Memorial Weekend In Pictures

I am THOR! I shall crush you like a little bug!

Aimee & I in Duluth. This is the scenic overlook but it was a little foggy on Saturday, so we got a scenic view of...fog.

Upper Gooseberry falls. This place was packed on Saturday.

Laynie going for a ride on the Daddy rollercoaster.

Lower Gooseberry falls.

I'm not sure of the name of these falls but they were just off of hwy 61 past the light house.

The Beaver House. It's just a cool building in Grand Marais.

mmm...KOA pancake & biscuits and gravy breakfast!

1984 Capcon Bowling! I'm in heaven now!

I see Laynie!!

The swing bridge in Jay Cooke State park

Laynie and I in Duluth waiting to see some boats. Finally a damn boat!
Aimee taking a picture of me taking a picture.
Aimee & I in Jay Cooke State Park.

Random Picture

I had to search deep into the archives for this beauty. This is from the UMD hockey weekend back in Nov. 2003. Dozer decided to take a nap, so us being guys, we had to take his picture. See that teddy bear? Yeah I photochopped that bad boy in there. Looks real eh? Dozer was wondering where we got the bear from when he first saw the picture.


Edit: By popular request from Dozer here is the photochop of him and a lady. The only problem is it looks like the chick has no legs.

Cloquet

Nothing much new. Aimee and I are just getting ready for this weekend. We are going up to the Cloquet KOA campground for Memorial weekend. Most of the weekend will consist of exercising our biceps doing beer curls. One of the days we are up there Aimee and I are going to drive up the north shore. I have lived in this state for close to 20 years and have only been up hwy 61 twice. I also want to check out Gunflint Pines Resort. Mel & Corey have been there a couple times and they always say it is a great place to camp. Other than that we will be enjoying some R&R.

Our 3rd wedding anniversary is this Thursday the 25th. We are going to Ruth's Chris steak house in Minneapolis. It's starting to turn into a tradition of us going there on our anniversary. The food is so damn good that you have to save it for a special occasion.


Urban Dictionary Word'O'Day
1.Y-boy
n. "Yeshiva boy." These are the only guys who have a chance with O-girls, to the dismay of many.
"If only I could be a Y-boy for just one day. That would be the sweetest thing of all..."

-MikeyB

Laugh

Check out this video of Laynie laughing. I'm telling ya, damn cutest kid ever!!

(not for dial up)
The Laynie Laugh

The Raconteurs

Steady As She Goes and hopefully will continue to go! Jack White of The White Stripes and friend singer/songwriter Brendan Benson team up to create a new band. It all started with the song Steady As She Goes and from there the rest as they would say was history. Add bassist Jack Lawrence & the drums of Patrick Keeler both from The Greenhornes and you have yourself The Raconteurs. The Raconteurs debut album Broken Boy Soldier has been creating quite the buzz for sometime. With the release of a 7" single of Steady As She Goes & Store Bought Bones it make for an even bigger buzz for their album debut.

After listening to the album roughly 10 times now, I really enjoy it. With the mixture of Jack White & Brendan Benson's voices, it brings balance to the album. This is one of those albums that you can listen all the way through and all the songs do NOT sound the same. They have a White Stripes, Brendan Benson & Greenhornes sound (no surprise) all wrapped up into juicy music burrito (I would like some seconds of that!). Hands has to be one of my favorite songs although there are many great songs on this album. The only disappointment is having 10 tracks. I can't tell you how much I hate it when bands only release an album with 10 or less tracks! For the White Stripes fans out there, this album will defiantly quench your thrust for the time being until a new White Stripes album is released.

I will have to give this album 5 out of 5 Snorks!!

Little Bummed

I'm a little bummed out that I couldn't go up north for paintball this weekend. We (P.L. Gang) go up every spring and fall to Andy's land in Leader, MN to play paintball and camp. I don't play that much paintball, it's just all about going up and hanging out with friends, camping, relaxing and drinking some alcoholic beverages. I guess there is always fall. Here are some pictures from years past, link.

Aimee and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow. I thought it would be a good idea to get a new pair of pants, shirt and tie for the event. I thought wrong. I tried on 6 pairs of pants and everyone of them I felt like my thighs were going to burst out of the pants. WTF do they only make these pants for people that are 170 lbs? I felt like cousin Eddie from National Lampoon Vacation in these pants. I ended up leaving Kohl's with a shirt and new tie. I'll just wear them with my khakis.

Saturday is Laynie's big birthday bash at Suzie & Jason's crib. I think they are having a bonfire afterwards. BTW on the subject of bonfires and camping, check out this chair I found at REI. I tested this sucka' out and it would make an AWESOME camping drinkin' chair. They are oh so comfortable. It's like sitting on a beer drinking thrown. "Get me a beer now! I am the KING, bitch! oh sorry honey...please get me a beer from the cooler when you get a chance." You see the two can holders? Yeah baby, double fistin'!


Urban Dictionary Word'O'Day
1.R'lyeh (ruh-LIE-uh)
The sunken city inhabitted by Cthulhu and his minions. The city used to be on an island above the ocean but the stars shifted and sunk the city beneath the sea. Cthulhu is trapped there today, dead but dreaming. When the stars are right the city will rise again.
"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

-MikeyB

Laynie

Isn't she the cutest dang kid eva'?! Suzie & Jason sent us a link to her 1 year old pictures. I did some photochoppin' so you can check out some pictures without having to log into the photography site. Silly copyrights.

Back to work

Why can't people take hints? I have my head phones on and yet people have to come up to me and turn into chatty Cathy. GO AWAY!! I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU!! One thing I hate about going on vacation is coming back to work and everyone individually comes up to you asking about your vacation. The first couple people you talk to you end up telling them the play by play of every second of your trip. By the time that 8th person asks you end up just saying, "Yeah it was fun". I'm just in one of those moods where I do not want to be bothered. I just want to listen to my iPod in peace and be able to listen to 1 song without being interrupted.

p.s. WHY HAVEN'T MY PARENTS SENT ME A BIRTHDAY CARD YET?!?! wtf?

ugh
-MikeyB

Random Picture

Links (photos)
Guns N' Roses over the years
The 'Boss' over the year
Hugh Hefner over the years

Urban Dictionary Word'O'Day
1. t'aint right
1) That is not proper behavior.
yo! that girl's saggy titties are flapping out of her grungy-ass tank top. T'aint right.

Laynie's First Birthday

After Jason and I left on Saturday from fishing we headed down to the Otsego Holiday Inn to meet up with Aimee's parents, Suzie and her sister & mom to celerbrate Laynie's first birthday. This Holiday Inn is the shiznit because it has an indoor water park. Don't forget all you parents out there, keep your kids on leashes. I would have liked to bust some kiddie skulls that day because moron parents didn't know what there kids were doing. But anyways back to Laynie's first birthday day :)

We arrived around 4pm and settled in. We went to Suzie & Jason's room to sing happy birthday to Laynie and open up gifts. Laynie had a cup cake for her first birthday. She looked at the cup cake knowing it was food but couldn't quite figure out how to put the whole thing in her mouth. In her frustration she started to cry. Suzie broke up the cupcake into pieces and then those tears turned into happiness. She was gobbling that cup cake right down with a few milk breaks. Next weekend will be Laynie's big birthday party where we hope she becomes miss piggy on the cake.

Thanks again to Jason for driving me around and Mike & Cindi for driving me home and letting me crash in their room.

-MikeyB

Fishing Opener

I got back from Fishing opener a little early due to the weather. Here's a little recap of the trip.

Thursday
Jason picked me up at 4:15 am to meet up with his father-in-law Vern in Prior Lake so we can follow each other up to Lake Winnibigoshish (lake Winnie). Vern has beening going up for fishing opener at lake Winnie for 30+ years. It is a long tradition in their family, this would be my first year. After meeting up with Vern we headed north and met up with another 6 guys in Princeton, MN. The weather was pretty wet and cold in the cities. We arrived around 11am at lake Winnie where we will need to boat to the primitive camp sites that are located on the shore of lake in the Chippewa National Forest. From the boat launch to the camp site it was only a 5 minute boat ride. We had three boats that day and filled them all on the first trip with gear and 6 people, leaving Jason and I behind to wait for a boat to come back. That's coo', we just cracked open a Coors Light for the time being. After a short wait Vern came back for us and we loaded our gear and headed out to camp, by this time the temperture was around 55 degrees and sunny. After setting up camp for an hour we headed into the woods to look for some fire wood. It seemed to be picked through pretty good. All the trees that were down were due to beavers which means the trees were pretty fresh and too wet. We collected as much fire wood as we could but next year we will need to bring in some bundles of wood. We cracked open some beers and started dinner which was chicken breasts and hashbrowns. I hit the hay pretty early because I was tired as all hell from getting up at 3:30am.

Friday
We all woke up to 35 degree weather and rain. Oh the joy! All of the weather websites and even the local radio station said that there was a 30% chance of rain. That 30% chance turned into a 100% change and it rained all day long. I couldn't stand the 40 degree weather so I stayed in my tent with the heater running for 5 hours napping and praying for sun. My stomach was starting to hurt and I realized I needed to go number 2. One problem, it was still raining. At these primitive camp sites there is no bathrooms, just a wooden box toilet in the woods. I gave in and had to work fast as it was raining when I had to go. I decided then that I was going to go back early with Jason on Saturday afternoon. It was dinner time again, we had some pork chops and hashbrowns again and then everyone went to bed to rest up before heading out at midnight for opener.

Saturday
12:00 midnight we headed out onto the lake. The rain stopped but now there is a light snow mist but atleast the wind died down to just about nothing which made it almost comfortable. Jason & I went with Jerry in his boat and we just went 50 yards from camp. I caught 3 walleye, Jason caught 2 rock bass and Jerry caught 2 walleye. We were only able to keep 1 walleye because 2 were in the slot limit and 2 were too small. Still not that bad for only being out for 2 hours. Now it's back to bed we go. Once again we wake up to rain but not as bad as Friday, it was a little bit warmer. I looked out at the lake and there were 40+ boats on the lake. We had some scrambled eggs and hashbrowns (think those guys could live on hashbrowns) and then went out for some last minute fishing before we leave. Jerry and I both caught small northerns as we trolled for walleye. Jason and I headed out at noon to head down to the Holiday Inn in Otsego for Laynie's first birthday (I'll post more about that).

Wrap up
All in all it was a fun time. Yeah the weather sucked but we managed to make the best of it all. I plan on going again next year and I think we will go Thursday thru Sunday. I did learn to be prepared for anything! (all of the pictures were taken on Thursday. I did not want to get the camera wet)

-MikeyB

B-Day Plans

The Fam-damily are meeting up tonight at Copper Bleu in Lakeville for a nice B-day dinner in my honor. Copper Bleu has a really cool atmosphere, kind of like something you would find downtown but for some reason it's in Lakeville. If you get a chance to go there I strongly recommend the Three Cheese Burger (that's 3 layers of cheese not 3 burgers).

This weekend is fishing opener and a bunch of guys, most I don't really know, are heading up to Lake Winnibigosh. From what I have heard, because I have never gone, they boat out to a point on the lake where there are some primitive camping sites and stay there Thursday through Monday. Primitive which means no running water, no bathrooms, no electric, basically you have a tent, sleeping bag and a fire to keep you warm. It should be a lot of fun. I'll take a bunch of pictures to share when I get back. It's hard to tell what the weather is going to be like because Wunderground.com says one thing and Weather.com says another so it is going to be 45-60* degrees during the day, 30-45* degrees at night and 20-40% chance of rain on a couple days. I guess I will have to plan for the worst so I will be brings all warm clothes & some rain/wind proof gear.


Urban Dictionary Word'O'Day
1. d-bag
short for douche bag, someone who is socially disfunctional in some way. generally an ass hole, some one who does something shady and low to someone else

"hey mal talk to jason lately?"
"no he never called me back"
"what a d bag"

-MikeyB

Day of birth

Happy birth day to me...
Happy birth day to me...
(blows out candles)

fo' shizzeth thy nizzeth
(what Snoop Dogg would say if he were Jesus)

-MikeyB

Hi, I'm Moron

This David Blaine stunt was one of the worst ideas in the history of man (other than making the movie Gigli). This guy is a moron for even doing this type of shit. Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, hmmm I think I'm going to submerge myself in salt water for 7 days just for kicks. BUT WAIT!! I think I will also hold my breath for 9 minutes! What Mr.Doctor? This could cause liver damage & the skin to peel off my hands? Whatever, lets do it! MORON!! Also everyone stop calling this guy an illusionist! He's not a fawking illusionist! He's a no talent assclown! If he was an illusionist he would be sitting at the local Starbucks drinking an espresso café latte caramel mocha vanilla dessert while the rest of us human sheep (baa...baaa...) are watching his fish bowl wondering, "How'd he do that?". Now that is an illusion Mr.Blaine. Chew on that, enjoy it, roll it around in your mouth if you want to.

Links
Row Row Row Your Boat
$1,200 Beer - I bet it was Coors Light
New Guns N' Roses album in Fall - That's what they said 10 years ago!

Fo' Shoozie My Snoozie
-MikeyB

Marmot

Aimee and I went to Gander Mountain yesterday and they were running a 50% off lowest ticketed clearance price sale. I picked up a $160 Marmot Mercury jacket for $49.99!!! It's Wind resistant, water repellent and breathable! That is a hell of a deal. I think the salesman said the sale was ending today so if you get a chance head down to your local Gander Mountain store.

Rock

I was just surfing the interweb this morning and saw this article on Mount St. Helens. It appears that there is a rock formation that is growing 4-5 ft a day out of the crater. I'm no expert but if you live around Mount St. Helens you might want to get the fawk out. I've watched the Discovery Channel, that shit is going to blow! OK I honestly don't know what it's going to do but it has to be building some uber pressure under that rock to be able to move it 4-5 ft a day. Scientists expect the volcano will rebuild its conical peak that was obliterated in the May 18, 1980 eruption that left 57 people dead.








Links
Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam
Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
ValcanoWorld - Even has the Valcano of the Week
Valcanoes.com - Get links to volcanoes around the world

fo' rozzle my nozzle
-MikeyB

Aimee's Anniversary Gift

I got off early from work today and headed down to the Burnsville Best Buy because they were showing 3 dishwasher units on hand. I get there and 1 is the display, which I knew, but they had 2 open box units. It's not worth it for me to get an open box since I get it at employee price so I’ll have to go to the warehouse in Bloomington to pick up a new one but first I have to take out the old one. I ordered the new dishwasher then drove home to figure out how to take the old dishwasher out. It was pretty easy, turn off the water, disconnect the water line, disconnect the disposal line, unplug it and out she came. I loaded her up on my hitch rack and I was off to Bloomington. I get there, pick the new dishwasher and it's 1pm by the time I leave. I wanted to get this thing installed before Aimee got home which I guessed around 3pm. I rushed home and I thought I wouldn't be able to install it in time but I got it in and running by 2:30pm. Aimee was pretty surprised by it. She has been complaining about our old crappy GE dishwasher for the past year.

Here are some pics and a link to it on Bestbuy.com

Bonus BABY!

Yay! I got my annual bonus today and guess what I get to do with it? Pay off bills! WhOOHoo!! I also get to purchase Aimee's big wedding anniversary gift too! I would tell you but then I would have to kill you and I don't want your death on my mind ;) , plus Aimee reads this blog too so she would find out. I will give everyone one clue, it's bigger than a bread box. Anyways I should be picking it up tonight as long as it is instock.

Fishing opener is coming up and I need to get ready. I have to respool all my reels with some new line before I leave for Lake Winnie. I just picked up Suck My Wake (boat) from winter storage (aka Rich's backyard) yesterday and fired her right up. The engine sounded great but I might want to get some new gas, she was smokin' pretty good but that is to be expected when it takes 50:1 mixture of oil & gas.

Nothing much really going on this weekend. Aimee is babysitting Laynie (our niece) tonight & I'll be stopping by when I get off work. I'll have to post up a picture of her, she is just the cutest damn kid you'll ever see! She turns 1 next week (13th).

Links
Odd News Photos
Famous Homes From Above
Top 5 Creative Notebook Mods

fo' shacka my cracka
-Mikeyb

Bikey

I was alone for last nights ride. After our beautiful cold & rainy weather for the past week I needed to get back on the bike again. I did 15 miles on Tuesday but I needed to hit 30 again last night. I decided to go with the figure 8 route, I don't feel like explaining it in detail so just look a the pretty picture I have supplied. The wind was HAULING ASS out of the west and also mind you I am biking in farm land country. I had to lean to into the wind when I was going north & south so I would not fall over. I almost bit the dust when I was coming out of Farmington and a semi truck pasted me while I was on the shoulder. After the first loop around Farmington I was ready to say fawk it and just go home but when I got to Pilot Knob I figured what the hell, I got this far why not finish. Heading west on hwy 50 had to be the worst, I was maybe going 7-8 mph. I get to the Ford dealership on the corner of 50 & Cedar and their American flags looked like they were going to rip off the poles. I ended up doing 31 miles in about 2hrs, 10-15minutes, avg speed was around 13.8mph. All in all is was a good ride and I am glad I finished it.

Links
Chernobyl
Star Wars released...again
Johnny Cash's Final Song

fo' shizzeth thy nizzeth
-MikeyB

Random Picture

Corey showing that pony who's boss

(fall paintball 04')