If you were thinking about seeing a play at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, check out “Baghdad Burning: Electronic Postcards from Iraq 2003-2006“.

I admit I haven’t seen it yet but the director is fabulous so I’m trusting the show will be great.

Home movies have come a long way since my friends were messing around with Super-8 cameras. This is what happens when you give s/w engineers a nice flat parking lot and a shiny new digital camera that takes good video.

The neighbor kids did some “ding, dong ditching” during my party on Friday. One of my guests caught them laughing behind their parents truck and convinced them they should stop. I thought iI knew who it was but it was a relief to me to catch them since I kept wondering if I had put the doorbell ringer back on incorrectly.

It was fun to see the kids walk in the house sheepishly on Sunday and offer their apologies. I told them that I might get them back when they are old enough to have their own parties and sent them on their way.No harm, no foul.

Wow, there were a lot of people in my house on Friday for poker.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to play.

Special congratulations to Brooke who was the big money winner for the night.

In contrast to Brooke’s performance, I went out first. All my cards looked so shiny and full of promise, I just couldn’t fold them.

I hereby nominate Joe to have the next party.

I was glad that after painting almost all the main public areas of the house I managed to get things mostly put back together in time for the guests to arrive. Yeah, I know there were plenty of mistakes in the paint job. I got them mostly fixed by Sunday. Thanks for not actually circling them all the mistakes with magic marker.

I would have been happier if the A/C had managed to keep up better. It crept up above 80 even though the thermostat had been set to 62 pretty much all day. I was probably being screwed by the thing on the A/C unit that cycles power during peak demand. Seriously, if the electric company wanted to make money they could charge people an unlock fee where they would disable that thing for 24 hours in exchange for $10 or something. I would have gladly paid it on Friday.The heat made Toni’s Dilly Bars taste even better.

When I invited people over this time, I didn’t explicitly ask people to check their guns at the door. Thankfully, this wasn’t an issue this time and no one brandished any weapons.

So she said “God musta know what he was doing when he put him in my life”.

I never know quite what to say when people talk like this. Mostly I practice not asking snarky follow up questions.

When I think about my response I realize that I have a hard time imagining a world where God interferes in our choices and interactions at the level where everything and everyone is a coded message from God just for me. I just don’t have that much faith. It is a fun intellectual exercise to imagine that existence, but it’s hard to believe in.

Every once in a while I’ll give myself the liberty to imagine a world where things happens for a reason. It doesn’t take long before life begins to feels like a punch line; I’m laughing at the joke, but I didn’t get it or didn’t really hear the beginning of it — I’m just laughing to fit it, trying to puzzle out the humor.

Reason #412 why I know I’m old, my friends don’t jump at the chance to help do home improvement for pizza & beer.

Alone or not I still like painting, which is what I’m doing today and what I will probably be working on until Wednesday. Painting was my first real job that I stuck with in high school; I did a lot of it in high school & college.

I miss the guys I used to paint with, especially the embarrassingly lewd offers they would shout to women in other cars while we were driving to a job site. Everyone on the crew, except me, smoked pot constantly — I think it kept the paint fumes down. Coincidentally, our little crew almost never finished a job correctly. At the least we almost always left the circle around one light fixture unpainted — almost like it was our signature.

The funniest thing that ever happened was the day when our boss went back into a huge apartment complex to touch up something we forgot. He accidentally got off the ladder only to realize that he put his foot into a five gallon bucket of paint. We came looking for him after he had been gone a little too long, only to find him fuming trying to wrap up his foot in a drop cloth so he could walk out to the van. I laughed so hard when I saw what had happened, I felt light headed.

Painting is one of the most satisfying home improvement projects. It doesn’t cost much but makes a huge difference in a reasonably short period of time.

I hope I can get my house whipped back into shape for poker on Friday.

So where was I going yesterday riffing about a few perfect moments at the lake?

For a few years I’ve had this sensation where I’m living in a moment and the moment is so beautiful I don’t want it to end. It reminded me of Lester’s soliloquy at the end of the movie “American Beauty” except without the gunshot wound. You weren’t physically there in the moment but you should have been — I would have loved for you to have seen what I saw in the moment — maybe you can see it with me someday.

Lester’s Soliloquy, in case you can’t remember it.

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Is it spelled judgement or judgment? I guess it all depends on where your readers are from.

You never caught Reagan rubbing down Thatcher. What the heck is this? Was this a decision born out of questionable intelligence? If that isn’t good enough, read the article on what the open mike overheard at the same summit. This is why I always hit the mute button on conference calls – unlike some people I know.

I spent the weekend at the lake with family & friends. There were some moments really worth savoring – moments I didn’t want to end.

I took a sauna in Gary’s old Finnish sauna. This sauna was built by Jeannie’s Grandfather Matti & Great-Uncle Laurie. Both were natives of Finland who came to the U.S. and worked in the iron mines of northern Minnesota. The sauna was originally a log smoke sauna, built with pegs. Over the years it’s been reconfigured into a wood burning sauna with knotty pine inside. I have always admired the building and appreciated the repairs Gary has made to it, but I had never bathed in it. On Saturday it had been plenty hot all day. I made a stellar supper on Saturday night and cleaned up the dishes. Bret & I paddled the mile or so that separates Russ’ place from Gary’s & Jeannie met us by boat. The sauna was still plenty hot when we got there. While Jeannie changed, Bret & I entered. I threw a bucket of water on the rocks; it didn’t seem hot enough so I hit it again. Then the steam billowed out hotter than hell – I nearly had to leave. It didn’t take long to work up a good sweat that night. Each time Bret and Jeannie would leave for their run to jump off the dock I would hit the rocks with another blast waiting for the steam to hit in a rush. Ambling out in the cool night air easing out in the water for a quick dip I felt like the luckiest person around — it felt good to be alive.

That night after a game or two I headed over to the other cabin for bed — Jeannie was still busy making plans or something. I walked down to the dock, sat down at the end and stared at the stars. When you live in the city and you are always hopping from one pointless task to another you forget exactly how dim the night sky in the big city can get. The smog and the competition from the city lights keep you from seeing the stars. Sitting there on the dock, watching the satelites, the rising moon & the stars I saw the magic again — the magic of sitting in the quiet with the far off sound of laughter over water and the beauty of light from far away places.