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July 08, 2005
4th of July Spectacular!
This past weekend was heaps of fun, if a bit tiring. For the fourth year in a row I had friends over at my house in Cumberland for the Fourth of July weekend, and this year was the largest gathering thus far.
I got back up to Cumberland on Friday afternoon, and quick did some trimming and vacuuming before people arrived. Seth got there first, so he and I made a trip into town to pick up some fireworks for us to shoot off during the weekend, and by the time we were done, Zach, Carl & Jolene had arrived as well. We all had a good time just staying inside for the cool evening, hanging out and watching "Ocean's Twelve."
On Saturday morning before Ben & Brendan arrived we all went out on the paddleboats for a trip around the lake. After lunch we picked up a bunch of delicious brats from Louie's. I think I was the only not totally amazed by how many different flavours of brats alone that Louie's had. All things considered, we stayed pretty ordinary, with "plain", onion & garlic, cheddar and Packer (cheddar, beer & sauerkraut) brats, especially when you consider that there were Viking (purple cabbage & cheddar), blueberry and apple brats that we also could've gotten, among others. Mmmmmm, Louie's is sooooooo good, and I think now everyone else thinks so too! We all decided to go for a swim when we got back, but first we decided to add about six feet of chain, so that it could be in somewhat deeper water, about 13-14 feet or so. Once that was taken care of, all us guys (we couldn't get Jolene to join us, and Josh elected to fish instead) had an awesome session of king of the raft, that resulted in some carpet burns and nice takedowns for all, hehe. 
Mike & Shaun showed up for the delicious grilled brat feed, along with my brother Jake, who pretty much invited himself over for brats. Many bottle rockets (even clusters of them) were shot off the dock before sunset, even resulting in the deaths of three minnows, lol. Then Carl had to head back to St Cloud for the night, since the following morning he had to catch a flight out to Los Angeles for his Teach for America training. After he left, the rest of us just had a fire, a few drinks and launched a few other fireworks. All in all a very enjoyable day. :-)
Seth left for home right away Sunday morning, and Zach & Jolene left for Jolene's house in Duluth after lunch, leaving just Ben, Brendan & I to hold down the fort for the afternoon. Mike & Shaun came back late afternoon to do some fishing (this time Shaun remembered their fishing poles), and Sarah S., Janelle, Kate & John all arrived around suppertime (grilled burgers, yum!). It was especially good to see Sarah & Janelle again, since they had both fairly recently gotten back to the States from a year or more abroad in Hong Kong & China, respectively; Janelle had only been back for three days at that point, and it was my first time seeing her since a month before I left for Australia last summer. And not only is it really fun seeing friends, but it's especially fun to see my friends from college and my high school friends get along with each other really well, even when they're all telling each other stories about me. :-)
Brendan had to leave promptly Monday morning, leaving Ben, John, Kate & I to hang out on the 4th itself, part of which involved having Kate watch "Kill Bill Vol. 2" in the afternoon, after having had her watch the first one the evening before. My parents gave Kate a good deal of conservative reading materials (which she of course promptly devoured), which immediately endeared her to my parents. Nathan & Laura and their kids also stopped by for a couple hours in the afternoon, as did Jake and one of his friends, so there was a lot of activity going on for a little while there. But we got everything packed up, and the four of us made it to Tourist Park in Cumberland for the annual Cumberland 4th of July Spectacular at about 8, a couple hours before the show. 
Ben & Kate were somewhat surprised to find that our beach towels were still where we'd laid them out that morning, right by the lakeshore -- I love small towns! Anyway some people that have houses on the lake near the beach were shooting off fireworks for awhile before the official show started, and those were a couple of pretty good displays, probably as good a display as you'd see in a really small town somewhere. So when you tack on all those to the 30 minutes that the official display lasted, we were treated to a good hour or so of fireworks! :-) And for the actual show, there were hardly any gaps in between the fireworks, they did a really good job of keeping anywhere from 1-4 fireworks in the air pretty much all the time. Plus I managed to get the grand finale on video on my digital camera, 
I'll try to get that uploaded to my website at some point. It was really nice getting to see 4th of July fireworks again, after having had to miss them last year while I was sitting in LAX for my 10-hour layover before my flight to Melbourne, though I was fine with having missed them when I got to see a fireworks display at Sydney Harbour back in November. At any rate, it was 11 by the time we all left Cumberland after the fireworks, and I didn't get back to Minnetrista until 1:30am, which was kinda rough, since I had to be at work at 6:45am Tuesday. Yuck.
Something amusing happened at work yesterday. A guy called up wanting to make a reservation for a rental car, but when he told me that every place else had turned him down because he didn't have a credit card or debit card or anything, I transferred him to Rick (the manager). Rick was about to make the rental after talking to the guy, but started to get a funny feeling and checked the computer after telling the guy to call back in 10 minutes. Sure enough, that same guy had rented from us back in 2002, didn't pay us, and we still hadn't gotten the money even after going to a collection agency. So when the guy called back Rick told him that we couldn't rent to him because he'd stiffed us three years ago. Then the guy offered to pay up what he owed if we rented to him this time, but again Rick said that we'd take the money but that we still couldn't rent to him, at which point the guy said, "then you're not getting any of my money!" and hung up. We were all amazed and amused at the gall that guy had, to call up, and say he was only gonna pay what he owed us from three years ago if we rented to him again.
Well, my Grandma Siesennop isn't doing too well. Two weekends ago she was moved from Martin Luther Manor to Fairview Southdale because of pneumonia -- I knew when I visited her that afternoon at the Manor that she wasn't doing very well. So I visited her again at Fairview last Friday on my way up to Cumberland, and she seemed exhausted and still not doing too well. At any rate, over the weekend the hospital decided to release her, but not without a feeding tube, which meant my Mom was on the phone with her brothers and other relatives almost all weekend. By the time they went down to the Cities on Sunday, Grandma had told the nurse that she didn't want a feeding tube, meaning my parents and uncles started arranging hospice care, which started when she was transferred back to the Manor on Monday. It probably won't be long for her now; she's 93 and very frail, has been bedridden for the last 3-4 years, and her hearing and sight are mostly gone. It's been tough seeing her wither away like this.
On a lighter note, a couple amusing news stories have come up in the last week, like the astrologer that is suing NASA for $300 million for their Deep Impact experiment, in which a probe slammed into a passing comet last weekend in order to create a crater and determine the comet's composition. She says that the universe's astrological balance has been completely thrown off because of it. Whatever. And apparently men and boys in Russia are having a harder and harder time passing as women, as evidenced by this would-be test-taker. Maybe that means the new generation of Russian girls that didn't grow up on Communist-forced steroid injections are actually a bit more attractive...
And in response to today's terrorist attacks in London, hopefully it's a wake-up call to many, many people around the world that terrorists are not content with simply gathering and carrying out attacks inside Iraq, but are determined to attack us in our own countries, as we go about our daily lives. And that's why these Islamofascist terrorists need to be wiped out, not appeased. Appeasement didn't work with Hitler, and it won't work with these evildoers either.
Posted by Jared at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2005
4th of July Party, Here I Come!
Well, June is gone. What happened to it? How come the summer is so suddenly over a third over and done with?
June has been quite the rainy month, it seems like it's rained about half or two-thirds of the month so far, and we've had so many big thunderstorms. But at Twin Cities Int'l Airport, where all the official records are kept, they're reporting a slightly below average rainfall for the month. Weird.
So I went up to Cumberland last weekend. On Friday night I played a board game over at Nathan & Laura's, with them and Mark, called Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. I'd played regular Settlers of Catan several times previously, but this was an enjoyable new twist, though the dice were thoroughly against me the entire game.
Saturday afternoon I worked my first shift at the radio station in Rice Lake in very nearly a year, from 4-midnight. Things went smoothly and dull as usual for a summertime Saturday night at the station. But it was good to get back in practice with that a bit, and to make a few extra bucks too. And now I can tack onto my resume at least an extra year to my time of employment at the radio station, hehe. And Mathison dropped by for a visit at midnight, it was good to see him again, as always.
On Sunday after church, which was at our house, Dad & I worked at getting the swimming raft out into the lake. Only where we first put it wasn't the best place for it, because as we discovered shortly after making it back to the dock, the raft was in water too deep for its anchor, and so blew way over to the side of the lake. Sigh. So we had to go fetch it and tow it back to a more suitable place with one of the paddleboats. Let me tell ya, that was some hard pedaling! But I just wanted to get that out there last weekend, so we wouldn't have to monkey with it this weekend when all my friends arrive, like the ordeal that happened with the raft last year upon everyone's arrival. And when we were changing oil on my car, my Dad discovered that the boot for one of the CV joints on my car was broken, so we traded cars for the week, so that he could get mine into the shop.
This week at work hasn't been all that eventful. I mean, how can I top last week's renting of a car to the wrong person? I put in nearly 38 hours from Mon-Thu this week though, hehe. It's actually kinda nice to get basically 40 hours, and yet to have those three-day weekends. This week I've been learning a lot more of stuff that gets done in the office, like data entry, billing credit cards, etc., to make myself even more of a utility person at Choice.
Tuesday night I went to the Twins-Royals game at the Dome with Zach, Jolene & Ben. It was half-price Tuesdays, so we got tickets on the Home Run Porch (lower deck left field) for just $8 each. And it was a fantastic game to go to as well, with the Twins winning a slugfest (if a game with only two total home runs, both solo shots, can be called a slugfest), 11-8. Cory was supposed to come too, but wimped out, using the lame excuse that he had to pack and get some sleep for his move down to Tucson and the University of Arizona the following morning. Wuss! Just kidding, Cory. :-)
I was met with quite the pleasant surprise this evening when I popped online -- my friend Simon from Australia was online for the first time since I'd gotten back, as he'd literally just gotten back a few hours ago from his semester of study abroad in Lyon, France. Welcome back to Melbourne, Simon! And speaking of Aussie friends studying abroad, Bradwa should be getting back from his stint in Italy sometime soon. I wish I could gallavant around the world like that again... And it's hard to believe that almost exactly one year ago, on July 4th, 2004, I departed for Australia. Wow, does time ever fly.
I'll be heading up to Cumberland in the morning, to get ready for this weekend's big event. For the fourth year in a row, I'm hosting a get-together for my friends over the Fourth of July weekend, for a few of my college and high school friends. Only this year instead of just a one-night event, it's basically going on the whole weekend, one continuous lakeside party right through Monday evening's fireworks over Beaver Dam Lake in Cumberland, the best fireworks show in all of northwestern Wisconsin. People will be coming and going throughout the course of the weekend, and I don't know how many will actually be staying for fireworks on Monday night. I will be though, and then hightailing it back to the Cities that night, since I'll no doubt have to be at work bright and early Tuesday morning at around 7am. To my parents, thank you for letting me host this again, and I apologize in advance for the probable disruptions to your sleep over the weekend, just from the fact that there'll be some noise around after 10pm. Only this won't be in advance, because I know they won't actually check my blog and read this until well after the 4th. But ha! this is proof I was thinking ahead. :-) At any rate, I'm sure that I'll put up a post about it all sometime early next week, once I recover. ;-) And to celebrate American Independence Day, you'll probably noticed I've temporarily replaced the New Zealand pictures at the top of my homepage with some fireworks pictures of mine.
But before I go, a couple stories I'd like to pass on. First, since I'm a weather geek, I was naturally interested in the new Japanese weather satellite that's monitoring East Asia and Australasia. And this guy totally had to be on some illicit substance -- he claimed he was being chased by evil subterranean beings while on his crime spree! And finally, in response to last week's breathtakingly outrageous Supreme Court ruling that essentially revoked our right to private property, a group of developers up in New Hampshire are proposing to build a hotel on Supreme Court Justice David Souter's land, using as legal support the majority ruling that Justice Souter himself voted for. It would be called the Lost Liberty Hotel, with an eatery named the Just Desserts Cafe. I mean, seriously, this isn't a conservative or liberal issue, this ruling by the Court should frighten every single American immensely. Now we no longer truly own our property, the government does. If a corporation, developer, or wealthy campaign contributor comes along and says to the city council, "I want that piece of land, and my new development would net the city more in property tax revenue than Joe Blow's house that's currently there," this ruling gives the government free reign to seize your land and give it to the wealthy person or group, under the guise of "eminent domain." Without private property rights and ownership, our republic and economic system as we know it will certainly collapse within the next 50 years. Maybe now is the time to start considering a Constitutional amendment that would either a) explicitly re-state, in stronger terms, citizens' private property rights, which are already enumerated in the Bill of Rights in the 5th Amendment (which the five majority justices completely ignored in this recent ruling), or b) allow Supreme Court decisions to be overturned by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. The runaway judiciary must be stopped before they ruin our country.
Happy Independence Day.
Posted by Jared at 12:48 AM | Comments (1)