Dammit, I love my birthday and I ain’t ashamed of it. Today I turn the big two-six. (And the lovely Chelsea Clinton turns 21.) If I were really smart, I would have set up a wish list at Amazon, from which you could have selected a charming gift and sent it my way. Instead, why don’t you head on over to the Rainforest Site, the Hunger Site, the Kids AIDS Site, the Child Survival Site, the Breast Cancer Site, or the Landmine Site and make a donation with your single click. Now that would be a great birthday present. The kind folks at eTour sent me a birthday email, “Today in History.” Remember those machines in Hallmark that would spit out a nice certificate with this exact same information, which you could then frame and gift to your loved one? Those kids and their computers these days, taking the fun out of everything.

On this date in:
1801	The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine.
1861	In Warsaw, Russian troops fired on a crowd protesting Russian rule over Poland. Five marchers were killed.
1922	The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the right of women to vote.
1933	Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming the Communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.
1939	The Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes.
1960	The U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet Union 3-2 at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, Calif. The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.
1972	President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai issued the Shanghai Communique at the conclusion of Nixon’s historic visit to China.
1982	Wayne B. Williams was found guilty of murdering two of the 28 young blacks whose bodies were found in the Atlanta area over a 22-month period.
1986	The U.S. Senate approved telecasts of its debates on a trial basis.
1997	Divorce became legal in Ireland.
1998	With the approval of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s House of Lords agreed to end 1,000 years of male preference by giving a monarch’s first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first born son.

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Apparently, someone thought yesterday’s post was a stroke of genius. Me too.

Where I work (and live), parking is a valuable commodity. In the paved lot behind my office, there are about 12 spaces — and that’s on a good day. Due to The Longest and Coldest Winter in Minnesota, there are only about nine or ten spots available. The snow coverage and ice-rink conditions obsure the yellow lines completely.

It came to my attention today that a blue mini-van in the lot must have been parked in one spot for a very long time. ‘Cuz it got the Boot. Ever see one of those things? It’s a monstrous yellow clamp thingie that fits neatly around the car’s front tire, preventing it from going anywhere without the owner going through a helluva lotta hassle. That boot can stay on anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on how much of a rip the owner gives to get his car back again.

Do you see the irony in the Boot? Obviously, the Boot is placed on the tire as a punishment to the driver for parking where he doesn’t belong. If he were to remove his car from the spot where he doesn’t belong, he would free up a parking spot that rightfully belongs to someone else. But, with the Boot on his tire he is unable to move his car; thus, the punishment for the Boot-ee becomes a punishment for the rest of us who actually deserve to park in that spot. So, I ask: why the hell don’t they just tow the thing?

My next job? The parking police!

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I took in the Twin Cities music scene Saturday night and enjoyed a performance of Gil Shaham with the Minnesota Orchestra. In addition, the Star Tribune was kind enough to send me two complimentary tickets to the Orchestra as a thank you for a small donation I made to its Newspaper in Education program. I’ll be seeing Doc Severinson at the end of March.

Monday’s Star Tribune featured an article about Postville, Iowa, a rural town I visited last October as part of a diversity immersion experience sponsored by St. Olaf. Postville has become known as the “Ellis Island of the Midwest,” after a Hasidic Jew opened a Kosher slaughterhouse several years ago. The slaughterhouse attracted other Jews and immigrants from around the world. While the article was fascinating and provided a quick glimpse into the changing lives of these Iowans, I highly recommend reading Postville: A Clash Of Cultures in Heartland America. Or, do what I did and actually take a tour of the slaughterhouse. The scent of the kill still lingers in my nostrils.

My lack of interesting or off-the-wall links lately has been due to the fact that, although I spend all day on the web, I never seem to leave the URL of my employee. Uff dah. I need to get out more.

My mom used to complain that I updated my web page more often than I emailed home. If I have time to blog, shouldn’t I have time to send a quick note to my loved ones? (Don’t forget, you can discuss below!)

My sweetie-pie surprised me on Valentine’s Day. While waiting for our dessert after dinner, he said, “I’m giving you your second present now,” and then began fishing around in his coat pocket. (Why is it that my co-workers’ eyes get as big as saucers when I tell them this story?). He brought out an envelope, let me read the paper inside, and a few minutes later we were dashing off to the Target Center to see Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Kurt Browning and Tara Lipinski in Stars on Ice. Now that’s romantic.

Other things I have considered romantic in the past six months:

• Making me try on ugly goggles and then laughing hysterically while we proceed to take pictures of ourselves in the bathroom mirror.
• Buying me windshield wiper fluid during the last thaw.
• Buying me a new scraper and brush for my car during the last freeze.
• Buying me maps of the Twin Cities last summer.

I’ve come to the realization that with the exception of the first paragraph, I have a very skewed view on romanticism. But I kind of like it.

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What do you think is romantic? I’m testing out “BlogVoices,” so click on the “discuss” link below. (Come on, the 20 of you who read this thing must have something interesting to say! Oh, and Eric, you can just refer people to your depressing Valentine’s Day post.)

My father never uses the word “redundant.” “To use the word redundant,” he says, “would just be ‘dundant.”

Exempli gratia, from the mouths of NPR babes in the course of a two hour drive during a snowstorm Thursday afternoon:

” … in the case that I get re-elected again.”

” … a wide variety of different things.”

Dundant? I repeat again! I strongly emphasize! I do declare!

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My drive in the snowstorm is pictured above. The photo would have been perfect, had it not been for the errant windshield wiper that prevented me from capturing the license plate on the van ahead of me which read: “IM COLD.” Me too.

There she is, my lovely photo of the peeing baby in the Guardian’s new travel section.