Dear Guy On A Bike That I See On My Way Home From Work At Least Twice A Week,

A few quick tips:

1. Please use the bike lane. I don’t drive down the middle of the bike lane so I’d appreciate it if you don’t ride down the middle of the street.

2. It’s great that you use your hand signals. But hand signals don’t give you the right to turn left in front of on-coming traffic causing all of us to slam on our breaks.

3. Wearing your noise-canceling headphones while biking is probably not the smartest idea.

4. Helmets are a good thing. If you are not going to use the bike lane, cut off traffic and wear headphones, you may want to invest in one.

Thank you.

Yes, I know that roughly half the country does not like my choice for president this election and that’s fine. But telling me why your candidate is so much better and why mine is incompetent, arrogant, too old, too young, to rich, to elitist, owns to many houses, is a liar, is a moron; does not make me want to discuss politics with you.* Or discuss anything we may disagree on.

A healthy debate with reliable sources and facts that can be proven as true (even if they make my choice look bad) that I will participate in. Name calling, insulting and claiming you know how a candidate feels or what they are really thinking? That’s not worth my time.

I’m all for free speech and technically you do have the right to say those things, but does it help to convince someone to vote for your guy? If anything, it’s going to make me defend my guy even more. If you want to change my mind, prove to me why your guy is better qualified for the job.

*Just fair warning, I rarely discuss politics with anyone and I hardly ever tell anyone who I plan on voting for. 99% of the time I don’t even tell Kevin. I like the fact that it’s a secret ballot.

Tonight is the Irish Fair of Minnesota and Romantica is playing. And the fair and concert are free. But tonight is also the opening night of the 2008 Olympics and I love the Olympics. Especially the opening ceremonies.

What to do? What to do?

(I actually know what to do: tape the Olympics, go to the concert. And if you’re in the Twin Cities you should go to the concert too.)

Kevin is in Chicago for a couple of days, leaving Lexi and I carless. At first I thought it would suck to be stuck at home for 2 days with no real way to get out of the house. Then I remembered how much Lexi loves to ride the city bus. Today we rode the city bus. A lot.

We caught the 67 at 10:00 and rode it to the library. Only to discover that on Mondays the library does not open until 11:30. No big deal. We played in the park, looked at art downtown, ate at Subway and then went to the library. Caught the bus home at 12:45 and Lexi went down for a nap.

After her nap I needed to go to the post office and Target, so back on the bus we went. This time we caught the 67 going the opposite way at 4:00, got off at the post office, mailed our letters and transfered to the 68 at 4:45 and went to Target. We got our supplies, ate dinner and went to wait for the 68 to take us home. Well, after rush hour (which ends at 6:00) it stops coming every 10-15 minutes. And it only comes once an hour. So we waited at the bus stop for almost 45 minutes. During that time Lexi entertained herself by telling us what color the cars were that passed. And she earned $0.50. The guy who was waiting with us was impressed she new her colors so he gave her the change. Go figure. Anyway. The but came. Problem was it got to our stop at 7:00. The 67 (which we needed to catch to get the rest of the way home) left that stop at 6:53. We had to wait until 7:53 for the next bus. I was not too excited about that. But there was a Caribou Coffee at the stop and they have toys for kids to play with so we killed some time there. Lexi was pretty well behaved for the whole thing. Considering it took us over 2 hours to get home (if we would have gone by car it would have been 10 minutes at the most). When we got home I still let her watch her Veggie Tales movie that I had been promising her all day long. Hopefully I wore her out and she’ll sleep in past 8 tomorrow.

My favorite part of the day? Lexi and I were on our way home from the library. She was laying around in my lap, jabbering away. Suddenly she stops, folds her hands and says, “Dear God, Thank you for city bus. Amen.”

Wow, Minnesota folks are hard core rummage-salers. It was snowing, blowing, raining, freezing, and generally gross out yesterday. And we had a steady stream of people come to the house. Today is a little slower, but if you’re reading this, we are open until 5 today and we’d love to see you.

Spring is in four weeks. Last week it below zero with even colder wind chills. Today, I was running errands with just a sweatshirt for warmth. No winter coat, no hat, no mittens, no scarf. The sun was shinning, the snow was melting and it actually felt good to be outside. Spring is coming.*

*but it is Minnesota so by Monday it could be -30 outside.

No school today. Snow day part 2.

A few fun things that happened today…

1. Snow. Lots and lots of snow. Last week we got a pile of snow dumped on us. Today it started up again and didn’t let up until around 8 tonight. Kevin had to shovel various trenches and piles so the dogs couldn’t climb the snowdrifts and jump the fences.

2. Snow day. Due to all the snow, we sent the kids home by 11:45, so I was home by noon.

3. Speak’s Photoshoot. Speak had a photoshoot for Target today. Kevin took him since I was at work. While he was there he found out the when the Target photo ad people are discussing what dogs they need for upcoming ads they all talk about Speak by name. Apparently, he’s a big star around there. Also, they told Kevin that when Speak models something Target gets more calls asking about where they can get a dog like Speak and what type of dog he is than asking about the actual clothing he is wearing.

4. Lexi decided she can crawl - sort of. She has figured out how to sit up on her own so she has been lurching forward grabbing what she wants and then sitting back up. Today she was in her room and decided she wanted a book so she sort of crawled, dragged and walked on all fours to get there. It was pretty funny to see.

5. Standing up. Since she has figured out how to sit up on her own, she has realized that she can pull herself to standing. Which means she spent the first part of nap time sitting up, standing up and playing around.

So those are the highlights of today. Hopefully tomorrow I won’t have to go to school. We have a staff development day planned, but it’s just working in our rooms, getting ready for conferences. I wouldn’t mind doing that work from home. It will only take me an hour or so to get things done - I don’t really need to stay at school for 6 hours.

We are in the process of selling our house. I’m pretty excited to be getting a new house, we’ve been looking at a few and found one we really like but we have to get our house ready to put on the market before we can make any offers. And getting a house ready to sell is a total pain. We’ve cleared out several loads to Goodwill, packed up all the clutter (clutter defined as pictures of us, Lexi, knick-knacks, half of Lexi’s toys, photo albums and pretty much anything else that makes the house feel lived in) We’ve been cleaning everything - scrubbing woodwork and floors, organizing cupboards, vacuuming cobwebs out of the basement, washing windows, dusting - and realizing that the house was a lot dirty than we thought it was.

We’ve also been making some minor and major improvements to the house. Minor ones include replacing the ceiling fan in the kitchen, the light in the dining room, and buying a new rug for the front hall. Major improvements include replacing the roof.

So if you know of anyone who wants to buy a house in St. Paul, send them our way.

It got cold. Not the kind of cold that comes after it has been 90 degrees out for three weeks and then is suddenly 75 degrees and “cold.” It’s the kind of cold that is grey and cloudy and makes you want to wear a huge sweatshirt, wrap a quilt around yourself and stay in bed.

The funny thing is, in March, when it is 45 degrees out, I will probably be really excited about how warm the weather is.