Subtropical

Interviewing for a position at a college in Florida. Here's the view from the meeting room. To a winterbeaten Northern boy, this doesn't suck.

C is for car trip

I'm burning Sesame Street DVDs in preparation for a big road trip with the family. Hopefully, the new DVD player will be part of the Circus o' Distraction needed to keep a toddler occupied for eight hours.

Green-12

One of my solutions for dealing with a fading memory is to snap a picture of my car's location in a big parking ramp. Here's the Mall of America.

Undazzled

No bids on eBay. Won't somebody buy my BeDazzler?

Flop this house!

Another quick snap while driving. It says "Owner will finance home."

My little cheerleader

Dress-up week fun at day care continues.

Private party

A private birthday party at a local caterer/friend's teaching kitchen & event space. It was fun to chat up the chefs while they prepared and served some exquisite treats for us.

Pulltabs! Meat raffle!

You can tell it's a real working-class, neighborhood Minnesota bar if they have pulltabs. Or a meat raffle. Or both. I've lived here thirteen years and I'm still hazy about pulltabs. It's some kind of organized gambling, I know.

Mall of the Dead

Portrait of a dying mall. Saturday, noonish, at a formerly upscale mall in a hot area in the middle of Minneapolis. Notice the lack of stores and clientele?

The real

We got proofs back from the fabulous folks at smirkphoto. They know how to get a kid's real personality to come through.

Smart!

Smart ForTwo cars are actually starting to appear in the Twin Cities. This one was parked outside one of my regular breakfast joints. They look fabulous for navigating crowded city streets. We saw them all over Europe on our honeymoon four years ago.

Buy my crap!

Busy getting old stuff up on eBay. Nothing worth a heck of a lot, but it transforms space-wasting crap into soft, folding portable cash.

And you thought YOUR job sucked...

Remind me never, ever to bum a ride in this car.

Roll your salad for you?

Fancy dinner at Porter + Frye. This is my salad. It's stuffed in a rolled Parmesan baguette crisp.

Crack in the ice

Almost sixty degrees and pleasant. Lake Calhoun is still covered with ice and the trees are bare. Joggers and dog walkers were out in force, pretending spring is here.

Panopticon

Only part of the wall of flat screens at Best Buy. Ten years ago, this would have been a super-cool sci fi movie set. Now it's no money down for six months.

Genius!

A bad chip in my MacBook battery. After a few diagnostics at the Apple Store's Genius Bar, they gave me a new battery.