Going postal
These stamps totally make up for the post office being closed for four days this last weekend
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These stamps totally make up for the post office being closed for four days this last weekend
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I'm always complaining about the way people drive in general, and specifically in Minnesota. I was telling somebody who has lived in Los Angeles for the last sixty years that it's gotten awful around here, and when she started to give me the yeah-well-in-California, I mentioned that specifically, a new habit I've seen beginning this summer was that when people stop at a red light, they'll run right through it if there's nobody coming as if it's a stop sign [As of today, I've counted nine in my last five workdays]. She quickly changed her look to one of disbelief. A few months ago I complained about a guy trying to run me down on Lyndale while I was crossing with the kid in a stroller. On tuesday, I was crossing First Street at First Avenue to go to Origami, and some guy in a Buick decided it would be much funnier to run right through the stop sign and cut me off by a matter of inches than to stop and wait five seconds.
Finally, today at about 12:30, while riding my bike to work, I was hit by a car. I was stopped at a light at Franklin in the turn lane on Nicollet, ready to turn left. The light was about to change, so I looked left first to make sure no cars were coming. I looked right, and there was a retired squad car, a '97 Crown Victoria turning right into me. I had enough time to jump up off my bike, she rammed my bike into my left shin, I landed on her hood, and my bike ended up under her bumper. Five hours in the ER later and it turns out I have a fracture in my leg and a bunch of bruises. Yikes. Won't be cycling for a while. Or driving for that matter. The bike didn't fare so well either. I just bought brand new wheels about three weeks ago and new handlebars last weekend. So that's where we stand. I'm still a little foggy, so I'm going to bed.
Suddenly beer gives me serious heartburn. Anybody know what's going on there?
Not A Box [Amazon]
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Anybody else switching to Cingular in June?
Roadside Soviet bus stops
Eliot learned a new way to deal with something she doesn't like: revenge. She's been sick since Sunday, hitting the one-year-old trifecta with a cold, an ear infection, and popping a new tooth (number eight, if anybody's keeping track). We also found out she takes after me with a cat allergy. Because of this, her nose has been running uncontrollably, so we've been swiping her upper lip with Puffs. She hates it. After five days of fighting it, pushing us away, today she suddenly got a determined look on her face, grabbed my nose with one hand, and wiped my face as hard as her little arms could.
We've also found that she's rather listen to real music than children's music. She couldn't care less when we put on a Wiggles or They Might Be Giants CD, but when Deerhoof or Why? or the Advantage is on, she gets down, and when Joanna Newsom or Julie Doiron or Blonde Redhead is playing, she starts singing along (she makes up her own lyrics: "Yah yah yah yah"). She already has far better taste than the average listener of the Current [pdf].
Really, though, it's been a week and I couldn't think of anything worth talking about other than my sick kid. Also, I like pointing out how horrid the Current is.
So it looks like Borders is planning on closing shop in their Block E location. The company line on the closing is slow sales due to poor foot traffic. The Star Tribune's brilliant idea? A white guy got shot down the street last year and everybody's afraid to go there. They must have forgotten that nobody went to Block E before last year, either. There's a small sentence acknowledging the Barnes & Noble 300 feet down Eighth Street, but according to the Tribune, that couldn't possibly have anything to do with it. And Block E being the ugliest building in town, built below the lowest common denominator (Borders was how they 'niced it up' a bit) couldn't possibly have an effect, right? Because people just love spending time in places where they don't enjoy being? While every globalized chain store continues to move out of that eyesore [wasn't there a Snyder's for about three days?], how long is the Star Tribune going to blame the teenagers that spend their time there because they're the exact demographic the entire building was built for?
When is Minneapolis going to learn?
Borders prepares to leave Block E [Star Tribune]
Eliot grabs chunks of her own hair and yanks as hard as she can. Repeatedly. If we try to get her to stop, she cries.
Maybe we'll put off any east-coast trip for a little bit. It sounds like they're opening a couple of U.S. Footprint With Two New York Openings [WWD]
What exactly is it about Alternadad that's debating? (I'd love to read it but the wife won't let me look at it until she's done).
I think the real issue here is that in attacking Neal Pollack for being a grup (one of the more asinine words I've ever heard some asshole blogger come up with, although the terms yupster, yindie, and alterna-yuppie are coined in the same piece, hitting the superfecta of inanity) the editor attempts to manhandle herself into a position hipper than Pollack so she can flaunt her non-grup-yet-still-hipper-than-thou-ness. How does she do this?
"Reference is made to encounters with, yes, Death Cab for Cutie, among others. You don't get hipper than that."
Later she mocks the guy for writing about his kid's favorite music: the Hives. This is the same magazine that has a column by Mates of State. Colin Meloy was interviewed this week. Hmm, which of these is not like the others?
I guess my only point is that some of us parents aren't trying to be anything, we're just young ourselves. If you're getting old and kind of a little bit out of touch, don't try to fake it or bring anybody down. Just get back to your old lady stuff and leave the rest of us alone.
Mix time is back, we've just finished the February mix, and we're going to share it with you. It's wintry. There are a lot of female folk type singers on it. It's about half new music, some leftovers from 06, and even a couple of older tracks in a few cases where the artist's older music is better than their new records.
That Time of the Month Vol. 20, February 2007
Download link [ ? ]
Update 01 Feb: I fixed the download link. It was making you all download the wrong mix. Sorry, listeners. Redownload the BT file and you'll be set.
This page contains all entries posted to Driver2165 in January 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.
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