At the rally

At the rally
Originally uploaded by soelo

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Al and Bill

Al and Bill
Originally uploaded by soelo

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That One

That One
Originally uploaded by soelo

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Waiting for the Ice Cream Truck

Waiting for the Ice Cream Truck
 


When will it get here?
 


Mmm that was good
 


Okay, time for a nap!

RSS to Email Services

Shoot, It looks like Sendmerss.com is dead (r-mail.com and sendmerss.org also). It's good that I kept a copy of my OPML file. Rssfwd got updated after being mysteriously down for a while, but they let me import all of my old subscriptions. It sucks, I am sure there are some feeds in Sendmerss that were not in my OPML and not in Rssfwd. I liked Sendmerss' interface more, but now I have to use Feedblitz or Rssfwd. In looking for more services, I found most of the sites either require some kind of software installation or code or else they are really for mailing list managers and not end users.

I have found a few others that seem to meet my needs but I haven't tried them yet.* 
http://www.feedmyinbox.com/
http://www.feedmailer.net/
http://www.xfruits.com/ 
http://www.shootthebreeze.net/blogalert/index.php
http://www.inezha.com

*well I have tried each one with a single feed... but I have no meaningful results yet.

Local Transportation

In Downtown Minneapolis, Marquette and Second Avenues are under construction right now. Once the project, called Marq2, is complete in the Spring of 2009, all express buses that currently use Nicollet will move to Marquette and Second. The new layout for both streets will be two bus lanes and two traffic lanes. Neither one will have a bike lane and bicyclists are expected to use Nicollet Mall. Currently, bikes are not allowed on Nicollet Mall between 6am and 6pm, although I see plenty of them there and have never seen one getting a ticket. At some point, bikes will be allowed on Nicollet 24 hours a day. The Marq2 project is costing approximately $41 million dollars and is funded by the $133.3 million grant that Minnesota got from the US Dept of Transportation in order to reduce congestion in the Twin Cities.

In 2009, Hennepin and First Avenues will be converted from a 1-way street to a 2-way street for vehicular traffic. That project doesn't have a slick brochure like the Marq2 yet and doesn't appear to be funded by the grant.

There are plans to build 45 more miles of bikeways in Minneapolis through 2010.

The Lowry Avenue bridge was closed in April of 2008 and reconstruction is not scheduled to begin until summer of 2009. It is expected to take 2 years.

"Dave"

I have never thought of Applebee's as a joint to hang out in, but apparently Dave has. I was sitting at a table in the bar area with The Boyfriend. There were a few different people at the bar, all watching the football and baseball games that were on TV. Dave comes in, sits down at the bar and announces two things: #1 his kids are in the car and #2 he just bought a house here. His fellow barsitters and tenders are friendly and reassure him when he expresses doubt about such a big purchase. He then goes on to explain that he owns a martial arts business in The Cities, but it's okay since that's only a 30-minute drive from here. (I think it's more like 55, The Boyfriend says 45.) He then launches into a story about a customer injury, a lack of insurance, his brother's failure to buy the insurance and how he just decided to pay the customer off. All the while, he has pointed out what everyone else did wrong. He did nothing wrong, of course, and has the money to just take care of things. No one actually asked him anything about what he did or how the business was after he mentioned it. He got there all on his own. At this point, it's obvious to me that no one is paying much attention to him. The couple that was sitting closest to him went outside for a smoke. He then starts talking about several other things and finally settles on sports. Dave decides that insulting the Vikings is a good idea. He asks if they have ever made it to the Superbowl, and when someone points out that they have, he says, "Well not this year." Wow, he really knows how to make friends. He ends up bringing up a bunch of other teams and cities trying to stop the heckling that is coming at him from several of the formerly friendly bar patrons. When he finally gets up to leave, one of them tells him to take care of his kids, and he says, "You take care of yours, too," as if that was meant as a friendly good-bye. Some people just don't get it.

Free Poverty

Fill up, drive until tank is half empty, take pictures and drive home.

Fill up, drive until tank is half empty, take pictures and drive home.
Originally uploaded by soelo
We ended up in Silver Bay.

Cloud Cover

Cloud Cover
Originally uploaded by soelo

I can't see a speck of blue sky.
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Mmm

Mmm
Originally uploaded by soelo

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Five Years of Blogging

Today my blog turns five, and I always post the following list on my blogiversary.

Here are my top ten movies of the year-so-far:
Baby Mama
Burn After Reading
The Dark Knight
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Iron Man
Pineapple Express
Smart People
Tropic Thunder
Wall-E
Vantage Point

Based on previous year's data, 5.5 of those will probably show up on my Top Ten of 2008 list.
The movies most likely to take the place of any of the above are Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, The City of Ember, Zack and Miri, and Twilight. I have not allowed myself to see Nick and Norah yet. I am using it as the proverbial carrot on the end of my school-stick. Basically I can't see it until I finish my paper. More on that later.

33 books

33 books
Originally uploaded by soelo
Only 29 are shown, since I got rid of two and have lent two more out.

The Wisdom of 33 Books

As I go through them again, I will add quotes.

1. Eragon - Christopher Paolini
"Every age needs an icon- perhaps that lot has fallen to you."

2. Baggage - Emily Barr
"I want to see her, and yet I need to run as far from her as I possibly can."

3. Emily Ever After

4. The Guy Not Taken

5. Wuthering Heights

Catherine says she loves Heathcliff "because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..."

"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 

7. A Wind in the Door 

8. Dirty Girls Social Club 

9. Miracle 

10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 

11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

12. His Dark Materials:: The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman

13. Serenity

14. Little Earthquakes

15. The Know-it-All
16. His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife

17. Life of Pi 

18. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass
19. Girls' Night Out
20. Twilight
21. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Bill Bryson

22. I'm the One That I Want by Margaret Cho

23. Solo - Emily Barr
24. Good in Bed - Jennifer Weiner

25. Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner

26. Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer

27. Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin A Abbott
28. The Big Love - Sarah Dunn
29. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

30. How to be Good - Nick Hornby

31. Travels - Michael Crichton

"Brugh talked about the value of being able to see a card, or a life situation, from all sides. To see the good and the bad, and not to consider the thing itself as possessing either goodness or badness. He talked about how people became rigid when they assigned fixed values to things.

32. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

33. milkrun - Sarah Mlynowski
"How could I ask for a better friend? Someone who gives me a backup plan. Instead of someone who makes me the backup plan."

$2.25

I forgot that today was the day of the fare increase. My bus home has a sign on the farebox that just says "$2.25".
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