 pounds 6 ounces. Hours later I would still hear her mumbling to herself, “Nine pounds six ounces.”

04-Aug-2009 11:32 AM
Aren’t cats supposed to land on their feet? All I heard was a frantic scratching before catching a glimpse of Ali’s sister’s cat falling fifteen feet from the second floor landing and onto the living room carpet below. She landed squarely on her back. Completely debunking the myth that had lived on in my mind all these years.

06-Aug-2009 10:18 AM
Guess who said, “It’s pretty bad when I have to go pee while in the middle of a bowl of cereal.”

07-Aug-2009 9:43 AM
Ali’s been calling around to try and find a place to have a doctor visit and an ultrasound done. She is nineteen weeks along now and it seems like a good idea to talk to a doctor and make sure she is as healthy as she needs to be. Trying to find a place that you can walk into and pay cash is not nearly as easy as one would think. Most “clinics” she calls are for abortions and counseling poor kids under about twenty years old. A couple of popular nearby hospitals are only for the actual delivery of the baby and all the stuff that comes afterwards. In fact after ten phone calls she has only found one place that was able to easily arrange what she was asking for and give us a price. Six hundred dollars plus any other tests that need to be done beyond the actual ultrasound. Ali hasn’t had health insurance in seven years and me in ten, yet I never really thought of us as the “uninsured” that the politicians make such a fuss about. Yet that is exactly what we are. Imagine what the cost would be of just a normal healthy birth of our baby if we were to call around and set that up here.

When we explained this to our friends over in the UK they were completely blown away. “What? Having a baby is free isn’t it?” Now I don’t believe that is right either. Why should every single person be entitled to free health care? I’m not interested in paying fifty percent taxes on my earnings plus another fifteen percent on every purchase I make like they do; not when most of us can afford to pay a reasonable fee for the services doctors and hospitals perform for us. But come on, six hundred dollars just to run a scanner over a belly for twenty minutes? How about I give you a hundred bucks cash and we all just back away slowly.

08-Aug-2009 11:22 AM
Our baby’s due date is January 1st. My birthday is January 4th, and Ali’s is December 23rd. Can you imagine a more congested time of year? Also, I don’t know anything about horoscopes, but nothing except three Capricorns in one family has to mean something. Maybe we better have a reading done. “I foresee great wealth in your future. And beware of black cats.”

09-Aug-2009 10:21 PM
I’m sort of getting used to driving with power steering again though I’ve found driving an automatic to be extremely uninteresting. I’m half looking forward to working on the Porsche again. I’m sure once it’s running I’ll be thrilled but at the moment the thought of crawling underneath another car isn’t too appealing. To keep me in practice my father-in-law had me in the garage yesterday helping to rip apart his Harley (insert Harley joke here) and replace a starter. Miserable piece of machinery that is to work on.

11-Aug-2009 7:46 PM
Finished fixing the Harley today and promptly went out and blew away some Honda Yahama thingy doing 120 m.p.h. down a previously quiet and short, nearby road. At the stop sign I found out the rear brake had air in the line. Fortunately the front brake did not.

11-Aug-2009 9:50 PM
We got a lot of advice on doctors and midwifes and all that stuff from Bum friends the past couple of days. Some good, some not so good. I guess I should make this clear, I will not be delivering this baby. That option won’t even be on the table. Granted that would be a conversation show stopper at any cocktail party.

“Yeah, I just delivered my first born the other day. Had to use my 17mm box end wrench to twist the leg out but after that it was no problem. Wrapped a bit of bailing wire around that belly button thing, made a couple of super glue sutures, and we called it a day.”

12-Aug-2009 3:34 PM
It sounds sort of redneck-ish to me, but I haven’t paid for a haircut in six years now. Just this morning I sat down in the backyard and Ali chopped away. Here’s how the routine goes. Ali cuts my hair and I wear a hat for three days. For the next three weeks I go without a hat and my hair looks pretty good. But then all at once it is too long again and I usually spend three weeks wearing a hat. At which point we then repeat the process.

Ali got her haircut the other day for the first time in a year. During that year I didn’t get to cut it once. She told me I could get mine cut too, but I just balked. Imagine paying twenty bucks to cut my hair when Ali does a marginally reasonable job of it for free. However we did see some pictures of a friend’s kids recently where the mom had done a little mad cutting and we knew immediately that we wouldn’t put our child through that. It’s okay for me to look like a goon for a few days, but not the poor hopeless children.

We went to the liquor store today and our total came to $13.34. With a twenty dollar bill our change was $6.66. Yeah, the number of the beast. Burn in hell and all that jazz. The clerk noticed this too and said, “Oh I know what that means. You have to go buy a lottery ticket.” Really? Six-six-six means you’re lucky?

13-Aug-2009 8:21 PM
I thought all pregnant women were supposed to have bizarre cravings. Ali has yet to have one unusual food craving. Aside from going out of her way to eat fruits and veggies she really hasn’t been at all different from her normal self. And I have not put on one extra pound of sympathy weight either. I really believed these pregnancy myths were written in stone.

We took our nephew to Chuck E. Cheese today. Man is that place ever a rip off. Every game in that place is designed to get the kids to become obsessed over winning stupid tickets that can be turned in at the end for a plastic prize. One game is so blatant about it that all the kid does is put a coin in and press a button. That’s it. A number pops up on the screen and tells him how many tickets he’s won. I figured out that if he won the top ticket prize on every turn it would cost $9.75 for a plastic prank vomit toy. But hey, the kids like it, and at the end of the day we all get a good laugh out of trying to gross mom out by showing her the plastic nail through the finger gag and then throwing up on the floor at her feet.

14-Aug-2009 9:31 AM
Ali goes into the doctor next week for her twenty week check-up. After making dozens of calls to OBs and midwifes all over the city she ended up with the family care practitioner that’s been her family’s doctor for a thousand years. I should point out that the $600 I quoted a few days ago for an ultrasound was actually for both the doctor visit and the ultrasound. Judging by the email response there was some confusion on that front. And in the end the ol’ family doc was the least expensive option. The only cheaper one was to take up the Bum following midwife in Fargo that offered to see Ali for free. How nice is that? Unfortunately nobody in their right mind goes to Fargo, North Dakota. For anything. Period. Those are the Fargo midwife’s words, not mine.

A lot of people also told us to go to Mexico where the cost would be much less. Well, yeah, that is the point. We are going to Mexico, but not for a few more weeks. We are fully aware that health care costs down there are only a fraction of what they are here.

14-Aug-2009 1:41 PM
At Taco Bell today we met an employee who was a bit more forthcoming than he probably should have been with complete strangers. It started out with him looking directly at Ali’s belly and saying, “Ummm, well, ahhhh, I, ummm, are you, I mean, is that, uhhhh, are you pregnant?”

I can’t possibly imagine how he could have bailed himself out of that had the answer been NO! He was lucky though. He then went on to ask us what we were having and tell us how he just had to know ahead of time and how amazing an experience witnessing the birth was.

“Okay then I’m gonna have the number two and an extra hard shell taco.”

After eating he approached us again and told us to make sure we were taking plenty of walks and that Ali took lots of warm baths to, as he put it while touching his inner thigh, “Stretch the muscles down here.”

Wow. If he hadn’t been so genuinely happy for us, complete and total strangers, that might have been a little awkward. I can’t wait to see what sorts of conversations these next few months bring as Ali’s belly gets bigger and bigger.

14-Aug-2009 2:48 PM
Having a baby is making us nostalgic. The past couple of days Ali has been scanning old photo albums. Her childhood pictures and family photos. That sort of stuff. Next up is our wedding album and my side of the family.

Then while out driving around today we decided to do a quick loop of our family homes. My first family home was a little townhouse development. It had been quite a few years since I’d passed by there so I was a little surprised to find it still standing. In its original form save for some new vinyl siding to cover up the old dark brown paint.

We shot a quick video and then kept the film rolling as we drove four hundred yards up the street and took a left to our next home, the split level my parents built, where I lived for the next ten years or so. The tiny trees had overtaken the neighborhood, but the houses behind them still looked pretty good. Despite all the painting over the years our house still had the same slate blue color.

Tape still rolling we drove four hundred yards further, took another left and were parked in front of the house I lived in until disappearing off to college. Again, big trees were the only change. When we stopped rolling the video a grand total of two minutes and thirty seconds had elapsed. And that included the time spent idling out front panning around and talking about them. The actual driving time between my three childhood homes was thirty seconds.

We then drove twenty minutes down Century Avenue to Ali’s neighborhood. Her first home was a cute little two bedroom about four blocks from her grandma’s house. From there we had to drive a full mile and a half to her next house, the little brown A-frame three bedroom complete with in-ground swimming pool; a Minnesota luxury indeed. From there it was a grueling fifteen seconds up the road to her high school home and the home that we stay at whenever we’re in Minnesota. We had our first kiss in the living room here.

Sometimes I wonder whether we’ll ever live such a stable life. If it’s necessary or even better for kids to be so grounded. Neither one of us has a single bad thing to say about the way we were brought up and in fact we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. But for now at least neither of us can see our future like that. It’ll be interesting to see how we feel about it once kids enter the picture.

15-Aug-2009 9:10 AM
Went to the drive-in movies last night. Nothing is more summer in Minnesota than that for Ali and I. When we first started going I was driving a 1985 Chevy Blazer and we’d put the back seat down, open up the gate, lay down and… watch movies. Ali generally sleeps through the first one, catches a second wind for movie number two, and then dozes off and on through the third. No Chevy Blazer last night, and I only kept her out for two movies, but she stuck to her system perfectly nonetheless.

16-Aug-2009 6:36 PM
I promised my nephew we’d do some fishing this weekend, so on our way up to the cabin today I went into the gas station and asked, “Do you have any worms?” The answer was, “Yes sir, right there in that little fridge behind the ATM.” Yeah, the cabin is in farm country. There are just some places where you know that you can walk into the gas station and not feel weird at all asking if they sell worms. As it turns out, the fish have nothing to fear from us.

16-Aug-2009 11:40 PM
Ali and I have been fascinated by just how badly her family, and many friends, want to know what our baby names are. I don’t know if it is simply curiosity or if they are all genuinely afraid that we’re going to name our child something completely off the wall. It seems that the word bumfuzzle, and the fact that we’ve since become known as, The Bums, has them all worried. Many people seem to be expecting some sort of takeoff on that theme.

A few days ago her sister spent nearly an hour rattling off names while staring us in the eyes to try and determine if she’d hit it or at least come close. Ali and I walked away from that conversation pretty pleased with ourselves and our name choices. Her sister was never even in the ballpark.

18-Aug-2009 12:33 PM
Just got home from the doctor. Like I said earlier, we ended up choosing to visit Ali’s longtime family doctor instead of an OB or a midwife. In the end we were really happy we did. Her doctor was much more our style. What exactly is our style? Essentially our feeling is that we’re healthy and we’ve always been healthy. That Ali’s grandma, mom, and sister never had any problems delivering healthy babies. And that people have been delivering healthy happy babies for thousands of years based on not much more than that.

So when the doctor came in and announced almost those exact sentiments we knew we’d made the right choice. Ali’s weight is right on, gaining about nine pounds so far. Her blood pressure was perfect. The vitamins she’s been taking were just right. Everything looked good. Then he put the little hand held machine on her belly and the baby’s heartbeat came through the speaker instantly. Strong and healthy too at about 150 beats per minute.

They took blood to run all the normal tests which we’ll find out about in a few days, but aside from that we’re pretty well good to go. Hell, the doctor didn’t even bat an eyelash over our plan to deliver the baby in Mexico. And in the end he told us he’d be happy to sign a note for us to get an ultrasound if we wanted, but that there really wasn’t any reason for one. Our thoughts exactly. Doctor visit and labs: $228.60 no insurance.

So we’re thrilled, but not surprised, to hear that everything is good and that Ali is right on track to have a great big healthy baby. The bump in her belly and the glow on her face were enough to tell me that.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before either, but Ali and I aren’t going to find out the sex of the baby beforehand. We just don’t see the fun in that. We’re much more looking forward to the surprise when it happens than in knowing what color blanket to buy five months in advance.

Up at the cabin this weekend we managed to pare down our belongings by a full four more garbage bags. We are now down to six plastic containers. Two of which have souvenirs of our travels, one that contains school yearbooks, pictures, and childhood momentos, another with baseball cards, and two with Christmas stuff. The baseball cards I’d be happy to unload if I had a clue what they were worth or how to get rid of them in one batch. The Christmas stuff we just don’t know what to do with. Since we’ve been married we’ve had exactly one Christmas tree. A grand total of about ten days worth of Christmas decorating. Yet we’ve got all these ornaments and stuff that have been in the family for years. I guess some things you just have to keep. That’s what Ali kept telling me anyway when I got in a bad mood about owning SO MUCH crap. Anybody want to hire us to clear out their house? We’ll get you down to four plastic containers without a moments hesitation.

19-Aug-2009 2:55 PM
I’m feeling more and more out of my element here. Today we went to the mall and when we came out I couldn’t find our car. It was pouring rain so Ali was waiting at the entrance while I wandered aimlessly through the gigantic parking lot. It took a full ten minutes of thorough soaking before I found the car sitting there with its lights still on. We both decided that was the last shopping trip for us.

A few days ago when we were driving around looking at the houses we grew up in we also went and had a look at the first house we owned together. Ali and I bought this house about a year after we got married, moving from our apartment in the coolest area of downtown Minneapolis (a five minute walk from work) to the fastest growing suburb in the U.S. at the time. What in the world were we thinking? It was fun playing house for a little while though, despite the daily commute, the shoveling of snow in the winter, and the mowing of the grass in the summer.

When we went to have a look at it we noticed right away that the siding was all new. A big storm must have ripped through the neighborhood at some point. So then I just had to go around back and take a peak at the deck me and Ali’s dad built. It was still there. We must have done a pretty good job on it. That deck always makes Ali and I smile because that lumber was the first thing we ever bought with profits from my commodities trading. Twelve hundred bucks cash money. We felt like we had really made it. Sort of like a rapper when he buys his first giant dollar sign necklace.

The house thing only lasted nine months though before we decided to move to Chicago so I could trade there. We put the house on the market, flew down to Chicago for the weekend, bought a condo the first day, flew back to Woodbury late at night and found the house still being shown. It sold in just four days for a seventeen percent profit. I don’t know why all these numbers are still in my head. I can quote our down payment amount, the rate on our 30 year mortgage, and pretty much anything else that any tax auditor might ever want to know.

22-Aug-2009 8:24 AM
“What are you painting purple?” the Walmart girl asked, rather too cheekily I thought. The answer was that today Ali and I painted our soon-to-be twelve-year-old niece’s room purple. Actually it was a light lavender. Purple.

This tween room makeover was our birthday gift to her, and really to her whole family, because it is all of them that will get to enjoy the purple for the next six years when she is finally shipped off to college and her mom can convert the room into a more suitable neutral color.

And let me tell you, if we ever needed confirmation that paring down our lifelong belongings into a handful of plastic containers was a good idea, today gave it to us. Holy smackers! Twelve years old and I have never seen such a collection of stuff. Not that I begrudge my niece anything. There were more than enough contributions to that stuff pile from Ali and I, but wow do little girls ever hold on to things. Everything in the room is a collectible of some sort. Collectible dolls. Collectible white figurines. Collectible series’ of books. Then there was the ten, count them, ten, backpacks. Just in case she ever adopts a baseball team.

But I tell you she could tack a memory onto each and every one of the items in that room, no matter how trivial it might have looked. “Oh, keep that blue cotton ball, it’s off of a picture I drew in second grade. Ooh, ooh, that teddy bear is from when my friend Georgie and I went to the county fair when we were five. Oh I love that pink boa, it’s from…”

Note to family: Anybody who ever buys our child anything with the word “series” or “collectible” on it is dead. Seriously. Dead. No, wait, scratch that. The rule will be waved in the case of antique automobiles, rare gold coins, and Fabergé eggs. Otherwise, dead.

23-Aug-2009 7:30 AM
After six years worth of traveling and visiting some of the most beautiful sites in the world we’ve finally decided to upgrade from our simple credit card sized point-and-shoot camera to a fancy DSLR with the zoom lens and all the complicated buttons. Don’t ask me what sense that makes. This is obviously something we should have done years ago. But somehow now seemed like the right time because hey, this is just what parents to be do.

For this camera I actually had to sit down with the instruction manual to figure it out. I’m pretty pleased with it now that I’ve learned a couple of the fancy features. Anyway, here’s the inaugural photo.

23-Aug-2009 11:39 AM
When we were cleaning out my niece’s room the other day she was having a hard time going through her pile of one thousand stuffed animals. Even the twenty-five cent crane-machine-game animals held a place in her heart.

We told her, “Just keep the ones that have a special meaning for you.”

She picked at them a little more and then said, “I know it sounds weird, but I feel like the animals have feelings.” She’s too sweet.

Then in my softest, most caring voice I said, “Honey, they don’t.”

A few more moments passed, apparently while she thought of a reply to my insensitive remark. Finally, “Yes they do!”

I let the mood calm for some seconds and then asked, “So does that mean that the little old Chinese factory worker lady is God?”

She peeked up at me then with a smile on her face and answered, “Yeah.”

23-Aug-2009 2:33 PM
The real tall awkward looking girl that runs the cash register at Taco Bell now recognizes us when we come in and talks to us like we’re old friends. I think that means it is officially time for us to move on.

24-Aug-2009 6:07 PM
One of the fun things about having your own website is being able to see where the visitors to your site come from. Today we got a bunch of hits from a machine gun forum. Uh-huh. A group of gun nuts into sub-machine guns talking a bunch of racist babble and providing a link to us somewhere in the middle of it all. Sweet.

Here is an excerpt from the original post:

…at least twice that I read, they were almost robbed. Apparently they found the only robbers that are scared away by talking loudly, go figure. However, luck has to run out someday so what can you carry on a boat in the ocean? Is it as much as you want until you want to go into port where guns aren’t allowed?

This made me realize that we never talked about guns on the boat. I grew up with guns and hunting. I may have been from the burbs but my dad’s family are farm folks. They all hunted their entire lives and so did I pretty much until Ali and I moved to Chicago. Point is I am totally comfortable with a gun in my hand. Ali, not so much.

Despite this the idea of bringing a gun along for “protection” never even crossed our minds. We were going out sailing not hunting. Why would we bring a gun? In fact I’d go so far as to say that anybody, yes anybody, who brings a gun along on a boat is a full fledged idiot.

During our four year journey around the world we had one or two semi-uncomfortable situations with strange people approaching or boarding our boat. Each time we handled it easily with nothing but a firm voice and a flexing of my massive biceps. Now if we had been cowardly and scared and hiding a .38 in our waistband I doubt very much that the situations would have ended so easily. Either I would now be a murderer of somebody who may or may not have had criminal intentions, or Ali and I would be dead. Or even worse still I’d be a murderer and be locked up in an Indonesian jail for life. How idiotic would that whole situation be?

Why do people who are going sailing to far off lands feel the need to carry a gun? Why would you go into an incredible journey like this feeling that such bad things were going to happen to you that you would need to shoot somebody? If you really feel that way please just lock yourself in your log cabin and stay there, the world really doesn’t need you roaming around.

Ali and I truly believe in the old adage that if you go looking for trouble, trouble will find you. If you go through life believing that people are good then those are the people you will meet. Blah, blah, blah.

25-Aug-2009 11:15 PM
We went to a soccer game today. True, we both hate soccer, but this is what you do for the niece that you love. Anyway, I was teasing her earlier in the day by telling her I wanted her to score three goals for me. She informed me that in the previous two seasons she had scored a grand total of zero goals. Which, again, is why I hate soccer. How can a kid be expected to get excited about playing a sport in which they’ve got no shot at glory?

So at the game she played the first half without scoring a goal. Then she sat out the third quarter (period?) before coming into the fourth quarter playing forward. You probably know where this is headed. She promptly scored three goals and assisted on another. Honestly in the entire history of soccer I don’t think so many goals have been scored in so short a period of time. What a star.

Earlier in the day we went up to Ali’s parent’s cabin to help them move some furniture out of the basement. Eventually, and this is not uncommon at this cabin, a chainsaw came out. We were carrying furniture one minute and the next we were chain sawing an entire wall unit right in the middle of the room. This is how we fill our days while visiting our family.

26-Aug-2009 1:31 PM
We just got back from meeting an old high school friend of ours for coffee. Hadn’t seen or heard from her in over fifteen years until Facebook intervened. Liz has always been a free spirit so it was no surprise that she thought our plan for a baby in Mexico was a good one. It was nice to hear though considering she had two little ones of her own along. We especially liked her comment, “Kids aren’t that tough. Tiring sometimes, but not tough.” Our thoughts exactly.

26-Aug-2009 9:32 PM
We just read the response from the gun nuts over our post from the other day. Ali is now officially more frightened by them than she ever was by any Indonesians, Africans, or even Floridians.

Just one of many award winning posts: Darwin’s Law will catch up with such people and they will find themselves mortally wounded and floating in the currents, listening to the screams of their wife and kids being raped.

Sounds like a friendly fun-loving chap doesn’t he?

27-Aug-2009 10:19 AM
Last night we went to one of my oldest friend’s house for dinner. Along the way, over in Wisconsin, we stopped off at the liquor store and while I was waiting in line I noticed the lady in front of me that the cashier was trying to flirt with looked awfully familiar. Turned out to be Amy, one of Ali’s oldest friends, and part of our high school gang. What a strange day, and a small world, seeing three old high school friends in just a few hours.

Over at my buddy Rich’s we met his five month old girl, Taylor, for the first time. All this baby stuff is getting exciting now. Taylor is one of the best babies I’ve ever seen. Just quiet as can be and happy in anybody’s arms. It was fun to see Rich and Michelle again, but the highlight was getting our hands on a baby to see just what we’ve got ourselves into here.

28-Aug-2009 6:10 PM
Our baby is finally on the move. A few days ago Ali began feeling the flutters. She wasn’t sure at first, but now it is definitely moving around inside of there. Even I’ve been able to feel it within a couple of minutes. It feels good to know that our little ten-pounder-to-be is getting restless. Maybe he/she is looking forward to trains and cross-country road trips already.

Did I mention that we’re taking the train from St. Paul to Portland in a few days? Yeah, after our two-day no luggage arriving flight from England we decided that the extra cost, total of $520 vs $420 for flying, was justified. Plus, neither of us has ever ridden a train in the States. Sounds like fun. We leave late Tuesday night, sleep in our private little room, spend all day Wednesday watching Montana roll by, and then wake up Thursday morning in Oregon.

Before googling it I didn’t even realize there was an Amtrak any more, much less a daily run out of St. Paul. I can’t wait to see what kind of people are riding these things. It seems so old fashioned. Now if only it had a steam engine on the front of it.

30-Aug-2009 5:31 PM
Despite how little we own we still seem to find tons of stuff to sell on Craigslist. Today we had a couple of old power tools to get rid of. When a buyer contacted us we already had plans so we told him we’d just leave the stuff on the front steps and trust him to drop the money inside the door. We’ve done this a couple of times and it is always a fun little experiment. Putting to the test our feelings that the vast majority of people are good. It’s not a huge test since we’re generally only talking about thirty bucks or so, but it’s a test nonetheless. Our buyer today passed with flying colors, as has every other person we’ve done this with in the past.

Took the kids to this laser tag/video game/bowling alley place today. Holy crap, they wanted thirty-eight bucks for one twelve minute session of laser destruction, and we paid it! Fortunately after watching our briefing video the ten-year-old kid working there told us he had screwed up because there was another group booked in before us. We would have said, “No problem, we’ll just be over at the video games.” But he cut us off and said he’d give us a free laser session. We couldn’t complain with that. My favorite part of our laser tag excursion though was when Ali asked that little kid if the lasers were safe for pregnant women. You could see in his eyes that he had absolutely no idea. “Umm, yes, no problem.” I think he wanted to add the word Ma’am to it but wisely left that bit out.

31-Aug-2009 7:10 PM
Minnesota State Fair. You can’t beat it. We’ve been to a few state fairs but nothing compares to our home states’. We went out there today with both of Ali’s sisters and our niece and nephew. Ali and I love the fair. We always have. A lot of people hate the crowds, but to us that’s the best part of it. The people watching is unparalleled.

Then of course there is the food. Curt, our nephew, really surprised us with his strange appetite today. He started out with Big Fat Bacon on a Stick, then moved on to Shrimp on a Stick, before wrapping up the stick food with Alligator on a Stick. Give the kid some ice cream, root beer, and chocolate chip cookies and he was more than ready to take on the rides and the crooked game carnies along the midway.

Our fair has a building called the Miracle of Birth Building. Seriously. And inside this building are a wide assortment of farm animals giving birth. Seriously. And if the pigs, cows, and goats aren’t giving birth right that moment then they replay the days births on television screens all over the building. Seriously. It’s really quite horrifying. Younger sister Katy took one look at my “I’m screaming inside” face and concluded that there is no way I am going to be able to watch the birth of an actual human being. She may have a point. But really, why do fair goers want to see animals giving birth? While eating a Pronto Pup.

Aside from the scary movies this was the greatest fair day we’ve ever experienced. Seventy-five degrees, sunny, and somehow even though it was kids’ day this was the least crowded we’ve ever seen the place. How can anyone not love the Minnesota State Fair?

31-Aug-2009 7:42 PM
We got home and found a doctors bill in the mail. Ali snapped. We had the doctors office give us a price quote before we went in. At the appointment we had to see the billing department beforehand. During the appointment the doctor had to fill out a worksheet listing exactly the tests being done and sign off on it. And immediately afterwards we went back into billing where they rang up the total and we paid them. That should have been it. But today they sent us this new bill, completely incomprehensible, for another $130. This is why we don’t want anything to do with the American health system, either with insurance or without.

At least the bill showed up before we left so we can march right in there tomorrow and cause a scene over it.