Father's Day 2008

It was official today, Erik's gone. He left the company, and I had to drink coffee at one point all by myself, all lonely with my copy of HBR in the corner of the cafeteria. I'm not sure I'm ok with that, it impinges upon my ability to be fun for the departmental fun committee. Without Erik aruond, I had to complain to Mean Mr. Mustard about the painful realities of installing Red Hat Linux on a Virtual PC 2007 image, and we all know that's just going to garner a Microsoft joke at the end of the day. noreplace-paravirt seemed to do a squat lot of good, by the way. We'll see if Fedora works a bit more reasonably tomorrow.

But I had a good Father's Day! My family bought me a few nice Marvin-themed presents to celebrate. This pen weighs more than a small barbell. While it was in the wrapper, I suspected it was a tire gauge.


The Marvin the Martian bank that was the other half of my present. It's very funny as it seems to be hand painted, but was part of a mass-produced set "manufactured in 1994 for sale in the now-defunct Warner Brothers Studio Stores." That's also where my animatronic Marvin art is from, which might never get fixed now that the WB stores are gone. Marvin seems very Mr. Bean-ish with all that stuff on his spaceship - I almost expect him to be sitting on top with a broom handle. I hope he packed his Immodium Space Modulator. He's always misplacing it.


The other side of the bank, where K-9 is happily looking out the window.


This present I bought myself in Cannon Falls, on the anchor of a bike ride I did over the afternoon with Ming, Kyle, and the kids. Ming's wife and my wife were along as well, but not riding. They ate focaccia bread and read therapist books instead and picked the kids up in Red Wing so we didn't have to haul them back up hill. It's a new thermos! $2! $2! $2! I have a thermos that leaks, and you always need a back up, so it was kismet. The fact that it comes with a carrying case for bottles of scotch is an added bonus.


Snakes. Ish. This reminds me of the snake ball I fell in when I lived in St. Michael as a kid. UGH. Kyle commented, just as I was having the thought, that 150,000 was considerably more than any pile I could have fallen into.


Here's a nice video of the Narcisse Snake Pits in Manitoba:


The old railroad tracks at Welch. They gave us free chocolate chip cookies here courtesy of the town on Father's Day. Quite the bargain. Eryn used that toilet in the background, and it's not a plumbed facility, but a very deep outhouse with a cement floor. When I told her she was sitting on a 20' deep hole, she didn't believe me, until she got off and looked, and then backed away with a look of horror on her face, not even bothering to pull up her underpants first.


The group of us, hanging out and eating cookies. It was a great day for a ride. We chased a groundhog down the trail for a while. Checked out the bald eagles. Saw a coworker (Ming didn't - he did the half ride, but Kyle and I saw Jen from my office, on the new bike she bought on Thursday). Shopped at the garage sale. Got told I look like Bishop the chiropractor from Red Wing. Checked out the baby swans. Mocked Ming for having a squashed worm on his butt. And dropped Eryn off the tagalong.

Um...yeah. At about mile 15 I hit a bump on a bridge traveling at about 14 mph, and a second later I heard a plaintive, "Daddy, wait!" I pulled to a stop, and at least 100' back is Eryn running across the bridge toward us, having apparently fallen off the back of the tagalong. She insists she wasn't goofing around or taking her hands off the handlebars and feet off the pedals, but there was precedent during the day (and even afterwards). Amazingly, she was unhurt physically, only a bit traumatized mentally. I was so glad she wasn't hurt, and Kyle was glad he was riding in front of us on that part of the trail so there wasn't the possibility of running over here. I think Logan is convinced the tagalong can wait a few years.