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It's the end of the year, and that means it's time for a lot of lists. I'll start of with a quick one, kind of a teaser for the big kahuna. Plus, this one won't make fun of M.I.A.. Eight podcasts* that I felt were top notch this year.

1. KCRW's Good Food [ rss ] (Cooking)
2. The Bike Show (Resonance FM) [ rss ] (Cycling)
3. Slate's Political Gabfest [ rss ] (Politics))
4. Fantasy 411 [ rss ] (Baseball, German Military Strategy)
5. KCRW's Left, Right, and Center [ rss ] (Politics)
6. Bikescape [ rss ] (Cycling, Urban Planning)
7. Slate's Explainer [ rss ] (News, somewhat)
8. Tool Talk [ rss ] (Tools)

Now if you'll excuse me, the kid is in the midst of another growth spurt. It's only been a week since the last one, during which she blasted through two shoe sizes and never even wore the couple-sizes-too-large winter boots we bought for her last month.

*Broadcast radio show that podcast are counted

The other day, I called the customer service number of a large corporation who's name I can't recall at the moment. Their phone greeted me with "For english, press one. Para español, press two."

Today I drove the 2. Stuck in traffic, I noticed the for sale sign on a mid-90's SUV. It advertised the cars features: power locks, power windows, and "curse control".

I really enjoyed that NPR Democratic candidates debate. I hope the Republicans aren't so fond of bickering about sanctuaries that they don't do one of their own.

I saw an Good Food made me wonder if this "seven courses of beef" is quintessentially Zakcq or not.

I got sick this morning. It was odd to suddenly become sick while I was awake, after waking up feeling relatively well. I woke up at around 9, and I started to work on one of the bikes that Jen picked up for us. I started to cannibalize all the excess parts (shifters and various pieces of now-useless, heavy clamps), and after about an hour I suddenly got flu-like symptoms.

So I'm not going to work today. I hate being sick. We'll watch some lame movie like Lonesome Jim or whatever.

Congratulations to married. And buy a house.

Yesterday I saw a rusted out F-150 from the early 80's plastered with bumper stickers. There were all of the expected stickers, the Git r Duns, the Calvin peeing on a Chevrolet logo, the gassy ass for grass thing, the slanty number 8, and campaign stickers for everybody's favorite neo-facist pres. Interestingly, however, mixed in were all those annoying pagan stickers (my other car is a broom, I'm an Ameriwiccan, etc.) that you normally see next to stickers advertising for the raise-taxes-for-public-welfare crowd (as opposed to the raise-taxes-for-corporate-welfare crowd).

It's been a great weekend. I had friday off work, which turned out to be a great day to take off. I would have been driving the 4 on Lyndale and through downtown on Hennepin, and, from what I saw when we went down to the Wedge to get Eliot some wipes while we wait for our Twin Cities Blend Peace Coffee [Peace Coffee absolutely murders Stumptown, while I'm at it. Other recent coffee deaths inflicted by Peace coffee include Intellegentsia of Chicago, and everything I had in Seattle.] But hear me out, I'm a huge fan of eggs+beans+salsa wrapped up in various combinations. Earwax (Chicago) previously held the title for Greatest Breakfast Burrito, and the Uptown Diner held the local version, but Anodyne has taken over. Insane.

But wait, there's more! The Twins are on a roll. Remember five days ago when people were freaking out about the Twins' 1-5 start? A slow start to a season on the road has never been reason for worry. We just swept the A's. Our supposedly terrible offense wiped oakland pitching all over the FieldTurf. Scott Baker put the supposedly incredible [offensively] Yankees in his back pocket and sat on a very… hard… something. Now we're suddenly one game behind the two hottest offenses in the American League, and tied with the defending World Series champs [soon to be once-World Series champs]. I'll admit I don't like the additions. But they'll help more than it looks like they will. Castillo batting second is better than whoever the heck we had there last year. Batista makes the seventh spot in the order upgrade from a hack to 25 homer potential. And at some point Gardy's going to realize that Morneau should be batting fourth or fifth and Rondell should be putting up his 25 homers in the six hole. Morneau is going to be sweet this year. It would be nice if he would have somebody on base when he's up. Liriano is smoking jerks. Baker's pitching like Greg Maddux. Lohse is in the way.

I was awoken by the theme from Calhoun Beach Club for an extra hundred. Who needs a yard in the City of Parks & Lakes, anyway?

Bethany started working again this week. She's going to do two four-hour shifs per week. This week it was just me and the kid for the first time. It took her a while, but I think she's finally come to terms with my not being her mother. On wednesday, she woke up after about an hour and acted hungry, but she wouldn't take the bottle (Playtex Vent-Aire). It was still 45 minutes before playgroup at the Porch, so I put her in the Baby Björn and we went down to the record store. It was a nice 45 degrees outside, but it was pretty much hot in the store; we weren't in there for more than 3 minutes before she starting lettingme know how much she hated the heat. We'll have to go back another time when she's in a better mood. She was also starting to poop. So i decided to just go down to the playgroup on 46th instead of home to change and feed her [the record store is on 43rd], and it was such a nice walk [45° and overcast YUM] that I decided to walk instead of take the bus. It's only 3.5 blocks after all [or just shy of a half mile]. Turns out the wind was north, so we froze. As soon as i was in no-man's land between bus stops, a nearly empty 18A drives by. Oh, well, if the short line comes by, the next long line is usually late, so I just keep walking. Two minutes later a very full 18E [that probably was supposed to be five minutes ahead of the A] sneaks up behind me. We made it, though. She likes the Björn. She was finally hungry enough to eat, but I left the Playtex, thinking she didn't like it anymore, and only had the Medela bottle. The hole is too big on it, so the milk comes out way faster than Eliot can drink. I only had one spare onesie. Thursday, she liked the Playtex.

That morning at 9:30, I woke up to "I'm leaving for work, here's Eliot" and having a wiggly, vocal kid set on top of me. Yiiiiiiikes. She was up all morning.

We'll get the hang of it.

What's with people pretending to have some sort of working-class rage that involves complaining about middle class people. I've seen it a lot lately, and it doesn't quite make sense. Most recently it happened in a thread at MNSpeak, where a NIMBYism runs rampant apparantly, and the middle class white people were having a fit about other middle class white people moving into newer buildings in their neighborhoods than the ones in which the NIMBYs live. It's as if they honestly think that buildings build themselves for free and come with a low cost of living. It's basically the same thing when people complain about magazines like Cookie and Dwell. The odd thing is that it's usually done under the guise that they promote unnecessary consumption, but seriously, compare anything you find in Dwell to anything you'll find at Target or Wal-Mart. I guess some people mistake irresponsible consumption as expensive products instead of cheap, disposable ones. Ironically, when people make arguments against new condo/retail/apartment buildings being built because they're too expensive, they're really making an argument that there should be fewer construction jobs for the working class they're pretending to champion.

Number three is when I say something anti-car (which I do a lot) and people assume I'm talking about the environment. As bad as cars are for the environment, that's not even close to my biggest problem with them. It's just kind of annoying, that's all.

This week I'll be drinking some E.S.B. that I picked up at Surdyk's. It's pretty good, although I think it tastes more like a fruity white wine than beer. Yummerskates!