Sunny Spirit

On Wednesday, the advertising department at work had a lot of extra tickets to an event at the Minnesota Zoo. It was a great event with wine and food sampling. I’m sure my parents would have loved it, but I took A. I knew she would love it because she use to be the manager at the Saint Paul Hotel’s food hospitality service, or whatever the fancy name they have for the kitchen.

The event was tonight, Saturday.

I tried 14 wines. I’ll list a few I liked:

• True Grit Petit Sirah – this was very good. One of the only Petits I saw there
• Gruet Demi Sec – this was a bubbly, white dessert-escque wine, but not super sweet like a moscato d’asti
• Chateau Beneyt Bordeaux Rouge – full flavor, but neither bold, sweet, or dry
• Blanc de Bleu – get this, it was a blueberry sparkling. I heard someone comparing it to UV Blue. It was unique, but it didn’t give me flashbacks to college parties (as UV Blue would surely do)
• Spring Valley Frederick Red – this was a red blend that had a likeness to Louie’s Wine Dive House Red (Cab, Malbec, Petit Sirah, other miscellaneous reds). I thought it was really good. Coincidentally, it is also the most expensive bottle they had available
• Ferrari Carano Siena – I can’t remember much about this wine. I marked it as good and to buy it in the future.

After that, we went to Red Robin, a restaurant in Apple Valley that I love. We split a Chicken Teriyaki Burger, which had mozz and pineapple. It’s been my favorite burger since high school dates. You know, when the good theater was still open in Apple Valley.

She went to her friends house for a movie night or something. I went home.

The drive on 35E at midnight was strange because it was so normal and uneventful. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just that everything is good.

It allows me to drive around with the windows down in the summer. It ensures that the car wash does a great job. It has a low cost and can be easily washed. It even cleans up random accidental spills!

Of course, I’m talking about an ordinary dish towel.

My car usually has miscellaneous paperwork in the back seat. I don’t sit back there, so what do I care? No I don’t know what it is, but I can’t just throw it away. It might be important!

I can’t drive with my windows down or papers will surely fly out, and we can’t have that! Luckily, I have a nice dish cloth in my back seat, so in the summer, it’s used to cover papers so they don’t blow away.

Or after the car wash does a shabby job drying my car, I just pull around to the pumps (sheets there’s light, because it’s naturally 10:00 at night) and hand-dry my car (before it freezes in the winter!).

Tonight I had a problem worse than I’ve had before. My window fogged up worse than ever. I wasn’t able to see, and of course the window got worse on the 94 on ramp from 6th Street.

I pulled over on Riverside. I was stranded. Hot air didn’t work. Cold air didn’t work.

I finally thought back to my 2nd grade school bus driver who, in poor weather, would wipe the front window with a rag from a bucket of water.

So I reached back to my trusty car rag and started scrubbing down the windshield.

Eventually, I figured out that the best way to keep my window so I could see through it was scrubbing it and having the cold AC air blow on the window plus have the driver’s window down.

Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes, that is a great way to cool down.

As I sit on my porch, listening to the rain, I’ll kind of write a debriefing of my night.

I left work around 7:00. I went to A’s house for a little bit. She had dinner, so I planned on waiting until after I left. Around 9:15, I arrived to a social event in a bar to which I’ve never been.

It didn’t take me long to get bored there. Basically, I was hungry, and when I’m hungry, I can’t socialize or relax. So I went to Calhoun Square to find some food and ended up with a small snack.

I was thinking about going home, but I knew if I didn’t “go out”, I’d probably get antsy later. So I headed back to the bar.

It was a new bar and was pretty cool, but really crowded. That’s why I left – I originally intended to get food at the new place, but they didn’t really have service (do they even sell food?).

I met several new friends. A couple guys, a couple gals, and I saw a couple people I haven’t seen for a while. It was good., and no one carries grudges, which was good and knowing so let’s bygones be bygones. At least for me.

Another friend was nearby, so I joined him for a drink at another bar. Eventually, I left him to drive to another place in Uptown called The CC Club (yes, another bar). Definitely not my kind of place, but it was cool. I would totally not fit in if I wasn’t with my buddy.

We hung out there, and before I knew it, it was 1:30. Time flies.

Tomorrow is a ballroom event I might go to. It’s at 8:30, but I can do those kinds of things (not get much sleep) because it’s not tax season!

Goodnight!

Several years agoI developed a new technique I called “reverse stalking”. I’ve used this technique, and I’ll just say that it does no good but takes a lot of time.

At that time, I liked this girl, but it didn’t happen, and I was stuck on her for a bit after it didn’t work.

At this time, my Sunny Spirit blog was substantially unknown. Me, being who I am, I still emailed her. I’m sure I told her about my blog because I remember promising to nor put Google Analytics on there so she could view it without my knowing. I never did because I was certain she was smarter than that and would just see it in the HEADER.

But okay, I didn’t have a job so had a lot of time. I never used any analytics, cause I keep my word. BUT I was on the up & up on technology in the early 90s, when the Internet was invented.

Talk to any computer person, while Windows (or whatever GUI you’re using) is nice and gives a lot of options, MS DOS is where you go to do big jobs. Everything is still very DOS driven.

The internet is similar, in that its old infrastructure is still there. So while I didn’t have any analytics, I still had raw IP Address logs.

Before you knew it, I refreshed my IP numbers and could tell when someone visited my blog from Verizon in Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Even smaller cities like Shakopee or Eagan had unique IP addresses.

It was a very strange time for me. The thing that would’ve helped me best is if I just calmed down, but I couldn’t.

Then I got busy and stopped caring who visits my blog.

I think this illustrates an interesting point about today’s society. There is tons of information available, but it’s absolutely necessary that no one search too hard. I think that would kill it.

Point is, just let things be, and everything will be more natural and everyone happier.

Cheers!

 

 

I had a most interesting 5K on Saturday night.

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It was actually kinda crazy but mostly fun. “Fun at a 5K?!” you ask. Yup, it’s possible.

It was truly interesting. At the Nation Night Run, it’s not about the run. I’ll tell you about it.

I met A there, and we checked in. On the way to the start line, I introduced her to an old friend from back in the D-Days named vodka-Red Bull.

We then went to the starting line. Many of you know that I’m bad carrying liquids because I walk like a troll. That’s not the case when I’m “out”. For whatever reason, when I’m holding an adult beverage and I’m walking quickly, not a drop spills.

One look at my shirt will tell you that is definitely not case when drinking while moving fast. But I can definitely run while holding my drink.

Eventually, we got to the first music station. There was a DJ there, and we just danced in the crazy lighting.

Eventually, we left and went further on the course. Now the course was interesting. It was at Canterbury. We started on the horse track, but being less lazy than horses, we kept going, eventually running around the stables and various machine shops.

We went to another dance station. The whole 5K took a long time – possibly two hours (I wasn’t tracking time, and there was not a running chip in our numbers).

Well, at the third dancing station, I got a Saga, A got an EPA. THEN WE DANCED.

Okay, we kept going after a while, and then there were outhouses along the course…. with a 20 minute line! (For those who don’t normally run 5Ks, they usually take around 30 minutes and have no outhouses/booze)

We finally got to the end, where there was a giant after party. We stayed and danced there until it was over. A was jumping around like a maniac. I was getting tired and starting to question my usual bottomless, youthful energy.

It wasn’t until the second to the last song that I realized the problem. The music they were playing all night was mostly electronic techno. Basically pop songs with a techno remix.

I thought I was a tired old man….. But then they played Roxane by The Police, and I was spazzing around like my normal self. It turns out that Iwas not slowing down because I was low on energy, but I was slowing down because of my age. Apparently, I prefer good music.