Return of the U-Turn

For the first four years we lived in Wisconsin, I would drop Michelle off at work, and make a u-turn at the next intersection to make my journey home to begin my day of work. Because there was no No U-turn sign at the intersection, I never thought twice about it until about two years ago when I was pulled over for making the u-turn. The officer asked if I knew why he pulled me over, and frankly I had no idea. I looked back at the intersection, but didn't see a No U-turn sign.

When he told me I made an illegal u-turn, I was confused. I commented that there was no sign stating it wasn't permitted. That was when I learned that Wisconsin had a law forbidding u-turns in any controlled intersection, regardless of whether or not there is a sign there. When I asked how would I know about this law, he asked "How do you know to stop at a red light." My first thought was that stopping at red lights is the same in every state, but I kept that thought to myself. He reasoned that by having a Wisconsin license, I should be aware of Wisconsin driving laws. Not much to argue about there, so I paid my fine.

As of the beginning of the year, though, there is no longer a law against u-turns in controlled intersections unless otherwise marked. This morning, it shaved a couple minutes of my morning commute. I need to get used to it again, but it is a good thing.

Dangerous Drivers

I'm tired of getting frustrated at drivers who do crazy things on the road that endanger themselves and everyone around them. Road rage sets in, and I feel inclined to do stupid things back, like speeding up to prevent someone from passing on the right. These people seem to feel they are more entitled to the road than everyone else. Rather than engage in such practices, I've decided to instead make a list.

When I see a dangerous driver, I will add them to the list. It will be an exercise in patience and memory. Perhaps it will show some recurring offenders. Maybe it will help others avoid these dangerous drivers.

There can be a fine line between aggressive driving and dangerous. The examples below are those I subjectively feel have been excessive. Unfortunately, it seems to happen a lot.

19 January 2010 - 8 am

Red Hyundai Elantra - Wisconsin

Heading north on 60th St. in Milwaukee, passing the line of cars going straight from the right turn lane

20 January 2010 - 7:34 am

Green Plymouth Voyager - Wisconsin

Heading south on 60th in Milwaukee, didn't slow down for traffic lights and passed all traffic going straight through the light at the intersections with North Ave. and Lloyd St. This van barely slowed down when the light was red and accelerated hard to get ahead of cars moving in the same direction at the intersections.

21 January 2010 - 7:40 am

White Ford Ranger - Wisconsin

Heading east on Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee. Passed all traffic from the right turn lane at the intersection with 27th St. and quickly cut off everyone by moving to the far left lane. This move got the driver nowhere, as we passed him later on down the road when he had to stop at a light that turned red, and we arrived at it just as it turned green.

Do you come across dangerous drivers? Don't get mad and do something rash. Remember what they did and let people know to watch out for these losers.

Me, Myself, and I

Myself thinks it is strange that people want to add syllables when they talk or write. If yourself doesn't believe myself, take a listen the next time yourself and your colleagues are in a meeting.

Reads ridiculously, no? Over the past several years, there has been a 'self pandemic.' It used to be that every once in a while you would hear someone misuse a reflexive pronoun, but it seems to have become more and more common. In fact, this issue is creeping into use more and more frequently, and I find it distracting.

I've seen it in some comic books I've read recently, but also in movies. Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian did it once. I hear it in conference calls for work quite frequently: "Myself and Joe will..." or "we will rely on yourself and Mary to follow through..."

Last night, Michelle and I watched Inglorious Basterds, and while the movie itself was entertaining, I was disheartened to see no fewer than five cases of reflexive pronoun misuse in the subtitle translations.

I hat to be a stickler, but the reflexive only makes sense when the subject of the sentence matches. I can do something for myself, you can do something for yourself, but I cannot do something for yourself. I'd rather see people confuse I and me. When you've got a group of people, take out the others to figure out which pronoun to use. There are plenty of resources out there. Even wikipedia has a decent simple write up, so I'm not going to give a tutorial.

I just hope that people will slow down and stop adding extra syllables. :)

Pain is good, right?

I thought I was in reasonably good shape. I mean, I run half-marathons in reasonable time (sub-two hours), so how out of shape could I be?

Well, last week I started the P90X system to try to get my weight down a bit and to work my muscles more than what I get from just running. I'm off to a decent start, but I've certainly learned that I no longer have any upper body or core strength (It has been a long 16 years since I did gymnastics in college). After a week of the classic p90x routine, I am sore. Today's workout was Chest and Back with "Ab Ripper X" (which should have been called "Ass Kicker X"). Some of the push ups and pull ups really did me in, but where I really struggled today was with some of the core exercises, particularly where I needed to raise my upper body off the ground.

I've been a bit sore over the past week, but it is a good pain. Overall, I feel energized and good. I've been sitting more upright and am looking forward to seeing progress over the next few weeks.

New Zealand and Australia trip 2009 - Day 1

I had been hoping to get around to this a little sooner, but I thought I would chronicle a bit of the trip Michelle and I took to New Zealand and Australia to celebrate our tenth anniversary. To make it more easy to write up (and read!), I thought I would break it into the smaller chunks of days.

We left home on the morning of November 14 and spent a lot of time on planes and in airports before arriving. We did have a nice (though abbreviated thanks to traffic) visit with our friend Alfred Valrie at The Encounter Restaurant while on our layover in LA.

After a long 13 hour flight from LA to Auckland, NZ, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise from the plane. Landing in Auckland, you feel as though you are landing on water.

Customs wasn't a big deal. We were a little concerned at first because the declaration form asks if you are transporting nuts, and we had some packaged Planters nuts that we brought to have with us when hiking or walking around. To declare or not to declare? The form stated "raw" nuts, but we opted not to take any chances. It turned out that they were not concerned with the nuts once we told them they were packaged, but they were concerned with our hiking boots, which were not one of the questions on the declaration form.

The shuttle ride to the hotel (Rydges Auckland) was uneventful, though we were not able to sit together for a good portion of it. I ended up sitting next to a marine biologist from Falmouth, MA. We talked a little about the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where he worked (and I used to go on school field trips as a kid).

While I was checking into the hotel, Michelle ended up speaking with a couple who was just finishing their trip around Australia and New Zealand. They claimed to have only had two good meals on their entire trip and told us we needed to pick up the book "Visit Australia and DIE."

After getting settled and cleaning up, we struck out to get some lunch and see the the Auckland Domain, which is home to the Auckland Museum and the Winter Garden. On the way to find the little cafe where we had lunch, we passed the Santa Claus statue at Whitcoulls bookstore, but his face was covered up. Apparently they make a big ceremony of revealing the face, which winks at passers-by.

We continued making our way to the Auckland Domain through Albert Park, which is kind of like "the Green" for the University of Auckland. When we arrived at the Domain, we took "Lover's Walk" from the Auckland Bowling Club up to the Winter Garden and Auckland Museum. At the Winter Gardens we saw some beautiful flowers and a guy burning weeds from between the rocks with a big blowtorch.

We spent some time at the museum, where we learned a bit about Maori culture and saw Sir Edmund Hillary's ice axe. The traveling and time change started to set in though, and we hit a wall so we made our way back to the hotel by way of the Centennial Walk and took a nap.

In the evening, we found a good Indian restaurant and wandered around the waterfront. For the first time on the trip, we felt the person waiting on us at the restaurant thought we didn't order enough food (though what we did get was more than enough). It wasn't like we could take leftovers with us. While we were there, the couple who took the table next to us ordered a ton of food. Not sure if we missed something there, but it happened several other times at some of the Asian restaurants at which we dined.

We didn't stay up too late, as we had an early morning departure for Waitomo and Rotorua.

See pictures from this and other days of our trip here.

Starving Artist Show 2009

Over the weekend, Michelle and I went to our first "Starving Artist Show" at nearby Mt. Mary College. The event takes place annually and has lots of great artists selling their work at a maximum price of $100 per piece.

We found some art that we really liked, and I thought I would show it off a little here.

The first piece we got is a watercolor on watercolor canvas by Peggy Engsberg Furlin from Lake Mills, WI. She had some beautiful work and we had a really difficult time selecting which piece to buy. You can see more of her work at her website. We really liked her style. I took the picture of the piece on our stairs, because we have yet to determine where we want to hang it.

The second piece we picked up is a limited edition print by artist Kae Taylor from Madison. We were first attracted to her stand by the batik work on display, but we ended up deciding on this work called "Autumn Celebration," which contains three prints: Autumn Oak, Autumn Ginkgo, and Autumn Maple. As with the first art work, we are deciding exactly where we want to hang the piece.

The next stop was for some pottery. There were lots of pottery artist present at the show with some beautiful work, but we settled on some bowls by Lisa Weber, an artist from Oak Creek, WI. Unfortunately neither she nor Kae Taylor have web sites so you can see other work by these artists. While we were at Lisa Weber's booth, she commented on the watercolor we purchased from Peggy Engsberg Furlin. Apparently they used to live close to each other. Small artist world. :)

Our last purchase of the day (that I will describe here, because other items are going to be gifts), was from an artist we discovered through a PBS auction at a home and garden show earlier this year. We ordered a piece from Dick Cooley for Michelle's Dad as a gift. He makes really cool sculptures using spark plugs as people and other various items to depict them in various activities. My father-in-law described it well when he let us know he received it:

"Got the package from you guys yesterday but I'm a bit confused, it was full of just a bunch of old junk parts.

"Lets see there is a old furniture caster, bottom half of a muffler clamp, 2 wood screws, an allen wrench, 2 kitchen knives, a teaspoon, 2 sockets, a couple of gears, a washer or two, 2 spark plugs and some other assorted odds and ends.

"Of course all these junk parts are put together in a really neat way."

His sculpture was of an adult and child on a red tractor.

We had a hard time deciding between the piano player or the baseball players and opted for the baseball players (a batter hitting a ball with a catcher crouched behind the plate. Unfortunately, our little point and shoot camera couldn't focus on the sculpture very well, so it is a little blurry. Maybe we will retake the shot when our new camera arrives later this week.

Overall the show was fun. Certainly not as large as the art fairs we've gone to in Sunapee, NH or Ann Arbor, MI, but very good nonetheless. I think we'll go again.

Digital magazines

I received my latest issue of Smithsonian magazine today, and it had an outer cover with the big label "Go green" to promote their new option to receive your subscription digitally. I'm all for saving a tree, so I thought I would investigate a little at http://www.smithsonian.com/godigital, where they have posted the August issue as a sample.

The service is provided through a company called Zinio, and let me start off with some positives: The quality is excellent. The text and the images are very clear, and presented just as the magazine is. I find it looks particularly nice on a good, big, widescreen monitor.

The ability to search is a very nice capability. I also like that they have linked the table of contents to go right to an article.

I won't get into some of the nitty picky points on the interface though, because there is a serious deal breaker for me when it comes to magazines: I don't read them at my desk.

I read magazines when I travel and don't want to turn on my laptop. I read magazines in bed before turning out the light. Yes, I read magazines in the bathroom. In none of these places do I have a computer. I might be inclined in some of these locations to read on my iPhone (or other type of electronic reader), but until they can get around the digital copy being read on other mediums, it is just going to have to be paper for me.

My apologies to the environment, but for now, make mine paper.