Charismatic Dog

Originally via digg:
http://www.3monkeyweb.com/wiki/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=4&postId=45

I’m giving wordpress and dreamhost a shot…

I've had some traveling excitement a while back that was followed by yet other excitement that I thought y'all (whomever y'all happens to be) might find interesting. However I then put this post off for a while because it was getting long… Gee that was smart. Let's try this again.

Last Weekend of April

Tyler gets his self confirmed as an adult member of yea ol' ELCA. This is exciting stuff for the family. As an aside: I know most of the folks who take this in are Catholic with the big “C” so let me just set the record straight that Tyler wasn't held back 2 years in confirmation or anything, the ELCA just runs it from 7th to 10th grade. All cleared up? OK back to business. Both my Grandpas rolled up together from Illinois for the event, however due to a hilarious misinterpretation of directions on my Grandpa Wayne's part they didn't meet up to leave until about two hours after go time and only after my Grandpa Jim had gone to a police station to start a giant game of telephone that included my Mom and my Uncle Paul before finally reaching Grandpa Wayne and getting things straightened out. Amber and I had the Grandpas over to our place for a nice dinner of pistachio encrusted walleye–if you're going to learn to only cook one fancy meal, pistachio encrusted walleye's a good one. Then there was brunching and confirming and good times generally had by all. I also found out my brother's mentor grew up with one of my co-workers and that said co-worker ran a might good time (don't have it memorized, but it was good) in Grandma's Marathon after getting hammered and smoking like a chimney the night before. I found this incredibly amusing, if anyone's stuck this out this far, they probably do not. Ha ha suckers!

First Weekend of May

Went to Portland to see Paige graduate from college. This was awesome minus one small thing… I let my drivers license expire. It is very hard to rent a car with an expired license. Well no problem because Amber's there and she has her license right? Oh, she forgot it in St. Paul… I see. Well, the good folks at the MN DMV were kind enough–after a couple of hours of hemming and hawing and actually having the nerve to yell at my wife to the point where she cried–to send a faxed letter saying that yes she had a license and she did have her passport along so off we went. Oh by the way, the “guy” who yelled at Amber–I could here the voice coming out of the phone it was very masculine sounding–was named Barbara. Go figure…

We stayed at a nice place called McMenamin's Edgefield. It was pretty nice and I'll leave it to the curious to click the link and go see why. Saw my pal Freddy who I hadn't seen in a while. Amber got sick on day 2 and missed a lot of things but did generally agree Portland was cool and that we should get back out there sometime.

Second Weekend of May

I went up Friday night after waiting for Mark to figure out if he was going or not (answer: not) and Lloyd's to figure out if the car was going to make it up to ND (answer: yes). Dan and I grabbed some late night grub, a keg, some cigars and some whiskey. We walked around campus smoking and stayed up way too late. I got up in the morning and rolled over to the concert hall on campus just in time to catch the graduation ceremony and get a few shots of Dan in his little dress and and floppy hat… er… cap and gown. I can't find my camera cable, but expect those soon. Dan's speaker was a fiery sonofabitch who gave a pretty good of the cuff commencement speech. Ate some decent grub on UND's dollar and then back to Dan's apartment (fungus and all) for grilling, drinking and, unfortunately, vomiting. Half a bottle of whiskey is too much by almost half a bottle. I did get asked by a switch-hitting class mate of Dan's (of the lady type I might add) if the Mrs and I would ever consider a threesome, but I was too drunk to be freaked out and was shockingly casual in retrospect with my refusal. I think sober me would've been way more freaked out and uncomfortable about the whole thing. As it is a polite no-thanks and a funny story are the results. I should really stop sharing that story with everyone I meet, but I find it pretty darn funny.

So there you go. I was going to post this way back in May…

“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither” -Thomas Jefferson

Saw the above quote on Hawk Wings and thought it was worth double-checking (I know this link's not exactly authoritative either) and repeating.

Happy 4th all.

-Drew