Being 6am, I should get to bed, but I just wanted to write something here quickly. I didn't get a chance to get online yesterday, but I still want to wish Matt and Carrie a happy 5th anniversary. That would also make today the 5th anniversary of my first journal entry, as I started keeping a journal the day after they were married coincidentally enough. Yay!

Having screwed up mightily in so many ways, the Pinochle HR department came on up here tonight and bought dinner from Victoria's for the entire station. I don't think I even want to imagine what that bill came to. Because I had to work, I got to eat mine in ops. Of course, I got way more food than I could ever eat in one sitting, so I brought half of it home - I guess I know what I'm having for Thursday lunch. Even so, I still ate too much, so I'm feeling all fat and bloated now. Ugh.

I tried calling him both yesterday and today, but Dave S. didn't answer his cell phone. Well, he called me back tonight and gave me the 411 on his work schedule. He works early in the morning, so he can't go out most nights, but he is going to be at Muldune's Sunday night for the big commencement of the the Tavern Tour. Oh yeah, getting the party started!

No, I didn't see him tonight, but I finally had him humanized for me. Sitting at Jekyll's tonight, Betsy asked us if we'd had any more chance encounters with the guy over the weekend. After describing him again for her, she recognized who he is and told us all about him and his past. Apparently he wasn't given the nickname Wild Bill by the staff at Ravens, but rather has had this nickname for a while. Sometimes, she said, he also goes by Tequila Bill. This may sound funny, since he only drinks Diet Coke, but she said he used to drink alcohol a lot more. She told us more, but I won't go into it all here. He's still freaky and weird, but at least now he has some basis in reality.

Tuesday being my Sunday, I can - and intend to - make the most of the beautiful weather outside, which some may find it difficult to believe since I'm sitting inside on the computer. I sat outside on a lawnchair and read for a while yesterday, followed by taking a nice little nap. I intend to go outside earlier today, so I can have more exposure time before the sun starts to duck behind the trees. It's not as if I really have any other obligations I need to take care of today. I'm probably not going to have the Tavern Tour website finished by Sunday, but if the trade-off is between sitting outside in this beautiful spring weather and working on some website, I'll take the sun myself.

I received word yesterday that Dave S. is back in town in the mood for some boozin'. I suspect I'll have to drop him a line this evening and see if he'd be willing to accompany us to Stinky's.

I'm so happy to be home! Work should have been easy, fun, and painless today, as every flight was damn near empty, but a certain dipshit coworker of mine insisted on making my day drag on and on. Thankfully he usually works early mornings so I never have to see him, but today he was working most of the day, while I had to come in earlier than usual, so I worked with him for a majority of the day. He blatantly sidestepped safety regulations, mouthed off to me repeatedly, failed to do fulfill his own job duties while questioning me on the fulfillment of mine, and kept turning the radio back on and tuning it in to a country station every time I turned the damn thing off. I've been joking a lot with people lately about bareknuckle boxing, but I really wanted to take this guy outside today and lay him out in the parking lot. He's another one of these ex-Marines who thinks he's all the shit because of it. Damn, that guy just needed a good ass-whooping today.

Forgetting him though, tonight is my Friday night, so it's time for me to move on and enjoy myself. Last night was an example of living fun and fancy free. Okay, I hyperbolized last evenings fun just a little, but not too much. I accompanied Corey, Carrie, and Matt to Ravens once again. We sat at a table right by the front window and were entertained for a good portion of the evening watching dumbasses seeking the entrance open the next door over leading up to apartments above. On any given normal evening there, we might see one or two groups of people attempt to enter the wrong door, but last night there must have been a minimum of twelve groups of people trying to enter through the wrong door. We also saw "Wild Bill" there again. Wild Bill is the name given by the manager of Bar by Ikea to our old friend The Pervert. I'm not sure if the name is taken from The Silence of the Lambs, but as the name is much more family-friendly, I shall now from this day forward refer to The Pervert as Wild Bill. Although I was not the one to coin the name, I hope that others will read my post here and start using this name to refer to him. Word on the street - and I'm not one usually to spread rumors of this sort - is that our dear friend Wild Bill is banned from Sammy's. This ban is not related to the recreational activities which we have noted previously in this blog, but rather due to other activities which are much cleaner, yet less appreciated by the proprietor of any decent establishment. I'm beginning to get the impression that Wild Bill is starting to become as much of a local legend as Biggy Rat was back in the days when our parents attended high school in the area. Back to last night, Wild Bill was there drinking his usual Diet Coke and staring at the asses of females. At one point, our server tapped him on the arm and inquired how he was doing, after which she sat down to bend over - she said she wasn't feeling well - and he stood there staring at her ass, after which he moved around to get a nice side view as well. Thankfully, Wild Bill kept Li'l Bill in the holster last night. At closing time, I was going to stop at Jim's and ask Stan for his opinion on whether I should start the Tavern Tour at Cold Shot or Muldune's on Sunday, but he was busy breaking up a fight inside Jim's - ah, the life of the bouncer - so I didn't want to bother him. Not at all surprisingly, one of the guys involved in the fight was this dumbfuck who majored in philosophy at UW-Milwaukee. I only know this because a few months back we ran into him one night when Corey, Erik, and I were at Ravens. Erik was pretty smashed that night - it was his last night in town before he moved down to Chicago - and this guy, with whom Erik apparently had a class or two at UWM, came up to Erik and started a conversation with him, but was totally talking down to him the entire time. Yeah. Okay, so that pretty much was last night.

Back to today quickly, I finally finished reading Vanity Fair, so now I can get started on a new book. I still haven't decided which one, but I have more than enough unread books on my bookshelves from which to choose. I should get going now, because I need to call Matt back and see if they're ready to party. Or booze it up.

I got talked into going to Buffalo Wild Wings tonight. Great - I love hanging out with hicks in hick bars. I wasted an hour of my life that I can never have back and which would have been better and more enjoyably spent sticking needles in my eyes. I mostly went because Corey wanted to go so he could see Andrea. While I'm willing to support him and all that, next time I'll let him go there alone with her and I'll just go get shitfaced at a respectable dive bar. No more pseudo-wingman operations for me.

I did it - I got sucked into the evil world of Friendster. I see an email from Trixie inviting me to join, and next thing I know I'm updating profiles here, uploading photos there, and instantly my night has disappeared. I mean, come on, it's 4:45 already and I still didn't accomplish anything tonight. Damn you Friendster!

I've had it pointed out to me lately that my entries have not been all that wholesome. Hey, I can take constructive criticism... sometimes. No, I won't be making any promises anytime soon to clean up my writing. Frankly, I enjoy the raw and uncouth approach to writing. Everybody loves a bit of gritty realism now and then, don't they?

Yesterday was my parents' 26th anniversary. I had actually forgotten until I was paging through old journal entries and discovered my entries from last year about their 25th anniversary. I quickly ran out and bought them a card and left it behind before leaving for work. I think the card said something about knowing they'd be celebrating their anniversary tonight, but I don't really want to think about how they'll be celebrating it. I worked until midnight and then went out drinking until 2, while Mike has been gone pretty much all day himself, and I really don't want to know what they were upto - if anything - tonight while they had the whole house to themselves. As I said, I have no real intention of cleaning up my writing anytime soon.

I had to stop over at Comair tonight and find out what they were upto in ops tonight. Of course, they had the tv on and tuned in to "American Idol." I quickly noticed that the reception on their tv is much better and inquired if they had a new antenna. They told me they now have an antenna on the roof. An antenna for their tv on the roof! I work for an airline that won't even get us functioning Tugs to get the luggage to and from the planes, but Comair now has an antenna on the roof for their tv in ops! I definitely think sometimes that I work for the wrong airline.

I could write right now about the United flight attendant I met yesterday at Jekyll's, but I'm starting to run out of ambition to write tonight, so I think I'll leave you all in that mysterious dark. Just think of it as one of the umpteen commercial breaks in the middle of "American Idol" as they string you along.

Yesterday was Matt's birthday, but since Sundays aren't really a big party night, we went out Saturday night instead. We first attempted Ravens, but they were so full that they weren't allowing anyone else in. Matt's secondary choice was The Fish House, so he, Carrie, Corey, Ben, and I went on over there. Molly, who was in town for Skappleton, met up with us there when the show let out. The place was quite loud and full of rowdy people. We discovered shortly after arrival that Saturday was the birthday of one of Matt's coworkers, and he was in there partying with friends also. It also turned out that we went to high school with the coworker's sister, and she was there with several friends also, so there were a lot of people there we knew - including many we didn't care to see. That's the nice thing about being a few years removed from high school now: you can recognize someone you went to school with without having to acknowledge their existence. In other words, we ignored them (as much as we could despite their yelling and screaming), they ignored us, and everyone could go home happy. At closing time Carrie took Matt home and then she, Ben, Molly, and I went to IHOP. Who should I see sitting in a booth opposite the room from us but my boss. Although I doubted he'd really care, I quickly warned everyone to be on their best behavior. Of course, it's not within Ben's nature to ever be so... and that's why we like him. It was 3:45 by the time we got out of there, so Molly crashed at my place so she wouldn't have to drive home that night. I guess she cruised home early the next morning. I just know she was gone by the time I climbed out of bed.

Hello once again everyone. I returned (semi-triumphantly) from Memphis early this evening. Surprisingly, my parents haven't returned home yet with my brother. He had to be out of the dorms today, so they were driving out to La Crosse to move him back home. I would expect them back home soon, but, then again, that has been the expectation for the last several hours.

I know everyone is just dying to hear about my trip. Okay, maybe not, but I'm telling you anyway. Running on a total of about 4 hours of sleep from the previous two nights combined, I showed up at work at 4:30 Wednesday morning. I ended up working right up until I hopped on the plane to Detroit at 10:30. It was about 4:30 when we (Krista, Amy, and I) arrived in Memphis. Shortly after checking in at the hotel the two of them got the itch to head out, so I joined them in a taxi downtown to Beale Street. I should point out immediately that the last two days were spent with a pair of shopoholics, so one can imagine how bored I was. Anyway, we split our time between bars and clubs and tacky little souvenir shops. We also ate there. The Holiday Inn, very much unlike the lesser Courtyard, ran a shuttle to Beale Street, which picked us up at 10. That was a late evening for middle-aged Krista, who refuses to believe that nobody really goes out drinking until at least 11. Didn't bother me any to get back so early, for I was tired, and the bar scene there is really overrated as far as I'm concerned. I could just as happily drink on College Avenue for half the price.

I was awoken four times this morning. The first was at 4:30 with the tv and lights still on, so I turned those off and fell back asleep. The second was at 6, at which time I decided that I didn't need to get up because my alarm would wake me at 6:30. At 6:30 the alarm woke me up, so I turned it off and promptly rolled over and fell back asleep. And then at 7:40 Krista called me to tell me that she and Amy were leaving on the shuttle for the airport. I figured that by that time I should probably think about getting up. Class was more a waste of my time than anything. With the test it was only about 4 hours long, and most of the people just sat there in their seats dumbfounded. In fact, Krista and I were the only ones really talking. Krista, Amy, and I hopped on a flight to Minneapolis at 1:30. There was plenty of room on that flight - enough so that we were able to fly first class. Of course, I came back to Earth on the flight back to Appleton, where I shared the exit row with a pair of heifers. The 250+ pounder sitting next to me forced me to squeeze into only about half my seat, which is small enough as is. He ended up having to sit next to me because Mr. 400+ pounder needed 2 seats for himself on the other side. Of course, dumb ditz flight attendant didn't know any better that guys who require two seats - and thereby also require the seatbelt extention - are prohibited from sitting in the exit row. Good thing we didn't have an emergency, because I don't think that guy could have fit through the door, let alone "assist" in the case of an emergency. I was just happy to be back home with my own bed and my own car and my own bars. I may work for the airline, but it sure as hell doesn't mean that I like flying.

I just had to share that story. I decided later to check to see if that man was listed on the sexual predators list, but I couldn't find him. I was (mildly) surprised though to find a photo and profile of a guy who was in my Tiger Cub group on the website.

It's still Zak's birthday for another 20+ minutes. I had completely forgotten until Corey and I walked into Jekyll's last night and Zak met us at the door. I wish I could be out drinking again tonight, but alas, I have to work at 4:30 in the morning. I have to work until 10:30, and then I have to hop a plane down to Memphis for more training. Sorry folks, you'll have to wait until Thursday night for any more disgusting stories out of me.

Hiya everyone! I just returned home a little while ago from another lovely evening of working for Pinochle Airlines, where the shit don't stop 'til my pants drop. The wind and rain made for quite an enjoyable little shift. We had two flights cancel today, Delta and Midwest didn't have much more luck, and I think United must have cancelled damn near everything but their last inbound, which still arrived over 2 hours late. Our last inbound from Detroit had a bunch of people involuntarily rerouted from flights to CWA. Of course, their bags didn't arrive with them. I came in from dumping bags, opened the door to ops, and found a nice little line of people waiting to file claims. We ended up taking 10 claims, all but one were from people originally scheduled to fly to CWA. I'm just happy to be in and out of the wind and rain.

Saturday night was, uhhh... interesting. Corey and I met Matt and Carrie at The Bar on Lynndale. We sat there for a while, had a few drinks and some wings, and then left to go down to Ravens. It was not nearly as busy as I should have expected for the day of Celebrate. The four of us grabbed a table near the front window. From my seat in the corner, I had a pretty good view of everything and everyone, especially The Pervert. You see, if you've ever been in Ravens before, then you know there's this really creepy guy with glasses who walks around with a soda in hand just looking at people. He doesn't really say anything to anyone except when he orders his soda from the bartender. I'm not sure if he haunts any other bars downtown, but I haven't seen him in any. Well, last night we saw him walk out the door and head east down College Avenue. As he walked out, we joked about his jacket and fannypack. Maybe ten minutes passed before he returned again and headed straight for the back of the bar. He slowly made his way through to the back, taking time to look around at various people in the bar, and then worked his way back toward the front. As he came fully into view, I noticed his hand was... uhh... "down there." Yes, his pants were unzipped, his penis was hanging out, and he was fondling himself as he walked through!!! As he got back to the front door, he quickly shoved it back in his pants, walked out, and headed west down College Avenue. My first thought was: holy shit! We discussed it at the table and Matt and Carrie both admitted having his seen his hand down there, but both looked away before seeing what was in his hands. Apparently I'm the only one who actually witnessed him playing with his one-eyed trouser snake. When the waitress came back around, Carrie told her. The waitress passed it on to the doorman, the bartender, and Howie. She also told half the people in the bar (since just above everyone in there knows who the guy is upon description). By the time we left, I think just about everyone in the bar knew what the guy had done, so it was almost disappointing to not be there when he returned. Anyway, what a lovely story, huh?

They tell me Sunday was Mother's Day. I saw my mother for all of maybe an hour on Sunday, which is an hour more than I would have seen her had their plans not changed on Saturday. My parents were originally supposed to drive to La Crosse on Sunday to pick up some of my brother's belongings, but now I guess my dad was able to get a truck from work for when they go to move my brother out of his dorm on Thursday. That's my Mother's Day story.

Wow, it looks like I might not go out drinking tonight. I believe this would be the first night in probably a month that I'm not consuming some sort of alcoholic beverage. Friday night was the first night I hadn't gone to a bar in some time, but I still drank over at Matt and Carrie's. I could always crack open one of these warm beers sitting on the floor right next to me just keep the streak alive, but I've started to lose interest in warm beer. That popcorn my parents brought back from the movie theater Saturday night is sounding pretty good right about now.

The Commander-in-Chief or the chief executive officer? Being bored at work today, and partially curious about how I could contact our CEO if the need were to arise (I'll get to that later), I started looking up various people's World Perks info. For some reason, I'm barred from looking at Pinnacle Airlines CEO Phil Trenary's WP listing, yet I can look at President George W. Bush's WP listing. Interesting....

The reason the idea came up to even look for Phil's info was because we were looking into the flights down to Memphis and back for training next week. I have to fly down to Memphis next Wednesday for some class, go to class on Thursday, and then fly back to Appleton Thursday night. The problem is, Pinnacle no longer pays to fly its employees positive space to come for training. In other words, if the flights are full, because I don't have a confirmed seat, I could potentially get stranded in one of the hubs overnight and have to pay for my own lodgings! How ridiculous is that?! The flights between the hubs are usually pretty full also - and it doesn't help that some of flights are on dinky little DC-9's - so this is a pretty realistic scenario. In the event I got stranded somewhere, I wanted to be able to call Phil and give him a piece of my mind, but they must have thought of that ahead of time, for they bar from finding out where he lives. Damn these people who plan ahead!

Am I crazy, or did I hear Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in a Subaru commercial tonight?

I thought I had more to write about, but then it occured to me that all I can think of right now are mundane stories about passengers today at work, so I think I'll just shut up.

UPDATE: I tried looking up my pal Phil's WP info on Saturday and it worked just fine. Must have been a glitch that it didn't work the earlier time I tried it.

I don't want to say too much to jinx them, but it looks like the Twins may be starting to turn their offensive slump around. They've won 7 of their last 10 (including three in a row), they're back above .500, and now that the Royals have started to come back to reality, the Twins are sitting in second place in the division only 3.5 games in back of Kansas City. The team is finally starting to get some hits with runners in scoring position (batting .489 with RISP in the last 5 games) and the pitchers, notorious for giving up the long ball, haven't allowed a homer in 5 games - their longest streak in 6 years. They're also getting a little help in the homerun department themselves, with Kielty batting the ball around, Jacque Jones hitting two HRs (in a 5-for-5 night at the plate) Tuesday night, and Pierzynski hitting his first career grand slam Wednesday night.

It's also interesting that the Twins are involved in 3 of the 4 longest winning streaks against another team in MLB. The Twins have 15 straight wins against Detroit, the Yankees have 13 straight wins against the Twins, and the Twins have now won 10 straight against Tampa Bay going into Thursday's game. Wicked.

It's fascinating how quickly the week passes by when you don't have a traditional weekend. I mean, here it is, Thursday - the new Friday - but for me it's only Tuesday. Even so, everyone else is gearing up for the weekend and getting ready to put on their dancing shoes and let loose. It's like I get two weekends, except I have to work before I can play on one of them.

Speaking of work, I went out drinking with some workmates tonight. Well, that's not entirely the case. Aaron, who worked there long ago, but about whom I've heard many a story, has been in town for the last week to visit his parents and old friends. He, along with Corey, another Corey (who formerly worked for Midwest before taking the voluntary furlough), and Jen (one of our supervisors) went out drinking. I could tell that Aaron and the other Corey had had a few tonight, but not nearly as many as Jen. Man, that woman was trashed. I guess it only makes sense when they started drinking by 8, but I didn't join them until 5 hours later. Chris and I didn't get out until 12:30 (thanks in part to 33 boxes of a 54 box shipment of plants coming in on the last flight), so it was late before we got down there. I'm not sure where they had all been before we met up with them, but Chris and I met them down at Ravens, where we were the only six in the place (other, of course, for Howie and one of the bartenders). Not surprisingly, they had last call by 1:20 and were chasing us out. There was no way in hell that Jen was driving home in her state, so Chris drove her car while the others followed. Corey and I went down to Jekyll's instead. Chris and Aaron were going to try to meet us down there, but by the time they got Rummy McLush home, escorted her into her apartment, and got back downtown for their own cars it was already 2. Betsy had to start closing up shop earlier than normal tonight also, because there were a bunch of rowdy Lawrence kids at Jekyll's who had no apparent intention to vacate the premesis until the last possible moment. There were two Lawrence girls at the bar who turned and talked to Corey and I for a few minutes, and they informed us that on top of being there for a friend's 21st birthday, Lawrence was also in the middle of midterms, meaning there were probably lots of little Vikings in there blowing off steam and pent-up energy.

Last night was considerably quieter down at Jekyll's. It died down early, and at one point it was just Corey, Crystal, and I in there. Trixie showed up with Girl (I've never learned her name, yet I've seen her around helluh times at Jekyll's and at parties) about the same time Corey decided to head out (he had more homework to do, and actually spent most of the time at Jekyll's doing homework while I talked to Crystal). At closing time, I met Trixie back at her place, where we indulged in post-bar food consumption. We started off with chicken strips, but those just weren't enough, so we ended up making a pizza as well, all while sitting around watching Nick@Nite.

Being as excited as I was to purchase them, I should make mention here of the new Blur album and Catch Me if You Can. I watched CMiYC over at my aunt and uncle's Tuesday afternoon while I allowed the cats to run around the house and get a little exercise. Cinders came and laid down by me, while Whiskers bashfully stayed hidden in the basement. Between my car and my bedroom, I've listened to almost nothing but the new Blur album since I bought it. I have to say that it's quickly growing on me. I liked 13, and it might be a little premature to say this, but I think Think Tank might be my favorite Blur album since the pre-self-titled album days. I'm a little disappointed that Graham Coxon left the band, but they don't disappoint without him.

Work is still progressing on the new website. I'm currently working on various different website projects, including the Tavern Tour 2003 site, a redesign of this site (intended to be ready in time for blueflower.org's 3rd birthday on June 8th), and, yes, hopefully eventually finishing the new Groutflow site once-and-for-all. I've never been in a rush to finish the Groutflow site since Groutflow is now more-or-less defunct, but I'd still like to get it out of the way one day anyway.

Okay, I've taken enough of your time for one evening. Nighty-night!

I just randomly decided to check out imood.com. I think it's the first time I've checked it out since 2001. In fact, I see my last entry there was in June of 2001. It doesn't appear that much has changed with the site, but the number of members certainly has! When I originally joined, I believe there were fewer than 20,000 members. Now I see there are nearly 450,000 members. Damn.

Tuesday is almost upon us, and you all know what that means, right? New Blur album! Yay!! I'm counting down the time until Best Buy opens in the morning. I had gone months without buying any new cds (I believe that the last cds I bought were back in December), but Blur will be my third in as many weeks. Two weeks ago I finally got around to buying Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." Last week I ordered and received the new All-Girl Summer Fun Band album. In the last two weeks I've listened to pretty much nothing but those two, but that'll all change tomorrow morning. Oh, I'm so psyched! I'm also planning on picking up a copy of "Catch Me if You Can," which gets released on dvd tomorrow. I've been looking forward to that one also. Yeah.

Today was sort of a wasted day for a day off. I was feeling lazy enough as it was, but then the all-day rain didn't exactly get me motivated to do much. Hell, I didn't first get dressed until 10 tonight, and that was just so I could go to my aunt and uncle's and feed their cats.

Work had me a little frustrated over the weekend, which is part of the reason why you hadn't heard from me since Friday. We didn't have anybody closing all weekend capable of using the jetbridge, so we had to ground deboard every flight. Exasperating the problem, the white gpu refused to work, which is the only one with an a/c hook-up (required for the jet). We didn't have any trouble with the Saab on Saturday (which uses d/c), but we had to do half-assed cleaning jobs on the CRJs all weekend because of a lack of power. It could all be avoided if Pinochle Airlines were willing to train us on jetbridge, but they're not. They won't let my manager train us. They won't let a manager from another station come and train us. I'm getting the feeling that the only person they'll let train us is Mr. Jay "The Letter J" Hines (who teaches most of their classes, and who I'll see in 10 days down in Memphis again), but he doesn't want to come up to Appleton until summer so he can avoid the cold weather. That had better not be the case, but the vibe I'm getting says it is.

Hahaha... I was just reading through old posts again when I came across this one, excerpted from June 14, 2002:

"I don't recall if it's a parade or a good fight that I love, but I figure I should find out soon, as since this is Flag Day, so there's probably at least one of them going on today. I want to get it right too, because I don't want to turn up a fight and find out it's parades that I love. That would be such a waste."

I don't remember the day for certain, but I can only think that I was on some controlled substance at the time that I wrote that.

Don't get me wrong - I try to be amiable with my coworkers - but I think many of them have gotten the (incorrect) impression that I want to be their friend. I have bills to pay. I don't work for Pinochle Airlines to make friends, I work there to make money. Although many of them knew I have a mean streak, I think some of them might have first realized today that I'm an anti-social son-of-a-bitch who really could give two shits about what they think of me. I hate people.

So, how's it goin'? No, I'm not really in as bad a mood as my opening paragraph of this entry may bely, I'm just fed up with the two-facedness and incompetence of several of my coworkers. After finally finishing up tonight (I have to work until midnight all month because they pushed the arrival time of our late flight back from 10:30 to 11:19 for May), I went on down to Jekyll's, where Corey later met me. Right now I'm wrestling with the dillemma of trying to decide where I should start the Tavern Tour off on June 1st. I know I definitely want to finish the summer with a big drunken bash at Jekyll's on September 22nd, but now the next biggest decision is deciding where to start. I think that'll have to be a big bash also to kick off the entire endeavour. In an attempt to save money - and face - I really don't plan on getting trashed any normal night out during the summer, but there have to be a few big nights to tie at all together. I'm also thinking there will have to be a mid-summer bash in late-July or early-August. On top of it all, I still want to go to Minneapolis for the Twins-Angels game on September 1st. I guess we'll see how the summer plays out, but these are the plans as of now.

In case anyone here hasn't been there yet to check it out, today is the second birthday of Molly's MentalJewelry.net. In pseudo-celebration, she has thrown together and posted an all-new layout and design with plans to expand even farther.

And finally, after taking everyone's suggestions into account and thinking it over, I think I've decided to keep my blog and archives exactly as they are. At the end of the day, this whole project is really about me (sorry everybody!), and I guess I was silly to think that it wasn't. One of these days I'll get back to work on converting my old Blogger posts to MT and the whole thing will be set. Once again, thanks to everyone who gave me the two-cents for which I asked.

I spent more time on Tuesday working on planning out the Tavern Tour. I first worked my way through the phone book matching up the licensees with the establishments, so now I have an actual list of all the places to go, and creating a spreadsheet with all the info. Then, I went and bought a map to plot out all the locations. After plotting out all the places on the map, I split the city up into smaller areas which I could use to categorize the locations. While working on plotting out all the locations while sipping a beer at Jekyll's, I caught the attention of others who were curious about what I was doing. I've now found more people to accompany me to several of the bars! Yay! So, those people (the ones who accompany me several times) will be featured on the website when I get it up with photos and a short bio. I also had several people mention the idea to me last night of turning the whole experience into a book when I'm finished. I don't know if I want to make too many commitments at this time, but I definitely like the idea.