oooooh, that smell

I was going through the security checkpoint at the Hennepin County Government Center yesterday when I caught a noseful of 'body stank.' It was a powerful odor. Best described as obese-construction-worker-making-gravy-in-the-tropical-sun smell. In front of me in line was a young man wearing a dark hoodie pulled over his head. The security guard eyed him suspiciously and asked him why he was wearing a full sweatshirt on a 90+ degree day with a 70 degree dewpoint which, in my opinion, made the temperature actually feel hotter than Satan's bunghole.

Dude, sounding like Chester of Sifl and Olly fame, says, "I'm doing that Atkins thing. Heh, heh. Trying to sweat it out, you know."

Mind you, homeboy was skinny as a beanpole. He went through the metal detector without a bleep. So luckily, the most lethal thing he was carrying today, was the stank.

Ramp rage revisited

A bloggable moment from Saturday night:

Me and my special sweet baby M went for dinner in downtown Minneapolis. By the way, the food was great - particularly the lamb chops. Anyway, I'd parked in a nearby ramp (U.S. Bankcorp) that I found out later didn't have an after hours attendant. But it had one of those machines to stick your ticket in and pay.



Unfortunately, this machine didn't have a credit card slot. Only room for cash and below it a coin return receptacle. So what happens when I stick in my 20 dollar bill to pay for my four dollar fee? Like a Vegas slot machine it spits out 64 quarters.

WTF?

Oh, Suzy Q

"Oh Suzy Q/baby I love you/Suzy Q..."

No, not talking about Suzy Quattro. Talking about the tasty snack treat that I've loved since childhood. Some say the Twinkie is the best thing to come out of the Hostess laboratories - er kitchens, but me, I'm hooked on the Q.

I know that just a few skyway jumps away are pastries that are actually baked in ovens, not created in test tubes. But there's something about the firm little rectangular chocolate nerf cakes - and the goo, man, the goo.

Oh yeah.

"Oh Suzy Q/baby I love you/Suzy Q..."

You want coffee with that?

A brief salute to the hardest working, under-appreciated members of the downtown workforce:

The coffee jockeys.

These are the people who without batting nary an eyelash, nor roll of eye, will take an order for a “large, carmel, double-vanilla whip, latte -- with a hazelnut flavor shot. And can you make sure the milk is heated to 103.5 degrees?”

They do so without ever once reaching over the counter to bitch-slap a customer, even those who request a beverage that takes longer to order, than it does to actually make.

I salute you coffee jockey for your infinite patience and restraint.

Overheard this...

...request at my favorite skyway sushi joint, asked by an obvious sushi newbie:
"I'll have the COOKED shrimp tempura, please."

Ramp Rage

One of the other sometimes frustrating realities of working downtown is parking in a ramp. I’m extremely fortunate that my employer pays 100 percent of my parking – which ain’t cheap – but daily parking in a ramp is one of the small pinpricks that contributes to the overall deflation of the soul.

The other day I got stuck behind a woman driving a Lincoln Navigator. This SUV has the turning radius of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Indeed, she couldn’t get close enough to the ticket-dispenser, so she had to open the door and dangle one of her legs out to grab the ticket.

As she crept forward at a snails pace, the roof of her tank just barely missed the concrete ceiling beams of the ramp. The Northstar ramp is an obstacle course of a ramp and I held my breath watching the behemoth on wheels skim past the parked cars as it slowly edged around the tight corners.

I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to get to work. I was more looking forward to getting at my morning coffee fix. So I was a bit anxious. My anxiety grew as the monument on wheels in front of me lumbered around corner after corner. Fed up, I angrily turned into the first nook of a space that I could find. Part of my car came to rest just over the yellow line that separates the parking spaces. No big deal. I see many cars parked like this everyday. Upon my return to my car at the end of the day, I’ve got a note stuck in my door from ramp management scolding me for parking in ‘two spaces’ at once.

Bastards…

Beans: An appreciation

(Mecca and Beans just back from a trip to the vet)

I first met Beans on the day I returned from a grueling canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. I'd emerged from the bathroom after a long-anticipated hot shower and was intercepted by this barking 25 lb dog. I had no warning that we'd be getting a dog, although Mecca had always talked about how much she wanted one. I like dogs, so I said, 'sure, no problem.' While I was off paddling and portaging, Mecca travelled to the Humane Society and found Beans. The dog was left at the humane society because her previous owner -- an old lady -- had died.

At first, Beans treated me like a stranger. She growled and barked as I approached my wife to give her a hug and kiss. And until the day she died, Beans continued to express disgruntlement at each display of affection between me and Mecca.

It didn't take Beans long to warm up to me, and we hit it off just swimmingly. We often enjoyed the same activities together, mainly lying on the couch with the TV on and napping. She also liked chasing our two cats around the house and would sometimes playfully head-butt our little cat Baci.

Like many dogs, Beans was afraid of thunderstorms and firecrackers. But she also feared the sound of flatulence. And if the offending noise came from her, Beans would try to run away from her own butt.

In 2006, at the age of 9, Beans was diagnosed with diabetes. So we began giving her twice daily insulin shots. Despite a little flinching every now again, Beans was a trooper and accepted her medicine. A few months after that, I noticed her having a harder time than usual negotiating the back stairway. She kept bumping into things. And to my horror, realized that Beans had gone blind.



We rushed her to the emergency vet who told us that indeed Beans' slowly growing cataracts had rapidly grown overnight. Our little dog could no longer see. But that didn't stop the Beans. Her energy, her appetite and her enthusiasm for life were unbowed.

She would maintain that attitude through several more bouts of illness and (expensive) trips to the vet. But on June 1, 2007 the sickness returned and knocked her down for the last time. She went peacefully at the hands of a skilled veterinarian who assured us that putting her to rest was the best thing for her. And we knew it. The fight had gone from her eyes. Mecca held Beans as the doctor applied the lethal overdose of anesthetic. I held Mecca. We both sobbed as we felt the life finally slip away from our little dog.

Over the five years we had Beans, we spent thousands of dollars on her. Maybe as much as 10 grand. If you would have told me - before we got her - that I would spend that much money on a dog, I wouldn't have believed it. But she wasn't just a dog. Beans was a member of the family. She was our baby. And we miss her so much.