I've Moved

I've moved.

Check me out in my new location.

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Bummer

As you may (or may not) have noticed, my new site is down. All of blogsome is down. It doesn't make me very happy. With the combination of no internet at home and generally more busy at work than when I was in Montana this means that I don't have tons of time to write anyway, so when my site and its manager go down, it leaves me up a creek. At least they have a warning up now, yesterday the site just didn't load.

I'm in the middle of a post from my perspective of Steve's party, and I have a few other things to say as well. Like how great my friends are and how I watched Star Wars Episode 2 last night. You know, important stuff that you need to know about!

Anyway, hopefully it will be up soon.

EDIT: It's back up. Phew.

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Food and more food

Work is killing me today. It’s too nice out and there’s only 3 people here today, and I’m the only one in the office. Zzzzz.

Must keep working at plans on computer screen...

I know you've all been waiting for me to say something about food. Isn't that what I always talk about? So let's recap some of the highlights from the past month or two.

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Last Day in Montana

As I downloaded the pictures I took for my last post I noticed I had some pictures from March in my camera. What could those be?

Well, they turned out to be from my last day in Montana. Emily and I went on a hike up the Storm Castle, or Castle Rock. It was a beautiful day and we talked about all sorts of stuff. A perfect send off for me. I had the camera along and took a few pictures, and here are a couple of them.

If you want to see the pictures you should go look at them.

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New Family Member

Someone already called me a "horrible uncle" for not having pictures ready after 1 day of knowing Elaina. But I have a few from tonight. My nephew is very excited to have the baby around and has been very good with her so far. He's even been a little over protective at times when other people want to hold the darling little girl.

There are pictures over here.

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Good Blog Stuff

I put a couple of blogs up in my "Blogs I Read" section (of the new place), but I thought I would call them out specifically.

If you are a fan of Star Wars, you should read "The Darth Side": Memoirs of a Monster. It is a blog written from the perspective of Darth Vader during The Empire Strikes Back. It is pretty darn hilarious. The comments can be funny but a few people get a little crazy about it.

If you are a fan of the Minnesota Twins (and maybe even if you are not) you should read Bat-Girl. Most of it is really funny and excellently written. I thought that the post about yesterday's game was especially good. It explained, in metaphysical terms, why the Twins can't get a hit with the bases loaded. Good stuff.

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Happy 5-5-5 Day

Today is a day that only happens 12 times a century: the month, day, and year numbers in today's date are all the same. I suppose it becomes a little passe, since it has happened the last 4 years in a row, and will happen for the next 7 years. But I think it's pretty cool. When I was born in 1976 this hadn't happened in 64 years!

A consequence of this that I just thought of is that the date reads the same here as it would in Europe. I suppose people who have to deal with that on a daily basis don't worry too much any more, but it confuses me for a second when I read dates written over there, especially if it is before the 13th of the month, when it becomes obvious which number means what.

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Moving

I'll be out of my brother's house this weekend. As I mentioned, this means that I won't be around Elaina as much as I've been around Luke for a couple months, but I'm guessing mom and dad are looking forward to having their whole house to themselves again. I will be moving into a luxorious place over in Eden Prairie, which will be way closer to work. I'm looking forward to giving that new commute a test drive on Monday.

So, if I'm moving in real life, why not make a move in cyberspace as well?

I've been on Blogger/Blogspot since last May 13th--almost exactly one year. I've enjoyed it, but had a few frustrations and wrangled the system into submission. But I've seen other websites out there. Websites running on much cooler software with way better features. Features that I probably wouldn't understand or use, but features nonetheless.

Out of the blue a few weeks ago I found a link to Blogsome.com where they have free space for WordPress powered blogs. So I signed up since I had read a few things about how powerful it is. I hadn't really looked into the site I signed up for until this weekend. Just logging in to the dashboard I was blown away. The default themes and features are pretty sweet. A few things that I've noticed that I'm excited about are: a clickable archive calander, static pages (like an "about" page) that aren't in the normal time flow of posts, hosting of images on the same server, and categories for posts.

So after I've finally gotten my Blogger.com blog and profile to the top of Google (you can even see the link to the post where I asked for and got my gmail account--hooray!), and finally getting back into writing, and even gaining a few new readers I know of (Hello Madison, WI and Anchorage, AK!) I'm going to try and start migrating my readership to the new setup. For a little while I'll be double posting so that you won't miss anything (the horror!!) if you go to one site or the other. Also, I'm going to try and point some of the links on this page to the new site, like the header link, and maybe the "Read the whole post" links, if I can figure that out. This also means that two(?) of you will have to change your links some time soon as well, not that I get all that many referrals, but you never know.

Please leave me any feedback on your thoughts on this or on the feel of the new site.

Later!

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New Life (for real this time)

Well, that didn't take long!

I'm an uncle times two. And this time it's a baby girl.

Elaina Mary Johnson was born at 11:07pm on May 3rd, 2005, weighing 7lbs. 8oz. and measuring 20.5" long. Mom and baby are healthy and happy (and sleeping as far as I know), and dad is floating on cloud nine, I could hear it through the phone.

I'll be going over there tomorrow morning to visit. I don't think I've ever seen a zero day old baby before, I'm pretty excited.

Okay, good night for real this time.

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New Life (almost)

It's a pretty exciting night in the Johnson family. Jenny, my sister-in-law, is in labor as I type this. She and Matt, my parents, and her parents have all been up at the hospital since 6:30 or so. By the morning Brian and I will have a new neice or nephew.

It's been so fun to watch Luke grow up in his third year. He's almost like a new person every single day. Kids can pickup and learn so much just observing everything around them. Luke literally seems more grown up and smarter every day that I talk to him. It was fun to see the leaps and bounds he grew by when I'd visit every few months from Montana, but it's even more amazing when you notice a difference from day to day. I can't wait to be around the new one for its first and second years too. I won't be living at the house any more but I'll still be way closer than Montana.

Keep mom and baby in your thoughts and prayers.
Good night.

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Mmmm, finger steaks (part 2)

Remember back in February when I went to Sir Scott's to have succulent finger steaks?

Well, someone asked to see some pictures of the occasion. Since I haven't posted many pictures lately, except in relation to amatuer movies, I figured I'd finally get around to this request. (thanks for the pics, bro)

A welcome sight when you're hungry for beef.



Here they are. Battered, deep fried stips of steak. I never knew such a wonderful thing existed until I lived in Montana. And those are lightly floured and fried slices of potato, Jo-Jo's, in the background. On the plate behind the beer is ketchup for the Jo-Jo's and ranch for the finger steaks.




(Incidentally, I think this short post has the new record for most typos. I had to read through it about 5 times to make sure everything was correct. And it was so bad I'm not even sure I got it right in the end.)

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Ripoff

This weekend could have been really fun if it weren't for dastardly microbes coursing through my throat causing me discomfort and pain. I can't remember a time when I've been sick or under the weather so many times within a few months. It is rediculous.

Alas. Friday was an okay day at work. We had a nice meeting with a contractor and designer in the afternoon. It went really long but we got through all sorts of good stuff that needed to get ironed out. Unfortunately I had woken up with a sore spot in the back of my throat--not a good sign. It didn't escalate into anything worse, it was just really annoying.


I went to bed on Friday night just achy and sore, not happy at all. I woke up feeling better but not good. The rotten thing about this was that I was going to a wedding later that day (that I had been invited to only on Thursday night--he didn't know I was back in town). The groom was my bro's best friend through junior high and high school--so my parents and I were invited along seeing as we were pretty much his second family for half of his youth. The ceremony was very nice and in a very nice church. I'm not Catholic, but I've been to a number of Catholic services at different churches in my day and this sanctuary was very different than any I had seen. The neatest thing, I thought, was their 3-D cross hanging above the altar. It was built out with more vertices than would be in a normal 3-D cross shape, almost like trying to represent a 4-D figure like a tesseract. It was pretty unique.

The reception was a full two hours after the ceremony so my parents and I drove around a bit. We drove by the house I lived in for the first couple years of my life. The neighborhood is starting to look a little run down these days. Then we drove to what my mom believes was one of the first Target stores ever, where I quickly bought a card and present to bring to the reception.

The reception was very similar to any other wedding you've been to. One cool thing they did was bride/groom trivia. Whenever people clinked their glasses enough instead of just having the bride and groom kiss the DJ asked a trivia question of the crowd and then had the couple kiss.

One fun moment of the evening happened when I decided to open my big mouth during the trivia. The question was "Does the groom have any siblings and what are their names?" I raised my hand and gave my answer "Yes and Kari." For any of the other questions that would have been it and he would have walked away, but no, he had a follow up question: "Is she single?" To which I answered "No" (she's been married 3 years.) You would have thought that would be it, right? But no, he had one more two part question for me "Does that make you sad?"(or something like that) and "Are you single?" I just left him with an ambiguous "Yes".

Well, the groom's sister, Kari, who was a bridesmaid, and her mother start laughing up in front and no one else knows why. What they, and my family, but probably no one else in the room knows is that Kari and I dated in high school. Kari told me later that she was glad that the lights were turned down a bit as she was turning a bright red color in the cheeks.

I didn't make it much longer beyond dinner unfortunately. I was just feeling too crappy. Luckily my brother Matt took my mom out for at least one dance, as I couldn't fulfill that duty this time.

Today was very uneventful, except for the fact that there was snow falling all over the Twin Cities today! How crazy is that? It's May! I guess it's all a part of the plot to keep people out of the state. We like it just the way it is and don't want it any more crowded.

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Thumbs Up

Well, well, well. That just goes to show that you shouldn't judge something before you see or experience it for yourself. I actually enjoyed Mobile Home Disaster. For all the same reasons that I enjoy Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. A deserving family gets a new house and everybody in the whole show wins in the end. I thought they were going to make a ton of fun of "trailer trash" and that whole set of stereotypes, but Bill Engvall, the host, did it all very nicely. The family was very nice and completely appreciative. They could laugh at themselves and their situation.

Brian's graphics, especially for the opening montage, were really cool. One effect was where a wrecking ball came swinging in and took the screen off like a piece of paper. I guess it's hard to explain, but it was neat. Especially because I can picture Brian sitting up until 4am at his desk trying to get the shot perfect.

Anyway, if you missed it. That's too bad. Hopefully enough people watched it and you'll get to see more episodes in the future.

G'night

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