Guess who is home this Wednesday night in time for LOST? Let's do this.
7:59 - An attendance tonight: Dan, myself and a sleeping Bron-Bron.
8:00 - Jack wakes up on the island. I think I've seen this one before.
8:02 - The part they didn't show you is when Hurley let Leonardo DiCaprio sink just a moment beforehand.
8:03 - Can I just say I like flash-forwards better than I like flashbacks? It's like seeing something on the horizon and getting to walk to it.
8:05 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - I have a small bone of contention. So out of all of the people Ben was trying to recruit to come back to the island, he went to Jack, Sayid and Hurley. Then the only person who actually went with Ben was Jack while Sun is in this weird showdown and Desmond Hume more or less just showed up. How was Ben the leader of The Others for so long? I mean, wouldn't it be necessary to win people over to your side at least once?
8:09 - "Is he telling the truth?" One of those things that if you need to ask...
8:10 - "Okay, guys there are all of these 'pockets' and one of them is a tropical island." "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say we should try to find the one which is a tropical island."
8:12 - See what I mean about having something to work towards?
8:13 - Err, Desmond. I think it's been obvious for a while that Ben is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.
8:14 - Or land in Guam.
8:15 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - Is anyone else really fired up for "Watchmen"? It's getting so close they're running the short commercials now.
8:18 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - By George, Dennis Leary will sell Smallz a truck with a step if they have to mail it to him.
8:19 - Have we established whether Locke's legs work yet?
8:20 - A very good summation about watching the rest of this show.
8:24 - Okay, who's that guy?
8:22 - Ben: Dropping some knowledge on Jack.
8:25 - Oddly enough her name WAS Freckles.
8:28 - Kiss 'er. Kiss 'er.
8:29 - YES!
8:30 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - Doctor or God? Wasn't there an Alec Baldwin movie about that?
8:33 - Ah, yes. The venerable Coffee of Shame.
8:35 - You know when you think the bully from your school was the BAAAADDDEST dude around and then you see him get beat up? Yeah.
8:37 - I mean, it's obvious Locke's legs don't work now when he's dead.
8:38 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - So I got a new phone today. It has a QWERTY board and everything. If you think I sent a lot of text messages before... Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha!
8:41 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - Would you actually hold a friend to a "... I'll marry a goat." I mean, there needs to be an acceptable substitute like a slug in the arm. But to make him actually marry a goat?
8:44 - Hurley! Buying up the plane like Daddy Warbucks. Anyone remember that part in "Annie"? Anyone?
8:46 - "What will happen to the other people?" "Who cares?" Ben!
8:49 - Doesn't Frank LaPetis sound like the type of name you'd write down on the attendance sheet when there was substitute?
8:51 - And how exactly does a surgeon get to know an airline pilot very well? Doesn't that seem unlikely?
8:52 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - Having Dan here pays off. Frank is apparently the helicopter pilot. Again, I ask...
8:54 - COMMERCIAL BREAK - How nice is it to see Nathan Fillion getting cast in other stuff? I mean, even meaningless mid-season replacements.
8:55 - Do you think the LOST writers just sit around and think up one-liners for Ben to zing Jack with?
8:56 - Well, now that you put it that way...
8:59 - Ah, yes. It's not where you are, it's when.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Thirty By Thirty - #1 - Start Taking a Multi-Vitamin
Okay, when I was thinking up things to do for 30 x 30 it wasn't all just glamorous things like "Go parachuting" or "Visit New York City." Sometimes they're just going to be little things which I really should be doing anyway. Taking a multi-vitamin is a good example.
When you're young, you don't have to care about things like eating right. Your margin of error is much higher and you can do most anything without facing really grave consequences you can't recover from. Ask anybody you know about "how much wilder" they were in their youth and you'll surely hear tales of "I can't believe nothing bad happened" from most of them.
Well, later in life is when you start paying for those youthful indulgences and indiscretions. I know this personally from needing to undo years of abuse by losing a lot of weight and now fighting to keep it off. So I need to start thinking now about the little things I can be doing now to pay off positively much later.
Thus I am taking a multi-vitamin. There are some questions about their effectiveness. But I know that I'm most definitely not getting a balanced and completely nutritious diet right now. So I will take a One-A-Day multi-vitamin a vitamin C tablet to make sure I am augmenting my diet correctly.
When you're young, you don't have to care about things like eating right. Your margin of error is much higher and you can do most anything without facing really grave consequences you can't recover from. Ask anybody you know about "how much wilder" they were in their youth and you'll surely hear tales of "I can't believe nothing bad happened" from most of them.
Well, later in life is when you start paying for those youthful indulgences and indiscretions. I know this personally from needing to undo years of abuse by losing a lot of weight and now fighting to keep it off. So I need to start thinking now about the little things I can be doing now to pay off positively much later.
Thus I am taking a multi-vitamin. There are some questions about their effectiveness. But I know that I'm most definitely not getting a balanced and completely nutritious diet right now. So I will take a One-A-Day multi-vitamin a vitamin C tablet to make sure I am augmenting my diet correctly.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
25 Things
I technically did 29 things for my 30 x 30 unrelated to the 25 things craze. But here are 25 random things about me.
1.) Sometimes I just get lazy about shaving and turn it into an opportunity to grow a sweet beard.
2.) I always watch the Onion News Network twice, once with the sound and again without the sound to read the scroll.
3.) When I go on a date I have to listen to three songs as I'm getting ready: "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins, "I Have A Date" by The Vandals and then "First Date" by Blink 182. Then I listen to as much Jay-Z as possible. Do you know how super confident listening to a lot of Jay-Z makes you?
4.) If you and I are going somewhere in a car and we get to our destination, I am out of the car before you have your seatbelt off. Then I'll stand next to the car like it's you who has the problem.
5.) My brother and I have an ongoing competition to see who can shake famous people's hands. Basically the only way to win would be to shake Obama, Jordan or Thom Yorke's hand (and I was close on the first two).
6.) When I go to the movies, I try to sit in the dead center of the theater. I will go to the extent of counting rows and seats in a row if it's a place I've never been before.
7.) Peanut butter + two slices of bread = meal at any time of day
8.) If I had to pick my best year of my life, I'd pick 2005 followed by 1998.
9.) If I had to pick the worst year of my life, I wouldn't pick one. Each year had something going for it.
10.) My archnemesis for my entire life has been the telephone. If I'm ever on the phone with you for more than a minute consider this a show of the strength of our friendship. I'm literally torturing myself on your behalf.
11.) It would be my dream to one day play a game of Risktego, aka a game of Risk with each of the battles being a game of Stratego. And by "one day" I mean the week it would required to play straight through only taking breaks to sleep, to eat, to use the bathroom and to take a walk outside pondering why you wanted to play a game of Risktego.
12.) I don't eat beef. It's partially a consciousness thing but also beef just makes me feel logey.
13.) When I was little I read a lot of comic books. Here's the weird part. They were mostly Archie comics.
14.) I know that in kindergarten I was as tall as an emperor penguin. I know this because I stood up to show the class how tall an emperor penguin was.
15.) In college my friends and I developed a thirty-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week calendar. We're pretty sure you'd go crazy but the idea of twenty hours on and ten hours off appealed to us. I mean, let's be honest. We were already doing the twenty hours on.
16.) I've moved at least once every year since I was 16 except 2004 and 2007. Amazingly I still check and use the very first e-mail account I ever set up.
17.) When the World Cup rolls around, I'll cheer for any team that speaks English or Portuguese.
18.) I have a friend who I always considered a music expert and was intimidated by his knowledge of music. He then told me he considered me a music expert and was intimidated by my knowledge of music. This individual is now one of my best friends.
19.) During high school, I used to run up to people I knew, put my arm around their shoulder and try to swing into their arms. This worked about as often as you would imagine.
20.) If I had to pick between the ability to fly, invisibility or the strength of 10 men, I'd pick flying. People who pick invisibility are creepers and not to be trusted. I don't know anyone who would pick the strength of 10 men.
21.) To date I have yet to incur any credit card debt.
22.) My favorite soft drink is RC Cola.
23.) I believe there are two appropriate responses when someone offers you a piece of pizza: "Yes, thank you. How generous of you." and "No, thank you. I already have my own slice."
24.) I made a decision a few years ago to be more polite. I rethought it as the minimum amount of consideration you can expect from another person and perhaps politeness keeps us from tearing other apart.
25.) I remember what it was like to be the kid who got left out in grade school. For that sole reason, I am always trying to include new people into whatever I'm doing.
1.) Sometimes I just get lazy about shaving and turn it into an opportunity to grow a sweet beard.
2.) I always watch the Onion News Network twice, once with the sound and again without the sound to read the scroll.
3.) When I go on a date I have to listen to three songs as I'm getting ready: "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins, "I Have A Date" by The Vandals and then "First Date" by Blink 182. Then I listen to as much Jay-Z as possible. Do you know how super confident listening to a lot of Jay-Z makes you?
4.) If you and I are going somewhere in a car and we get to our destination, I am out of the car before you have your seatbelt off. Then I'll stand next to the car like it's you who has the problem.
5.) My brother and I have an ongoing competition to see who can shake famous people's hands. Basically the only way to win would be to shake Obama, Jordan or Thom Yorke's hand (and I was close on the first two).
6.) When I go to the movies, I try to sit in the dead center of the theater. I will go to the extent of counting rows and seats in a row if it's a place I've never been before.
7.) Peanut butter + two slices of bread = meal at any time of day
8.) If I had to pick my best year of my life, I'd pick 2005 followed by 1998.
9.) If I had to pick the worst year of my life, I wouldn't pick one. Each year had something going for it.
10.) My archnemesis for my entire life has been the telephone. If I'm ever on the phone with you for more than a minute consider this a show of the strength of our friendship. I'm literally torturing myself on your behalf.
11.) It would be my dream to one day play a game of Risktego, aka a game of Risk with each of the battles being a game of Stratego. And by "one day" I mean the week it would required to play straight through only taking breaks to sleep, to eat, to use the bathroom and to take a walk outside pondering why you wanted to play a game of Risktego.
12.) I don't eat beef. It's partially a consciousness thing but also beef just makes me feel logey.
13.) When I was little I read a lot of comic books. Here's the weird part. They were mostly Archie comics.
14.) I know that in kindergarten I was as tall as an emperor penguin. I know this because I stood up to show the class how tall an emperor penguin was.
15.) In college my friends and I developed a thirty-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week calendar. We're pretty sure you'd go crazy but the idea of twenty hours on and ten hours off appealed to us. I mean, let's be honest. We were already doing the twenty hours on.
16.) I've moved at least once every year since I was 16 except 2004 and 2007. Amazingly I still check and use the very first e-mail account I ever set up.
17.) When the World Cup rolls around, I'll cheer for any team that speaks English or Portuguese.
18.) I have a friend who I always considered a music expert and was intimidated by his knowledge of music. He then told me he considered me a music expert and was intimidated by my knowledge of music. This individual is now one of my best friends.
19.) During high school, I used to run up to people I knew, put my arm around their shoulder and try to swing into their arms. This worked about as often as you would imagine.
20.) If I had to pick between the ability to fly, invisibility or the strength of 10 men, I'd pick flying. People who pick invisibility are creepers and not to be trusted. I don't know anyone who would pick the strength of 10 men.
21.) To date I have yet to incur any credit card debt.
22.) My favorite soft drink is RC Cola.
23.) I believe there are two appropriate responses when someone offers you a piece of pizza: "Yes, thank you. How generous of you." and "No, thank you. I already have my own slice."
24.) I made a decision a few years ago to be more polite. I rethought it as the minimum amount of consideration you can expect from another person and perhaps politeness keeps us from tearing other apart.
25.) I remember what it was like to be the kid who got left out in grade school. For that sole reason, I am always trying to include new people into whatever I'm doing.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Thirty By Thirty - Mission Statement
As I approached my 29th birthday, I made a decision of how I would celebrate the last year of my twenties.
A lot of people approach their thirties in a mournful state. I should know as, in the last few years, my peers have increasingly become people approaching thirty. They think of it as the dying of their youth and the end of their best years. I take the opposite tack. I would much rather be 30 than 20. When I was 20 I had no money, had no girlfriend and didn't know who the fonk I was or who I wanted to be. Well, those three things are still true but I'm much further along the journey. I wouldn't peel back my twenties in any kind of redo because what I did and what happened made me into who I am today.
Thus I will celebrate my twenties as this great time I did, went and saw everything I could and enjoyed myself while doing, going and seeing. In much the same way we congregate together on New Years Eve to celebrate the passing of time instead of mourning it, my turning thirty will not be the dying of one era but the commencement of another. They will be the years when I find my way in the world, discover those people who will be my life companions and enjoy all of the perks of being an adult instead of being an over-inflated kid.
As a part of this year long celebration I'm going to do thirty things which I have never done before and then come back here and write about the experience. My brother calls it my "busted list" as in I have to do these things before I'm old and busted. Some of the tasks will be small and easily completed. Others will require planning and assistance. It is not my intent to have a list of thirty items and only accomplish twenty-something. There is a list which is already greater than thirty items and your suggestions are appreciated to expand upon it further. As I said, the intent is to share in this celebration both in the actual commission of the thirty things and also in writing about it in this space.
To that extent I have written the following as a declaration of purpose:
Between his 29th and 30th birthdays, Michael Herman will celebrate his transition into his third decade by completing thirty tasks he has never previously experienced and embracing the idea you can always find new experiences no matter how old you are thanks to the wonder, beauty and timeliness of Life.
A lot of people approach their thirties in a mournful state. I should know as, in the last few years, my peers have increasingly become people approaching thirty. They think of it as the dying of their youth and the end of their best years. I take the opposite tack. I would much rather be 30 than 20. When I was 20 I had no money, had no girlfriend and didn't know who the fonk I was or who I wanted to be. Well, those three things are still true but I'm much further along the journey. I wouldn't peel back my twenties in any kind of redo because what I did and what happened made me into who I am today.
Thus I will celebrate my twenties as this great time I did, went and saw everything I could and enjoyed myself while doing, going and seeing. In much the same way we congregate together on New Years Eve to celebrate the passing of time instead of mourning it, my turning thirty will not be the dying of one era but the commencement of another. They will be the years when I find my way in the world, discover those people who will be my life companions and enjoy all of the perks of being an adult instead of being an over-inflated kid.
As a part of this year long celebration I'm going to do thirty things which I have never done before and then come back here and write about the experience. My brother calls it my "busted list" as in I have to do these things before I'm old and busted. Some of the tasks will be small and easily completed. Others will require planning and assistance. It is not my intent to have a list of thirty items and only accomplish twenty-something. There is a list which is already greater than thirty items and your suggestions are appreciated to expand upon it further. As I said, the intent is to share in this celebration both in the actual commission of the thirty things and also in writing about it in this space.
To that extent I have written the following as a declaration of purpose:
Between his 29th and 30th birthdays, Michael Herman will celebrate his transition into his third decade by completing thirty tasks he has never previously experienced and embracing the idea you can always find new experiences no matter how old you are thanks to the wonder, beauty and timeliness of Life.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
The 29 Things About Me At Age 29
1.) I was born at 8:30 in the evening on February 1st, 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The hospital where I was born (Abbott-Northwestern) is still standing. No, Gregory Peck, it did not burn down years ago.
2.) I grew up in Edina, Minnesota where I lived at the end of a cul-de-sac with a large yard. I'm the oldest of three children with one sister two years younger and a brother four years younger.
3.) When I was really little (my aunt estimates 3 or 4 years old) I kept another little boy from drowning. We were up at my family's lake cabin and this boy hadn't been raised near the water like I had and thus couldn't swim very well. I laid down on my belly on the dock as I held his head above water and shouted until the adults heard me.
4.) I've been to the hospital a few times in my life. I can't give you an exact number because a good number of them happened when I had epilepsy as a very small child. There are the three times I remember.
When I was four, I was playing in the basement of our old house with my dad and my sister. My sister and I were taking turns jumping over a comforter my dad was swinging back and forth. Normally if you tripped you'd fall into the comforter. I overshot once and had to get stitches in my chin.
When I was 13, I had an incident during my sleep at summer camp which made it seem like my epilepsy was coming back. It turned out it wasn't. But I did have to have a battery of tests to verify this. The one upside was my dad and I stayed up all night watching "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" and "The Commitments" per doctor's orders.
Then when I was 20, I fell into a door frame and needed stitches in my eyebrow. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. It was a klutzy trip into a door frame, not a shameful display of foolishness. Move along now. Nothing to see here.
5.) Since I was very young I've been fascinated by the news. As a kid I would read Newsweek and US News and World report while being glued to CNN Headline News. On the morning the democratic demonstrations in Tienanmen Square were suppressed I watched the news report on CBS's This Morning with Charles Kuralt. It was the same day the Ayatollah died.
6.) The very first time I was on the Internet was in 1988 or so when the kid up the block got a modem. He had to place a long-distance call to Houston in order to sign into a very basic version of Prodigy. Later his father got the phone bill and hit the roof. The point was we were there.
7.) I was there in-person with my dad, my sister and my brother when this happened.
The fact I love baseball is not entirely unrelated.
8.) After my ninth grade year I transferred away from Edina to Orono where I graduated in 1998. Being at a smaller school allowed me to letter in varsity basketball, concert band and theater while participating in the school newspaper, the literary magazine and ultimate frisbee. I would not have had the opportunity to participate in all these extra curriculars at a school like Edina High School.
9.) I lived in the state of Wisconsin across three academic years while I attended school near Green Bay. This experienced exposed me to what it's like to live in a town smaller than Minneapolis.
10.) While I was in school at St. Norbert, I was a member of a "frat." It wasn't frat really. It was technically a "men's independent social group" and it was made up of a the really smart, really independent kids who "would never join a frat except... Hey, what's this?" To this date, my best and closest friends are people I met through this group.
11.) In the fall semester of my junior year, I won a student-faculty grant from the school to write a manuscript under the supervision of a professor. The college gave me $2000 which I promptly dumped back into tuition. To this date I have yet to finish the manuscript. But at one point in my life I was technically an endowed writer.
12.) I published the on-campus underground satirical newspaper while I was at St. Norbert. We were pretty serious about getting the paper out every two weeks. So serious that one time I drank too much, got up the next morning, puked during class (I was running to the restroom at the time), went home to sleep it off and still got up to meet my own self-imposed deadline of that evening.
13.) After my junior year of college I was blown out. I wasn't feeling challenged by my school work so I was making up impossible challenges to complete this school work. For example, I would type my papers for the critical writing class (the hardest class in the English major) on the day of class. When this wasn't enough, I started writing them in the two hours before class. In April I took incompletes in all of my classes and moved home.
14.) I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2003. Since I'd missed some gen ed classes on my first time through I took an extra two semesters (fall and summer) to finish. Recently I saw my diploma for the first time in five years. I put it back in the box it was in and don't expect to see it for another five years.
15.) I've visited 31 out of the 50 states. My family was very good (and fortunate) at taking a lot of trips when I was growing up. Since then I've added to my 50-state tally by taking long road trips to each coast either with my friends, my high school band, protest trips or just by myself. These are the states I've visited.
16.) I've been out of the country three times total. I went to Canada with my mom for a week and I've been over the border from Brownsville into Matamoros twice. I don't consider this a deficiency. Do you know how much of the United States there is to see?
17.) The one time I ever tried to hitchhike I was successful. In fact, it was someone I knew who picked me up. My friend Pete and I were leaving the Phish concert in the middle of the Everglades for Y2K and he needed to be on a plane the next morning. We were holding a sign near the front gate when my friend Jake drove by in an RV. It's possibly the luckiest moment of my entire life.
18.) When I got out of college, I didn't know what to do with myself. So I did what any person would do in that situation. I went into whatever paid me the most. In this case, it was insurance.
19.) There was one Friday night when I was nary a year post-college I was sitting at home watching a re-run of "Cops." Suddenly it occurred to me. I was sitting at home on a Friday night watching a re-run of "Cops." Even worse, I'd seen that episode previously. It was that night I decided to be more of an extrovert.
20.) I've had seven girlfriends in my lifetime. I loved all seven of them in their own way. I've felt bad about how things ended with all seven of them. The good news is three of the last four will probably read this so I'm getting better at staying friends.
21.) I lived in the state of Illinois for two years while my now-ex-girlfriend pursued an acting career. This experience exposed me to what it's like to live in a city larger than Minneapolis.
22.) When I lived in Chicago, I worked for the insurance arm of a large property holding firm doing complex filings of yada yada yada and blah blah blah. Our offices were on the Magnificent Mile and I would ride the train down from Evanston every morning. This was the best job I've ever had. The work was challenging, I was given a great deal of autonomy and there was an amazing culture of camaraderie amongst the young people of the office.
23.) The best part about living in Chicago for me was the really cool concert festivals I attended in that city's parks. I went to Pitchfork three times, the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary weekend and numerous great bands famous and otherwise playing at the summer street festivals. Still one of my five favorite moments ever was at Lollapalooza last year when this happened by accident.
24.) Three of my friends have died in my lifetime. The first was my childhood friend Brendan who used to come down the block to play when we were little. He died from a sudden onset of meningitis when we were in high school. The next was my college friend Emily who crashed her bike and flipped over her handlebars while not wearing a helmet. She used to call everything "fascist!" and I'm sure would've actually exploded if she had lived to see the Bush years. Then I was 24 when my friend Chuck who worked across the hall passed away after coming home from the bar. He complained to his girlfriend about feeling ill and went to bed. That "feeling ill" was his vital organs shutting down.
25.) I have only one grandparent left, my paternal grandmother. I was six years old when my dad's dad died and that makes me the youngest member of our family who remembers him. My mom's mom died when I was a sophomore in college and my grandfather died two days after I'd visited him when I was 26. I realize how lucky I am in all four circumstances.
26.) I cried when Kirby Puckett died. I actually cried twice, once when I heard the news and once when they held a moment of silence for him at the T'Wolves game two days later. After the moment of silence I turned to my then-girlfriend, pointed at Kevin Garnett and said, "That's the only other athlete I will cry over when he dies."
27.) I've been quoted twice in the newspaper of the metro area in twice I was living. When I was in high school, I was a part of an article about kids who transfer high schools under Minnesota's open-enrollment rules. When I was in college, I was a part of an article about a protest trip we took to the School of The Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. I also appeared on the front page of the newspaper in the later article.
28.) My brother and I were in a band together called MidDef when I was in college and he was in high school and even wrote a few original songs. We played exactly two concerts; once in Dad's basement for X-mas and once in our Mom's backyard for some friends.
29.) When this posts I will be when I have just turned 29 years old. If I live until at least 70, my life isn't even halfway over. The best part isn't that I feel like I've done a lot with the 29 years I've had. It is that I feel like I can do even more in the coming years ahead.
2.) I grew up in Edina, Minnesota where I lived at the end of a cul-de-sac with a large yard. I'm the oldest of three children with one sister two years younger and a brother four years younger.
3.) When I was really little (my aunt estimates 3 or 4 years old) I kept another little boy from drowning. We were up at my family's lake cabin and this boy hadn't been raised near the water like I had and thus couldn't swim very well. I laid down on my belly on the dock as I held his head above water and shouted until the adults heard me.
4.) I've been to the hospital a few times in my life. I can't give you an exact number because a good number of them happened when I had epilepsy as a very small child. There are the three times I remember.
When I was four, I was playing in the basement of our old house with my dad and my sister. My sister and I were taking turns jumping over a comforter my dad was swinging back and forth. Normally if you tripped you'd fall into the comforter. I overshot once and had to get stitches in my chin.
When I was 13, I had an incident during my sleep at summer camp which made it seem like my epilepsy was coming back. It turned out it wasn't. But I did have to have a battery of tests to verify this. The one upside was my dad and I stayed up all night watching "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" and "The Commitments" per doctor's orders.
Then when I was 20, I fell into a door frame and needed stitches in my eyebrow. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. It was a klutzy trip into a door frame, not a shameful display of foolishness. Move along now. Nothing to see here.
5.) Since I was very young I've been fascinated by the news. As a kid I would read Newsweek and US News and World report while being glued to CNN Headline News. On the morning the democratic demonstrations in Tienanmen Square were suppressed I watched the news report on CBS's This Morning with Charles Kuralt. It was the same day the Ayatollah died.
6.) The very first time I was on the Internet was in 1988 or so when the kid up the block got a modem. He had to place a long-distance call to Houston in order to sign into a very basic version of Prodigy. Later his father got the phone bill and hit the roof. The point was we were there.
7.) I was there in-person with my dad, my sister and my brother when this happened.
The fact I love baseball is not entirely unrelated.
8.) After my ninth grade year I transferred away from Edina to Orono where I graduated in 1998. Being at a smaller school allowed me to letter in varsity basketball, concert band and theater while participating in the school newspaper, the literary magazine and ultimate frisbee. I would not have had the opportunity to participate in all these extra curriculars at a school like Edina High School.
9.) I lived in the state of Wisconsin across three academic years while I attended school near Green Bay. This experienced exposed me to what it's like to live in a town smaller than Minneapolis.
10.) While I was in school at St. Norbert, I was a member of a "frat." It wasn't frat really. It was technically a "men's independent social group" and it was made up of a the really smart, really independent kids who "would never join a frat except... Hey, what's this?" To this date, my best and closest friends are people I met through this group.
11.) In the fall semester of my junior year, I won a student-faculty grant from the school to write a manuscript under the supervision of a professor. The college gave me $2000 which I promptly dumped back into tuition. To this date I have yet to finish the manuscript. But at one point in my life I was technically an endowed writer.
12.) I published the on-campus underground satirical newspaper while I was at St. Norbert. We were pretty serious about getting the paper out every two weeks. So serious that one time I drank too much, got up the next morning, puked during class (I was running to the restroom at the time), went home to sleep it off and still got up to meet my own self-imposed deadline of that evening.
13.) After my junior year of college I was blown out. I wasn't feeling challenged by my school work so I was making up impossible challenges to complete this school work. For example, I would type my papers for the critical writing class (the hardest class in the English major) on the day of class. When this wasn't enough, I started writing them in the two hours before class. In April I took incompletes in all of my classes and moved home.
14.) I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2003. Since I'd missed some gen ed classes on my first time through I took an extra two semesters (fall and summer) to finish. Recently I saw my diploma for the first time in five years. I put it back in the box it was in and don't expect to see it for another five years.
15.) I've visited 31 out of the 50 states. My family was very good (and fortunate) at taking a lot of trips when I was growing up. Since then I've added to my 50-state tally by taking long road trips to each coast either with my friends, my high school band, protest trips or just by myself. These are the states I've visited.
16.) I've been out of the country three times total. I went to Canada with my mom for a week and I've been over the border from Brownsville into Matamoros twice. I don't consider this a deficiency. Do you know how much of the United States there is to see?
17.) The one time I ever tried to hitchhike I was successful. In fact, it was someone I knew who picked me up. My friend Pete and I were leaving the Phish concert in the middle of the Everglades for Y2K and he needed to be on a plane the next morning. We were holding a sign near the front gate when my friend Jake drove by in an RV. It's possibly the luckiest moment of my entire life.
18.) When I got out of college, I didn't know what to do with myself. So I did what any person would do in that situation. I went into whatever paid me the most. In this case, it was insurance.
19.) There was one Friday night when I was nary a year post-college I was sitting at home watching a re-run of "Cops." Suddenly it occurred to me. I was sitting at home on a Friday night watching a re-run of "Cops." Even worse, I'd seen that episode previously. It was that night I decided to be more of an extrovert.
20.) I've had seven girlfriends in my lifetime. I loved all seven of them in their own way. I've felt bad about how things ended with all seven of them. The good news is three of the last four will probably read this so I'm getting better at staying friends.
21.) I lived in the state of Illinois for two years while my now-ex-girlfriend pursued an acting career. This experience exposed me to what it's like to live in a city larger than Minneapolis.
22.) When I lived in Chicago, I worked for the insurance arm of a large property holding firm doing complex filings of yada yada yada and blah blah blah. Our offices were on the Magnificent Mile and I would ride the train down from Evanston every morning. This was the best job I've ever had. The work was challenging, I was given a great deal of autonomy and there was an amazing culture of camaraderie amongst the young people of the office.
23.) The best part about living in Chicago for me was the really cool concert festivals I attended in that city's parks. I went to Pitchfork three times, the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary weekend and numerous great bands famous and otherwise playing at the summer street festivals. Still one of my five favorite moments ever was at Lollapalooza last year when this happened by accident.
24.) Three of my friends have died in my lifetime. The first was my childhood friend Brendan who used to come down the block to play when we were little. He died from a sudden onset of meningitis when we were in high school. The next was my college friend Emily who crashed her bike and flipped over her handlebars while not wearing a helmet. She used to call everything "fascist!" and I'm sure would've actually exploded if she had lived to see the Bush years. Then I was 24 when my friend Chuck who worked across the hall passed away after coming home from the bar. He complained to his girlfriend about feeling ill and went to bed. That "feeling ill" was his vital organs shutting down.
25.) I have only one grandparent left, my paternal grandmother. I was six years old when my dad's dad died and that makes me the youngest member of our family who remembers him. My mom's mom died when I was a sophomore in college and my grandfather died two days after I'd visited him when I was 26. I realize how lucky I am in all four circumstances.
26.) I cried when Kirby Puckett died. I actually cried twice, once when I heard the news and once when they held a moment of silence for him at the T'Wolves game two days later. After the moment of silence I turned to my then-girlfriend, pointed at Kevin Garnett and said, "That's the only other athlete I will cry over when he dies."
27.) I've been quoted twice in the newspaper of the metro area in twice I was living. When I was in high school, I was a part of an article about kids who transfer high schools under Minnesota's open-enrollment rules. When I was in college, I was a part of an article about a protest trip we took to the School of The Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. I also appeared on the front page of the newspaper in the later article.
28.) My brother and I were in a band together called MidDef when I was in college and he was in high school and even wrote a few original songs. We played exactly two concerts; once in Dad's basement for X-mas and once in our Mom's backyard for some friends.
29.) When this posts I will be when I have just turned 29 years old. If I live until at least 70, my life isn't even halfway over. The best part isn't that I feel like I've done a lot with the 29 years I've had. It is that I feel like I can do even more in the coming years ahead.
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