Agile Highway Construction

I noticed that the Highway 35E construction near 494 has a large sign board right next to the portapotty, decorated with various articles and details. Yes...they seem to have discovered Agile. They have a storyboard. It can't be for passersby, as you can't read it from your car, and there's no place to pull over. I picture the road construction individuals going over there and picking off individual work items for their next sprint, to peruse while they're doing their (other) business. Truly, Agile It.

Yesterday, before playing board games, I went geocaching around Lake Phalen. As I was pulling in to park, I noticed a lot of signs announcing that Waterfest was underway. I expected bikini-clad women bending over muscle cars, and acres of wet, white t-shirts. But mostly it looked like a lot of people just sitting in boats on the lake. Seriously disappointing. But while searching for the cache, I did find the nest of a homeless person, all tricked out in dirty clothes and empty 40 bottles. At least I don't think it was some geocacher who couldn't find the cache at first and decided to stay until they had.

During boardgaming day, I was given a gift. Porn. You see, I watched an episode of Attack of the Show! (G4) quite a while ago, and they listed their top 10 porn movies you'd want to have on a deserted island. #1 was "Porn Wars" - a Europorn spoof(?) of Star Wars. I think it was Sean who asked yesterday what made it "Euro", to which I replied, "no dice." (If you're a boardgamer, that is an incredibly witty, yet geeky, joke). I pointed out to my wife that we only had one single friend, and Porn Wars would be a hilarious gift. Unfortunately, it was hell to find, and I ended up ordering the trilogy (yep...trilogy) from Spain, which contacted a California shipping agency to forward it. As you might imagine, this left little room for a salutation. So when Kyle got it several months after I ordered it, even though I'd warned him I'd sent him a very unusual gift, he shipped it back. He seems to have felt at least a little surprised that he didn't attribute such a purchase to me, so he scoured eBay for a copy and gifted it to me on boardgaming day. I have yet to watch it, but when I do, I'll be sure to post a review. As Pete says, and I paraphrase, "I wonder if there's a Dickstar?"

And speaking of snail mail gone horribly wrong, I think I can comment on this now that it's been a few weeks. The only other piece of US Postal-related mail I've sent recently was a tattoo that Eryn and I found in a geocache. It was a Hawaii Pipefitters Union Something or Other tattoo, and I thought, "The only person I know who's been in Hawaii, and is in a union, is my friend Dan'l." So I asked Eryn if I could send it (what's she going to do with a Hawaiian Pipefitters tattoo) and dropped it in an envelope with a Honolulu return address. Seemed pretty innocent until Dan'l received it and thought it was something his Gulf I buddy had sent him, a buddy whose daughter, unknown to the rest of us (including his wife), was his goddaughter. He called the union in Hawaii and was wound up, until his wife thought to ask me if I'd sent it. On the one hand, I'm impressed that on some level I know Dan'l well enough to truly make such an egregious faux pax. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I could have avoided doing something boneheaded in the long run short of never sending him anything, which really isn't my style. I would have never thought to question the tattoo after sending him the heads of the Christian holy family in the mail with no consequences. My apologies nonetheless - not for the sending, I was bound to do something like that sooner or later - but for the resulting anguish. I can still feel bad about it, even if I couldn't have anticipated it.

So two friends, two bad mail experiences, in a short timeframe. Obviously I'm on a roll. So if you're a friend who's currently questioning something you received, call me before leaping to any conclusions about what you find in your p.o. box.

She Says asked me a follow up about the cement. It was going to cost us $600 to fix a few jutting slabs of cement, or $1200 to fix the whole sidewalk and some extraneous pieces (about 5x as much cement). So the math made sense, particularly given that the sidewalk had sunk over the years, or the yard had risen (more likely), and the whole thing was a great big ice slide every winter. As Jeremy the Renter noted, "The ice on the sidewalk only went out last week."

Yesterday, on the way to gaming, I was singing along to Finger Eleven's Paralyzer and realized that in the rearview mirror, I could see my mouth singing in my sunglasses, which really reminded me of Manfred Mann's Roaring Silence cover, as well as an advertisement I'd seen in a magazine which turned into a mouth as eyes photoshopping content at FreakingNews.com. Sorry Mean Mr. Mustard, I tried to find it at Worth1000 and had no luck.

Eryn, Pooteewheet and I placed a new tooth geobug for her today. She's lost three teeth so far, and the Tooth Fairy has brought her two tooth geobugs, and a shark geobug (he's toothy! I'll post his picture when we drop him off). We dropped it off today at Oak Terrace East Park in Burnsville, which is where I've been doing a lot of caching lately because it's just a bunch of great walks, and there are about 10 caches within .2 miles of each other. Still, a long walk when you have to go between them, because it's never a straight line. We've been turning each cache trip into a picnic and playground outing as well, so it's a family thing. Today I found a bunch of caches that Julie, a coworker of mine, had found back in January. Brrrrrrr.

The cache we didn't find today was this one. Very irritating, because I think it was a decoy. I looked around for a while because it was empty, but to no avail. But I'm about 99.8% convinced I should have looked harder, or thumped the bottom a bit more (the log, not Pooteewheet) to see if it was hiding there. This is why geocachers are annoying - they think they're all so smart and clever. Bastards. (Of course, I think I'm smart and clever when I actually find it, so it evens out in the long run). I also found my first puzzle cache today! It's actually my second, but the first one was pretty easy, the coordinates were in octal, and I didn't find the second stage, although I've retained the clue. This one I figured out by picking apart a James-Bond-esque set of clues on line. The last person there was almost six weeks ago, so I know it's a challenge.


Finally, Kyle, if you get this far...how was Adam after that last glass of Johnnie Walker Green? He seemed borderline (nonsensical folks, not borderline comatose - and in that way where you sort of have a well-informed, firm comment on everything, not in the way where you sound like you're speaking another language) going into it, although he was playing Cash n' Guns with some authority, so maybe it wasn't that bad.