129 thoughts on “January 25, 2013: Arrival”

  2. NOLA Hornets to be NOLA Pelicans: Good!
    NOLA Pelicans colors to be Red, Blue, and Old Gold: Stupid!
    I think the Vikings, Packers, and Athletics are the only non blue, red, or blue & red teams left.

            1. purple is just blue + red. Green is just blue + yellow

              [comeback: orange is just red + yellow, you twit!]

          2. Ravens: Team colors, Purple, Black, Metallic Gold, White
            Bengals: 2012 through present: Black, Brilliant Orange, White
            Browns: 2010 through present: Brown, Orange, White
            Jets: 2002 through present: Hunter Green, White
            Raiders: 2006 through present: Silver, Black, White
            Eagles: 2012 through present: Midnight Green, Black, Charcoal, Silver, White
            Steelers: 2012 through present: Black, Gold, White

      2. After being convinced that the Yankees caps are dark blue, I think the Sox are also just really, really dark blue.
        Plus, their throwbacks last year were Red, this year Red & Blue.
        And none of us have mentioned the Hyperboles yet.

        (Almost went with Red, Blue, or Black)

              1. Old me would have said: "Which is a shade of [off-]black."
                But I've been beaten on this, I concede.

    2. They're even drab red and blue and gold. Like every other team (Twins included). True primary red and blue would be at least a bit different than every other team everywhere.

  3. In case anyone was wondering, my pace for funerals has not slowed with the coming of the new year. Saturday I will have my third funeral in January. Since June 22, I have averaged a funeral every twelve days. I don't mean this to come off as whining, because funerals are a very important part of the job, and it can be very satisfying to feel one has helped people through a difficult time. Still, when you go to church growth seminars and they tell you all the things you need to do to grow the church and spread the gospel, they somehow never say, "Oh, and by the way, make sure you allow time to prepare for and preside at a funeral every other week."

    1. Try to think about it like this - many people never go to church except for the "big" holidays, weddings and funerals. You could very well be the only preacher that many people get exposed to, even if only for one grave-side service thus fulfilling your mandate to grow the church & spread the gospel.

      Also, death is a part of life, though not an easy one. A really good man of the cloth can be particularly comforting so, I'd say, your presence is particularly comforting.

      1. Oh, I know all that. As I said, it's an important part of the job, and can be a very satisfying one. Still, I wouldn't mind going a few weeks without a funeral every once in a while.

        1. btw, meant to ask you if you saw Adam Hamilton's sermon at the inauguration? He's a Methodist minister from COR in KC, and it was quite well done. I've met him, and he's a great guy.

          1. I did not see it. Hamilton has a great reputation, and a lot of my friends swear by him. I assume he did a good job, but at the same time, I haven't heard anything that he said quoted anywhere.

              2. I should make clear that my not watching it has nothing to do with any dislike or disrespect toward Adam Hamilton. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I have a great deal of respect for what he's done at Church of the Resurrection.

                I am a little uncomfortable, though, with the God-like status Hamilton seems to be accorded, at least within my conference. Church of the Resurrection is constantly being held up to us as this shining example of what a church should be, an example we should try to copy. Certainly there are things we can learn, but taking a program designed for suburban Kansas City and dropping it into rural South Dakota won't work, any more than taking a program designed for rural South Dakota would work in suburban Kansas City. Each of us has to find our own way, taking into account who we are and who the people are we live among and are trying to reach. I suspect Hamilton knows this, but a lot of people in my conference don't seem to.

                1. I guess we don't get that here. He was in seminary with our former lead pastor, so while we might have a lot of admiration for what he's done, that's about it.

                  This was just a great excuse to hijack a thread and hit both forbidden areas 😉

        2. I didn't figure any of that was news, but felt compelled to respond knowing how draining one funeral can be & with no idea how multiple funerals per month could be anything but challenging.

          1. The biggest challenge, other than just the time element, is finding a way to make each one special. I start writing a message, and I think, "But that's pretty much the same thing I said about so-and-so three weeks ago." That's disappointing to me, because each a) I never want something as important as a funeral to start to feel routine and b) each person's life is unique, and I don't want to just do the same thing I've done before. Also, in a town this size, there are probably a lot of people there who went to so-and-so's funeral three weeks ago, and will remember that I said pretty much the same thing at that funeral. On the other hand, there are only so many things you can say, and only so many themes you can hit. It can make it hard sometimes, especially when it's someone you didn't know very well and you have to rely on family and friends to tell you about them.

            1. Jeff A, have you by any chance read Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead (or the last part of Ender's Game, where the Speaker concept begins)??

                1. He's a practicing Mormon, if that matters. I don't think that that specific theology weighs much in his writing, at least in the Ender books. But the Speaker concept is both interesting, and quite consistent with what you do in the funeral process.

                  2. He's a practicing Mormon, if that matters.

                    It doesn't, at least not to me. If his books are good, then they're good. If they're not, then they're not. When I'm reading a book, that's really all I care about.

        3. Do you have any minister friends who you can debrief with about it? I know the WGOM helps, but sometimes having someone who knows exactly what you're going through can be helpful. I'm sure you know this, too. Just wondering.

          1. Well, yes and no. I have quite a few pastor friends, but a) again, I don't want to come off as a whiner, because any pastor who's worthy of the title is very busy and has lots of things to do, and b) what usually happens when you bring something like this up is that it becomes an exchange of war stories, which I find neither interesting nor helpful.

            Don't worry, I appreciate everyone's concern, but I'll come through this and I'll be fine. It gets frustrating, because I see all these things I'd like to do and I can't do them because I'm always preparing for funerals. On the other hand, part of being a pastor is learning to trust God's timing and God's priorities rather than your own. It'll all work out in the long run.

            1. part of being a pastorhuman is learning to trust God's timing and God's priorities rather than your own. It'll all work out in the long run.

              FTFM. It's hard to remember, but it's important for me to keep that at the front of my mind.

  4. POLAR BEAR PLUNGE UPDATE

    Just wanted to leave a reminder that tomorrow is the big day! Lucky for me, the forecast calls for a balmy 16°. Actually, I shouldn't complain considering we saw multiple days of below-zero temps this week. Anyway, thanks to a very generous response thus far, I was able to raise my fundraising goal to $400. Help me surpass that mark by following the link in the sidebar.

    Shout-out to the citizens who have already contributed - you guys represent 30% of my total donations thus far!

  6. (Hopefully not too political...) Denis McDonough, a Johnnie, to be named Chief of Staff. He and Moss overlapped at SJU. Moss remembers him and certainly played IM basketball against him, but he was a couple years ahead.

    There's also a minor character based on him in Zero Dark Thirty.

    1. Saw speculation to that effect in an alum e-mail a few weeks ago. Pretty neat to see it play out.

    2. in partial reply, I will note that Jack Lew couldn't quite make it through Carleton. Had to transfer down to Hahhhvahhhd in order to finish his undergrad degree.

    3. Fun thing to hear. I hate to give any nods to Barreiro, but in this case, it seems appropriate: "He's one of us!"

    4. I was going to asking you how you play basketball over IM, but thankfully I stopped being stupid before I posted.

  7. 30 Rock and Parks and Rec are always 'a win', but The Office because super interesting for the first time in like 5 years.
    also 1600 Penn made me laugh more than I thought it would (that half hour after The Office and whatever FX is offering up that night has been a drag for a while)

      1. It was good. I havent decided if it is great or not...it all depends on what the happens the next few episodes.

        1. I'd say that I'll watch it tonight, but I got my hands on Breaking Bad season five, so there's no way I'll see it before Monday. My wife brought up the very real possibility that we will watch all eight episodes this evening, though, so I might watch The Office as early as tomorrow.

          1. I love the occasional marathon, though I usually end up retaining very little of the season when I do that. I don't think that used to happen, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

            1. I don't know if I could handle a Breaking Bad marathon - especially of new episodes - because of how much I need to "unwind" at the end of most episodes. Nobody does a better job of ratcheting up the tension.

    2. I don't usually watch Jimmy Kimmel, but Matt Damon hijacking his show last night is an all-time classic.

      1. I started watching that, then I turned the channel during a commercial break and never turned it back. Channel 5 has really screwed up Kimmel because they really want to be an all news channel and dont start Kimmel until 11pm (before it was Nightline, then a repeat of the 10pm news then Kimmel at 1130. But thats Craig Ferguson time for me. )

    3. Lot of good viewing coming up next month. Mad Men is back for season 6, and the second half of The Walking Dead season starts. Saw the trailer last night for the new Coen brothers movie, Inside Llewyn Davis. In theaters February 8th.

      1. I mentioned it last night, but one show Im looking forward to is The Americans on FX.
        And Community season 4 starts in 2 weeks. There was a promo for something called Do No Harm that caught my eye.

    4. 30 Rock and P&R were solid, and The Office felt "real", not the overly cartoonish thing it had been when I stopped watching a few seasons ago, which I appreciated. I'm still on the fence about 1600 Penn. It has it's moments, but I'm having trouble liking Skip.

  8. So Sheenie won tickets to Twins Fest this weekend. It would be horribly wrong for me to chant "We Want Thielbar!" during his entire radio interview, right?

    1. Right.

      Goodness, I wonder if he'd even remember...pretty sure getting heckled by fans for a whole home game is typical for him.

    1. Let me explain -- no, it is too much, let me sum up:

      Oooh, sweet. So, this movie has swashbuckling Pirates in it?

      1. heh, as an example, he quotes what i think is one of the worst lines in movie history:

        Anakin: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is smooth and soft.

      1. EAR will definitely pick this up if she sees it, thinking, "AMR likes baseball and Amy Adams. He'll thank me for this." And she did well when she picked up Moneyball: a hit with both of us.

        I'm going to have to warn her.

          1. She was in the kitchen when I wrote that. Saying it at that time would have been immediately forgotten, or remembered as "I want to see that one." Instead, now it will stick.

      2. It arrived only just today via Netflix. I've tried warning Linds off of it a few times, but she comes back with "I want to watch it". I think I'm going to err on the side of "my wife wants to watch a baseball movie" and power through it. She liked Moneyball, I certainly won't be upset if she likes a baseball movie that's basically 110 minutes of baseball heresy.

        1. Sounds like what happened to you is what I'm trying to avoid.
          I blame Billy Beane and that book he wrote.

    2. It's 75 and sunny today, 10% chance of an isolated shower with three carnival parades 4 blocks from my house. Yeah, I'm going to pay for this in June, again in July, and double in August.

    4. There's no guarantee that if a guy would sign with the Mets for that much that he would sign with the Twins for the same (or even anything), but if he would have, that is very frustrating. There's always Joe Saunders!

      1. Players will sign with any team if you throw enough dollars at them. It's not like the Mets are that much better than the Twins. Add another million and it's still a good deal.

    5. Incentives could push that deal to $6M, but the Twins got Kevin Correia for only $5/year!!! Both Correia and Marcum have, amazingly, averaged 167 innings over the past 4 years.
      WAR for each in the last 3 years:
      Correia / Marcum
      -1.9 / 3.8
      -0.2 / 2.9
      -0.1 / 1.3

      Now, Marcum is coming off a year where he only threw 121 innings due to a bad elbow. Even so, I think Shaun in a Twins jersy > Kevin in one.

    6. also

      LaVelle E. Neal III ‏@LaVelleNeal
      Good grief! Miguel Sano has grown an inch. He will be listed at 6 feet, 4 inches!

    1. My diet hit the skids with my parents visiting and party gras exploding all around us. Today featured a sandwich made by the gods at the Cochon Butcher ---> roasted pork loin smothered in white bbq sauce, with bok choy kimchi and pork cracklin' garnish. Holy smokes.

      1. DROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Our neighbors are joining us for JazzFest and sent us a list of restaurants they were thinking about visiting. Cochon was on the list.

        1. I'm going to say that you'll need to stop by Boucherie as well. They serve excellent food for a totally reasonable price, and that's saying something about the trend of cost in restaurants in NOLA. It's not going to blow your socks off and make sweet passionate love to you or anything, but it's really, really good. Make reservations.

  14. Word to Can of Corn:

    I grew up in Minnesota, and went to college in Wisconsin. I had schools close a few times growing up for blizzards and one day for cold (-60 windchill) but I always felt that was the norm. My senior year at UW Madison in 2006, I was off to a volunteer gig on a cold Saturday in February. It was -20 real temperature, and the sun was very bright. I wore some sunglasses as I sprinted down the street to the chemistry building for the event. By the time I got inside I realized my sunglasses had broken, on my face, from the cold. I feel for that kid in Iowa, not because they were expensive and I would get in trouble, but because it was quite frightening to think that our usual gadgets were so fragile at what I felt were kind of "normal" winter temperatures.

    That same day there was supposed to be a Polar Plunge into one of the lakes in the Madison area. They had to cancel not because of the cold specifically, but because they couldn't keep a hole in the ice OPEN long enough. People would have been cut on the ice!

    2. That's reassuring in some way; it'll be like 36° warmer than that tomorrow.

      I have fished in -20° before...or tried to - couldn't keep the line from freezing in and twice cut it on the edge of the hole when a fish was on.

      Also, I'm with you cheap - I would miss this region if ever I moved.

  15. also, a question for all, but especially CH, Corn, and other vets in the Nation. Is it too Forbidden Zoney for you guys to weigh in here on the announcement about removing the blanket bar on women in "combat" roles in the military? I've seen a number of interesting first-person accounts from vets (male and female) cropping up in the press lately.

    1. My first deployment to the Middle East had my Detachment guarding a major distribution center for Iraqi oil. There were women serving there with me. You could argue that it wasn't a "combat" role, that it was defensive in nature, and (thankfully) we never faced any hostile fire. However, with asymmetric/guerrilla warfare (current conflicts), we don't have well delineated battle lines any more. The idea that we should allow women to serve and put them in situations like that, but prevent them from being in "combat" or "front line" roles (and receiving the appropriate training), doesn't mesh well with the reality of modern warfare.

      I've never been in a firefight, but always felt that if you can do the job, I don't care if you're a man or woman, gay or straight, black or white, young or old...you get the picture. From here, it get's Forbidden Zoney very quickly.

  16. Eddie Guardado voted into Twins Hall of Fame. I like that choice. He was always one of my favorites. His transformation to very good closer was amazing and a key part of the turnaround of the Twins last decade.

      1. They pretty much need to induct at least one player or manager into it each year and I don't recall them doing much more than one or two in a year, so I don't think they do too many. I guess the argument could be made that there are others that should go in ahead of Eddie, but I wouldn't include Gladden among them.

        1. Chuck Knoblauch, Cesar Tovar, Tom Brunansky, Corie Koskie

          one thing for Gladden is that he has been in the radio booth for a while now (this will be his 13th year)

  17. a big sports night: Wolves on FSN+, Wild-Red Wings on FSN, Mankato-Gophers hockey on BTN

      1. I was cheering for Mankato. I like the Gophers and all, but the Mavs are closer to me and its nice to see Gopher puckheads flip out.

        1. Gophers are the Yankees of College Hockey. Or at least a top-tier SEC team.
          But the Mavericks have such awful uniforms (or have had, maybe they've updated).

          1. When the Gophers can give out twice as many scholarships as a typical college hockey team then come talk to me about Gopher puck being the Yankees of college hockey.

              1. considering that four of the last five national titles have been won with schools whose names included "Boston", I'm not even sure I'd go that far.

            2. From a neutral fan point of view: they win a damned lot, and have, historically.
              I don't mind the Gophers, but it's nice to see the order of things shaken up now and then and the MNSCU teams (or UAA) find temporary glory until the WCHA breakup. Once it's Big Ten Hockey, I'll be all for the Gophers over the rest of that league.

    1. It's embarrassing, Joe [West]. [Equine feces]! Hey, Joe, don't laugh! You're not better than this stuff. You think you are, but you're not! You're a [illegitimate child]!

      Oof. I dunno. Girardi is a [kind, loving individual], but it's Joe West.

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