Father's Day

I'm a bit behind on posts, but it's not my fault for once.  Sort of.  My computer installed a Microsoft update and tanked.  Tanked good.  I had to go back to a restore point.  Twice.  So I didn't upload pictures from The Lindsey Sterling and Karmin concert (I was so happy Karmin was the opening band - it was a great concert), the tour of the Gateway area of Minneapolis with Kyle (which everyone who knows me can attest I won't shut up about), or the 106 mile ride across Wisconsin with Ming (Kyle sagging).  Maybe I'll get to them, maybe I won't.  Maybe I'll just post a lot of pictures with commentary in the world's longest post so I remember what I was up to.

Today we celebrated Father's Day by 1.) having my wife make us (me and my father) eggs, toast, and burnt bacon for breakfast, 2.) Going to the 40th Anniversary showing of Jaws at the local theater (Eryn and I went to Desk Set on Friday which was great - Mean Mr. Mustard told me at breakfast at Colossal on Grand with Greg that he'd seen it), 3.) a little bit of bicycling, 4.) a lot of the second season of Agents of SHIELD, 5.) Catan at the coffee shop in the evening (I won!) with my wife and Eryn, 6.) Boss Monster in the afternoon with my Dad and Eryn, 7.) a bunch of trash picking between all the other things, and 8.) my car washed by my wife and Eryn - for which it was long overdue but had been avoided because it leaks a bit.

Re: #7, Litterati has been having a small contest/proof of concept at my workplace this week and we've had a week to collect/photograph the most trash.  These were the rankings as of yesterday.  That's me on top at 623 pieces.  So today I collected almost another 200 wandering around the neighborhood.  I'm fully expecting someone to beat me today, but they're going to have to get their family involved and really buckle down.  I found $20 (and took a picture for Litterati), so regardless of how it turns out, I'm ahead.  As ahead as you can consider yourself after picking up around 800 pieces of trash including an open plastic container full of urine in the cul-de-sac near the house.  The fastest I was able to collect and photograph trash via Instagram was about 100 pieces/hour, so that represents 8 hours of collection this week  About 1 hour/day on average, slightly more.  That sounds about right because I had a few two hour days and a few days that I couldn't get out, not because of rain, but because of after work commitments like bicycling so I'm prepped to ride longer distances.

I should add that this is sort of par for my personality.  Short term commitments, even if they're recommitments of things I'm already doing/have done, are sort of my thing.  I once told a manager that my ability to re-start something over and over - e.g. intermittent perseverance -- was a strength.  He asked why I didn't just finish it the first time and I pointed out that given the organizational dependencies and apathy you're often faced with, that's not always a possibility, so being able to reboot, and reboot in an aggressive way (I should probably call that with leadership, or urgency, or passion so it sounds more friendly), has advantages.

I'm looking forward to the best picture portion of the contest as well.  I hope someone has better pictures than my urine bucket, $20 bill, and trash in flower fields.