A new blog on the scene: Ailee and Rachel. Okay, okay, so mom and dad are doing most of the typing … but still — these girls are pretty high-tech at only five days old! Congratulations to Chris and Kristin on the birth of their beautiful twin girls, Ailee Ryan and Rachel Taylor! The girls were born a bit earlier than expected this past Sunday night (they were due in August but just couldn’t wait to meet us all, I guess) and are only a bit over a pound a piece — but are doing well and have surpassed some major hurdles in their earliest days. Chris, Kristin, Ailee and Rachel: our continued thoughts, prayers and well-wishes are with you.

What cruel games nature plays on us. As I look out on the deck I see 6 inches of snow covering the deck and all our patio furniture. So much for doing yard work yesterday while Lynsey is in Chicago.

On the bright side though, it gave me a chance to make that long awaited purchase of one of these. And of course I couldn’t be with out one of these either.

I never thought I was much into the aesthetics of functional equipment. I mean who cares what color the wheels are. Well, it did yesterday. For all practical purposes last years models and this years models do the same job. But this year they decided to change to the color of the wheels to this really ugly yellow. A yellow so bad that I didn’t even want it in my garage. Something tells me they were trying to mimic another famous green and yellow combination. Take it from me, Sears should leave it to the experts at John Deere. They have this soothing green and yellow combination that is timeless and should be unchallenged. So needless to say, I have the much nicer looking green with gray wheels model decorating the corner of the garage.

Happy birthday, Eric! And, a one day belated happy birhthday wish to my mom, too.

So, if it isn’t tough enough to get in a minor fender-bender in stop-n-go traffic …. your wife has to be mean enough post pictures she found on the Department of Transporation’s web site during the time you called her from your cell phone to tell her you’d be late for dinner. For your viewing pleasure:

1. Roger and his victim waiting for the State Trooper.
2. The State Trooper consoling Roger and his victim.
3. The State Trooper leaving the scene of the crime.

Fortunately, Roger’s been a trooper himself while I’ve mercilessy teased him over the past 24 hours for being the jackass who holds up rush hour traffic and gets his picture on a traffic camera.

What should have been a nice day yesterday turned into somewhat of a bummer. Leaving work a little bit later than I had planned, I didn’t have time to stop at the gym. So I thought that’s fine, I’ll just stop at the grocery store to get the things we need for the week and I’ll have more time to spend out on the deck relaxing and having a beer. That was about the time I hit the guy in front of me while in stop and go traffic. Actually it was more like a tap since we were going so slowly. We pulled off to the side and found that we had neither of us had no damage. And neither of was hurt, although my ego was a little damaged for running into him.

So we decided to call the State Trooper anyway, thinking that I needed a police report for the insurance on my company car. The other guy was really nice about the whole thing and we talked about our jobs. It turns out that he is a house appraiser, so we had plenty to talk about. After 50 minutes a State Trooper showed and told us since no one was hurt and the damage (none) was under $1,000 that we didn’t need to fill out any reports and he couldn’t do anything for us anyway.

Lessons learned:

• Pay attention in stop and go traffic
• If no one is hurt and the damage is under $1,000, exchange info and go on your merry way
• The only info you have to exchange is your name, license, and insurance

If that wasn’t enough, I had another incident at the Cub Foods on the way home. After buying everything we would need for the week and after driving all the way home. I realized that I was missing the strawberries I’d bought. I showed Lynsey the receipt and we realized that I was also missing the bread, a turkey, eggs and the bananas. Altogether a total of about $25.00. After retracing my steps, I realized that the check-out girl had put half my groceries on one conveyor belt and half on the other one. Of course at first I thought I was losing my mind and had forgot them somewhere. The good thing is that when went back, they were all bagged up and ready to go behind the customer service counter.

The day did get better though. We had Ryan and Paula over for dinner and relaxed over a few beers and good company. We also met our next-door neighbors Dan and Seth.

I think that Spring is finally here and our current Web site title isn’t just wishful thinking. Besides having to work on Friday night and all day Saturday, we managed to enjoy part of the weekend together. Or should I say that we were introduced to the joys of doing yard work at our new house. Of course that meant a trip to Home Depot for some of the essential yard tools: garden hoses, rakes and shovels. The only good thing is that we don’t have to buy them every year. I think our next trip will be to Sears for a lawn mower and weed trimmer. We got quite a bit of our lawn cleaned up and took out a section of old fence that the previous owner hadn’t replaced when he did the rest of the back yard.

While reading the paper yesterday, I found an article that was quite disturbing. I wasn’t so much disturbed by the subject matter of the article. Only that they’ve come up with a name for it and now there is a book about it. Doesn’t this just perpetuate the problem and only make it the “in” thing to do.

Attempting to end the doldrums of what would have ordinarily been another monotonous weekend in the suburbs, Roger and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Sunday afternoon. We participated in an hour-long tour called “Decorative Arts” and learned how individuals “decorated” their homes through the centuries with tapestries, vases, glasswork, cabinets and more. We also wandered around the museum for an hour and I snapped photos of interesting and intriguing works. Apologies for my naming conventions … somehow I don’t think that any artist would want his work named “Man with Lots of Hair” or “Abstract Bowl of Fruit.”

“You know the feeling you get after reading a book that speaks to you, that touches your life, a feeling that you want to share it with someone else? BookCrossing.com gives you a simple way to share your books with the world, and follow their paths forever more.”

What books would you leave lying around for others to find? I’m so possessive (and obsessive) about my books that whenever I move to a new place, the bookshelves are the first things to get filled — so the thought of giving away my books sort of freaks me out. But why? I never read them again … why not pass them on for others to enjoy?

Fossilized Human Heads Found in South Dakota! (At least they weren’t found in North Dakota).