Can You Hear Me Now?

In my daily surf of the WWW over lunch today, I came across some Tweets and the fact that the Pope now has a Twitter account.  It got me thinking to how far the ‘communication’ system has come from when I was a wee little lad. I give you: The Evolution of Communication After the House Phone (from what I can remember)

HUH? You have phone in your car?

What’s your pager number?

I.M. me; What’s your screen name?

What’s your email address?

What’s your cell phone number?

You should join MySpace.

Text me.

Friend me on Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter.

Car phone: My grandpa was in real estate and had one. I think I was with when he used it once.

Pager: Never had one—I wasn’t and am still not that big of a phone talker. If someone wanted to get a hold of me, they had to call me at home.

Screen name: lele2000

Email then: lele2000@aol.com Now: leiann12@hotmail.com

Cell phone number: not going to tell you! – didn’t get a cell phone until I was 20 years old—WAY behind the times.  Who ever knew they would get smaller than the one Zack Morris had or the one Julia Roberts had in My Best Friends Wedding?  I bet Zack never imagined he'd be texting Kelly on a smaller version of that phone someday...

Join MySpace? No way.

Texting: Guilty.

Friend you on Facebook? I think I was one of the last people in America to get a FB account, now I hardly ever use it. I much prefer reading blogs and I don’t like strangers (who say they are my ‘friend’) being able to nose around in my business nor do I find it necessary for people to tell their every waking move to the world; which brings me to my main topic:

Twitter?? I don’t get it—what do these things mean??: #,@, RT… When I look at those symbols, this is what goes through my head: “Please enter the last four digits of your social security number, followed by the pound sign”, “At” and “Dodge Dakota R/T”

Strange Sightings

Hey, you!...Yeah, you!, 40+ year old guy with all the tatts...you might impress us more with your 'cool guy' image if you didn't wear white sweat socks -oh wait, correction...ANY socks with sandals.

Please!

MSN and Bing bug me. Read and dissect the entire article below before you move on to the rest of the post...

Done? Ok, good.

Does anyone else find this annoying? Why can’t they just write a normal article? Why do we have to click on five hundred separate links (no doubt sponsored by Bing) to get the full details? LAME!
Not that I care about Nick and Vanessa’s TV wedding—I actually love Nick and think him and I would have a bright future watching baseball games and drinking beers together—but why does he feel the need to televise his wedding?

Back to my point…the article. If I were a writer in the entertainment biz (and my editor didn’t care about my sarcasm), here's what my article would look like:

Kwik trip--tons of fun!

What happens on the Kwiky…
Stays on the Kwiky.
I ventured out sailing with two of my uncles to the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior this past weekend. I can’t go into great detail because of the Kwiky pact, but it was an awesome time filled with a lot of snacks, hardly any adult beverages *wink wink* and a ton of laughs! I learned the ropes of sailing…which, ironically, aren’t called “ropes”, they are called “lines”, watched a massive orange fire burn above the tree tops on the island across the way from us, only to realize a minute later that the "fire" was actually a beautiful full orange moon on the rise...and listened to my fill of Kenny Chesney’s “Be As You Are (Songs From An Old Blue Chair)” album to last a lifetime (or at least until the next sailing trip!).  After a beautiful sail Friday out to our Stockton Island destination and a very cold sail back on Saturday (which, I hate to admit, but I spent a good part of the day inside playing solitaire and napping by the coal stove instead of braving the cold), we went to Madeline Island where we hung out for a few hours before heading to the Port Superior Marina for the last night on the Kwiky.

Over the fence...

Can somebody please tell me why J.Lo is "on the fence" about returning to Idol next year?  C'mon J.Lo, the show needs you!  Sure, we were all unsure of the two new faces joining the judging panel this year, especially when your slicked back pony tail and bright red lipstick came out, but this was probably the best year of judging yet.  And you will probably never find an easier job in your life, AND you can still sing and dance if you want--all's you have to do is ask (although, please refrain from awkwardly shimmying your sequence-filled booty next to Marc like you did on the finale.  I am pretty sure all of America was asking the same question: Why?).
Yes, we know you went a little easy on the contestants, broke out your slang from time to time..."Scotty, I'm so in love wichyou"... and for some wacky reason chose to use the one save on that red bearded, grunting-while-singing, Casey kid, but still...you were a great judge!  I am still gloating from the Lauen/Scotty finale, don't ruin it by forcing us to listen all summer long to morning show D.J's banter on about whether or not you will come back or who they 'speculate' will replace you.  Just sign another contract already--get off the fence and hop over!  Forget about that show that you and Marc are doing--we don't need another version of Idol floating around out there.  "The Voice" is bad enough.

Only in Minnesota

I meant to post this last week but was too caught up in my google doodle to remember.  Better late than never, huh?  I am pretty sure that only in Minnesota can you have a 40 degree difference in weather in 48 hours.

Tuesday, June 7th. Approx. 2:00 PM

Thursday, June 9th. Approx 2:00 PM

Doodling For Dollars

Dream job...
Some people have a ‘dream job’ and some have no clue what they want to do when they grow up. I really don’t know what my dream job would be, but if I had to pick one at this very moment (besides being an E! or Access Hollywood correspondent) it would be to work in the Doodle department at Google. I have always noticed the Google homepage doodles, but not until recent months have I really paid attention to them.

I did some research today and found they have a team dedicated strictly to the Google Doodles. I have been doodling my entire life—on sidebars of notebook pages, fronts and backs of folders, my Cub bag book covers all throughout my school days and now I have a giant doodle pad on my desk at work that is on it’s third sheet. If I could see the future and knew I was going to do this post someday, I would have saved my past two giant doodle sheets and scanned them in and posted them (they would have also made pretty good resume-material if I did ever decide to apply at Google). But since I went against my Grandpa’s policy of “never throw anything away”, those sheets, along with hundreds of past notebooks and folders are long gone. What I do have though, are these two awesome, high quality pictures (taken with my mid 2000’s flip phone) of some of the doodles that currently reside on my doodle pad. Sure, my doodles aren’t as “professional” looking as the Googlers, and consist of a lot of random lines, shading and weak attempts at the Twins logo, but I feel they come in pretty close! :)

Strangers In the Night

Everyone loves good people watching—It's is one of the main reasons thousands go to the State Fair multiple times a year (ok, maybe that’s a stretch—we all know the deep fried pickles, cheese curds and the pronto pups are the biggest reasons). Anyway, I am here to tell you that the Minnesota State Fair may no longer be the best place to People Watch on a summer evening. Coming in a close 2nd is the Vali-Hi drive in movie theatre… wow. I haven’t been to a drive in movie theatre in YEARS and after Saturday night, I probably know why. This was on the verge of not even ‘fun’ people watching, it was more disturbing than anything...I could probably fill up a month’s worth of blogging with all that I witnessed, but I will give some high (or low) lights of the event. Some things I witnessed can’t even be described over type.

Here goes:

The excessive amount of 5-10 year old kids there to watch The Hangover 2 and Bridesmaids with their parents, the pregnant teens there with their mom’s; all whom were sporting excessive amounts of tattoos and showing more skin than anyone should ever see in public, the 16 year old kid who waited with his girlfriend in the 45-minute bathroom line (I won’t even get into how disgusting the bathroom was) and decided they would make out for the majority of the time, the parent that not only brought her small daughter to see inappropriate adult movies, but brought a booster seat to put on the toilet so she wouldn’t fall in, the not-at-all-skinny guy dressed head to toe in red with a massive silver chain on his neck and his flat-brimmed hat cocked sideways who went back and fourth to the snack bar about three times and on the way back from is third trip, yelled to his friends “flip the steaks!”.
This may sound harsh, but the truth hurts, people!
I guess the strange come out when the sun goes down!

Mr. and Mrs. D.

What do you get 28 days after the Wright Royal Wedding, exact same dress; different color, a white Mercedes SUV limo and a random encounter with the lead singer of Cheap Trick?
Another wedding never to forget!
My friend Kari got married last weekend and I was lucky enough to be a part of the entire thing.
Another three days packed with grand adventures-- everything from the rehearsal Thursday to the nail salon Friday, to the hair salon, wedding and dancing on Saturday to the last beer poured Sunday morning!
And of course a wedding wouldn't be complete without a mariachi band, right?
After the reception was over, the bridal party and a few others made our way over to the bar at the St. Paul Hotel for more fun.  It was here that the one and only (insert name here because I only know him as "the lead singer of Cheap Trick") was sitting at the bar.  It was only because of the other stranger at the bar did I know who this man was.
What a great three days... if only we could rewind and do it all again this weekend.
Congratulations Kari and Miguel!

Getting Pretty at Head to Toe Salon

Getting Pretty at the Church

The Happy Couple

Party Time! *Cheap Trick Guy upper right*