Monday, April 28, 2008

I hate you, Paul Douglas.

Saturday was the first time all winter -- admit it, it's still winter -- I really hated Minnesota weather. When my family moved here in July 2007, I was determined to confront the winter with a positive attitude, and it worked, thanks to two things:

1. Geocaching. Everyone told us that you have to "Embrace the Winter" and get outside and do things. We moved here July 1, I began geocaching on July 17, and it didn't take me too long to realize that geocaching would be my winter thing. It took longer to realize that winter caching especially rocks because you can walk on lakes, and there are no ticks or stinging nettles.

I thought that part of "Embrace the Winter" was not to complain about the weather, but I think that my lack of complaining (until now) identifies me as a newcomer, as if my pronunciations of Woodbury, Edina, and Mahtomedi don't already do that. Next winter, I will complain more, and I will say city names correctly.

2. The Twin Cities are much sunnier than Ann Arbor, Michigan. Look for my upcoming series of posts, 50 Reasons I Hate Ann Arbor. It is gray. All the time. I'll take -10 + sun anytime.

So now my Cylon-like death rays of hatred -- let's hear it for Battlestar Ga-Frak-tica! -- are directed not at Ann Arbor but at Paul Douglas, because, as you know, meteorologists cause bad weather. Ha ha ha! That's a funny joke! Maybe they cause global warming, too... Oh no, what have I done...

Saturday minibass and I met shoestorm and his cache kids at the Mall of America park-n-ride to grab the train north to the Mpls Public Library and, of course, grab some caches on the way to and from. The brutal temperature and wind caused some crying, but I won't say who, in order to protect five masculine egos. shoestorm's jr. cache kid is the most natural nano-cache finder I have ever seen.

shoestorm's sr. cache kid -- a future architect -- is interested in the shapes of buildings, and so I suggested to them a website called geoGreeting. It was started by a graduate student at the U, and it creates electronic greetings with letters that are aerial photos of buildings. Pretty cool. Reminds me a bit of this cache.

Come out to Weeknight on Wednesday!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spending two weeks every summer in Ann Arbor hardly gives me room to talk about this but I never once experienced a gloomy day in AA even during my frequent trips there from Bowling Green during college. If what you say is true, Ann Arbor has been removed from my top 5 list of best places to live in the Midwest behind the Twin Cities :(

Someone needs to bring Cottage Inn pizza here and be done with all the crap they attempt to pass off as "decent" here :(

firstbass said...

No, you're right, there are many nice things about Ann Arbor, but you are required to act like you are extremely cool and lucky to be experiencing them.

Why else would you pay $400K for 1K sq. ft. in the middle of southeast Michigan?

I agree -- Cottage Inn is good. I didn't miss it until you mentioned it. :) I'm usually a thin-crust fan, but their hand-tossed with sesame seeds on the crust did the job too.

Anonymous said...

Too bad Paul Douglas was let go several weeks ago..not sure you can blame him any more.

firstbass said...

Such is the power of my Cylon-like death rays of hatred. So watch yourself, zman! :)

He's still at the Star Tribune, right? (I do occasionally pull myself away from the RSS aggregator long enough to look at a newspaper.)