By way of explanation

In case anyone wonders, here is the video I watched the other night that set me off down the road that led me to post the Van Halen video.  As did Frank, I found the Hot for Teacher video to be amusing.

At one point in the CNN piece Frank says to the guest who persists in attacking, "I've got a napkin for you when you drool."  Shortly thereafter the guy challenges Frank to some sort of manly resolution of the matter, I believe his words indicate that if Frank is willing that the two of them should go out in the alley and engage in fisticuffs.  I doubt that he really means it.

Some of Frank's facial takes are priceless. 

Just a rock musician on CNN with three professional talking heads.

Frank is way, way too smart to not have been President.

Everyone likes this one

Live in New York's Central Park 1981.

Three years before the Alex, Eddie and David Lee video.

Innocence disappears so very, very rapidly.

Van Halen

1984.

Not one of their greatest songs (although Eddie is really, really good) but unquestionably one of their greatest videos.

I love it when a plan works out

I played outside again today. It was cold.

Many of my circle will know that my long time preferred non-workplace time piece has for many years been a cheap plastic Casio analog. I love to watch the second hand, I like the hands, I am no fan of digital time pieces, time is very, very clearly analog. I own three of the Casio analogs.

So last week the watch I was using stopped. I always keep the appropriate battery on hand so the first thing I did was replace the battery. Unfortunately that did not restart the watch. I took the battery back out and tried it in one of the other watches, this time in my personal favorite, the one with the scratch on the face from the drainspout on rue de La Sourdière as we walked from Glenn's apartment to a recommended restaurant in 2006. The fresh battery started that watch. I concluded that the now non-functioning watch had a disability unrelated to battery power. Being as the watches in question are about $12 brand new, repair is out of the question.

However, I have long had an issue with the cheap plastic bands that come with these watches. They just don't last very long. I have located a source for them and have at least a couple in reserve. The thing is though, even a watch that doesn't work has a perfectly fine watch band. I didn't want to discard the non-working watch because of the band and I have no good spot for storing just the band. My solution was to put a piece of black tape on the dead watch (black tape dead watch, good one, eh?) and store the watch in the same place where I store the other non-working watch, confident that I would now know which of those two was the one that wasn't any good anymore.

Today the watch band on the watch now currently in use gave up the ghost.

I am, like, totally prepared.

Bicycling reminder

I was out for a walk today.  Shortly after finishing block 17 of 24 I met another walker, a person unfamiliar to me.  She had a large black dog on a leash which meant mostly I was keeping an eye on the dog and not really interacting with the other human being.

She was Minnesota Nice though and offered a cheery "Hello" distracting me from the dog. "Hello", I responded.

"Not riding your bike today?", she continued.

I was within a half mile or so of home. I have taken about 1,500 bicycle rides over the past several years each ride beginning in my garage so it is no surprise that my neighbors have noticed. I didn't know her, she knew me.

It was a reminder that this is a bicycle blog.

My most recent bicycling activity was preliminary work on BikeLog13, the Quattro file I maintain for recording ride mileage and comments. Mostly the preliminary work is to save a copy of BikeLog12 as BikeLog13, then update the desktop shortcut, make sure the cumulative totals are correct for going forward, change all of the 2012s to 2013s, stuff like that. I noticed in BikeLog12 that last year's first ride was made on March 11, the second consecutive day of last March when the high temperature for the day was 66F. Both of those readings were record highs for those dates but still . . .

That's only three weeks away.

And here's what a successful weekend looks like

5-0 on Friday night, 6-2 this afternoon. The photo is from Friday night when the team clinched the regular season championship. That puny little trophy in front of the jubilant team is the physical reward for compiling the best record in the league this season. We all know that the real rewards are internal and personal to the players who participated in this achievement.

The other deal is that I have discovered very clear evidence of recent alien activity in the neighborhood. And that seems like sorts big news to me.

There are definitely bright white, oh, I don't know, modules? out there on the flat space. If you don't find this worrisome then maybe you should rethink your whole belief system about the space time continuum and the theory of relativity. It looks pretty sketchy to me.

I had to do a little bit of hunting around but the tin foil hats have been located and it looks to me like we are out of danger. Unless of course the aliens have already taken over our bodies and the entity making this post is Qw*xo)#j from the Andromeda galaxy.

Who really knows?

At long last, who really knows?

What it looks like when your favorite team gets three-quarters of the front page of the local newspaper's sports section

The attention is well deserved and it truly is about time.

The answer to the question posed in the headline is, of course, that it is too early to tell for sure. They have to play the rest of the games before any answer is possible. As some who know me will know it is my position that if you want to go undefeated you have to win ALL of your games.

Here's a link to the actual story from the newspaper's website. There is a nice video included on the website.

For good measure, here is a link to the team's captains appearance on local TV this morning. The video in the background while Bethany and Megan are talking includes highlights from last year's national championship game including the game (and championship) winning goal on a penalty shot by Emily West preceded by just a glimpse of the final and clinching goal by Sarah Erickson.

And a link to a recent article on Minnesota Public Radio.

Anyone who hasn't seen them play yet, shame on you.

The game tonight is against UMD at 6:07, probably too late for that (although you can catch it streamed live on the interweb). No one has an excuse for missing tomorrow's game at 2:30. At the very least you can catch it on cable on the BigTen Network.

Best ever?

Wouldn't that be fun?