45 thoughts on “June 25, 2021: Félicitations”

    1. That building lower dead center is where I live! My unit faces the Capitol but if you could zoom in on one of those brightly lit windows, directly above the parking ramp stairwell, you could see my door.

    1. Hasn't been in the majors since 2017. He was terrible for the Twins after the trade, but he only made 10 starts. The Pirates purchased his contract from the Twins that offseason (after 2013), and he had a sub-3.00 ERA for them in 2014.

    2. Depending on how one looks at it, the Vanimal is either one of the most forgettable or most memorable pitchers to start on Opening Day for the Twins.

  1. Chicken Sammie War Update: yesterday on a run to Home Depot for ant traps, I went to Chik-Fil-A and picked up a pair of chicken sandwiches. There was brisk traffic there at lunch-time, and they had several people standing in the drive-thru with iPads taking orders, taking payment, and by the time I got to the window, they handed me a bag with my name on it. Pretty impressive operations.

    The sandwich was good, crispy batter-fried chicken breast with tomatoes, lettuce, mayo and pickles. But it was nothing special. I was expecting maybe more spice in the batter, some heat in the mayo, etc. The bun, meh. Also, 11 clicks for two sandwiches.

    I would rank them below NBB, BirdCode and PopEyes.

  2. Vegas just stopped playing good hockey. I heard analysis that Vegas just kept trying to carry the puck or pass the puck into the offensive zone instead of dumping and forechecking. So they kept skating right into the teeth of Montreals defense.

    Pretty ironic since Colorado's refusal to adapt to Vegas was how the Knights won round 2.

    1. I'm picturing the press conference:

      "Coach Bednar, will your team adapt to Vegas?"
      "We refuse."

  3. My wife picked up Moon Man and Totally Naked when she drove through Wisconsin. If I serve them in Minnesota to relatives from IL, MO, and NV, will I go to jail?

    (Liquor laws are stupid)

      1. Moon Man is so good. I pretty much drink that or Dancing Man when its in season.

          1. I usually grab some Ode and North Shore when I'm up visiting me family, which are both very good.

    1. Liquor laws are crafted to create barriers to competition, keeping prices higher than they should be and creating absurd profits for distributors with territorial/brand monopolies. All under the pretense of protecting the public from vice.

      1. Maybe I’m wrong in understanding Algonad’s joak, but I think New Glaus is not distributed outside the state boundary’s by intent of the brewer, not because of any law limiting its distribution. So I wouldn’t think there would be a problem unless he was selling beer without a license?

        (Edited for clarity.)

          1. I recently joaked about someone’s newborn being an accompanied minor (legal to drink with a parent/guardian present) in this state.

          1. There is an enforcement via the law, but in the case of NG, not selling outside of Wisconsin is a choice they made. Demand here is high enough they felt they would be stretched too thin with a larger distribution network and were concerned quality would suffer.

              1. New Glarus, both the business & its product, is consistently refreshing.

                Too bad so many people in this state have been conditioned to believe businesses can’t be successful without the legislature putting workers over a barrel and incentivizing & rewarding massive rent-seeking from mediocre multinationals.

  4. Second trial run last night with the wood-fired pizza oven insert on my Weber grill

    From Trial Run 1, I learned to make the pies a bit smaller and that my wooden peels were a bit thick, making it hard to manipulate the pies on the baking stone. So I aimed for 12-13 inch diameter pies.

    from Trial Run 2, I learned that my brand new, stainless steel pizza peel is sticky AF. I did not use nearly enough corn meal under the first pie, so it would not slide off. I was able to save it, lift it off and onto one of my wooden peels, rearrange the toppings, and insert. Then I used the metal peel to turn the pie part-way through baking. But with a somewhat sticky dough, the stainless proved to be turrible for the first step. I will either have to make sure my doughs are stiffer/less sticky, or use a LOT more corn meal (or, likely, both).

    The main problem with the oven insert itself is that it is hard to refuel to maintain temp. You have to lift the whole damn thing off to insert more hardwood, which is challenging and means you lose a ton of heat. I was able to bake the first pie at nearly 700 degrees, the second in the mid-500s, and the third dropped into the 400s.

    with even smaller pies (these were around 12-14 inches, barely fitting on my stone), the process should be even smoother. I will probably aim for 10-12 inch pies going forward. Flavor was great. I needed more coals directly under the stone.

    summary: fun purchase. It allows you to make "real" wood-fired pizza on your Weber grill at a reasonable cost. I will continue to use it regularly.

    1. This is one Weber mod that I get but don't get because of the lack of ability to add fuel. Not to say that I haven't been tempted to buy one..........

    1. A crass & lazy ¢a$h grab that will soon part certain fools with their money.

      I wonder who developed this merch, Nike or MLB’s marketing arm? Why the heck would you superimpose a monochrome version of the team logo over an arbitrary abbreviation of its home city/region, rendering one unrecognizable (for non-red/blue-dominant teams) and the other illegible? It’s bad enough when two of the three letters in the logo & abbreviation are the same, but the StL logo over S-T-L is particularly ridiculous!

      (Any use of “M-I-N” to abbreviate Minnesota annoys me. The USPS abbreviation is “MN,” while the old GPO abbreviation was “Minn.”)

  5. Aaron Nola ties Tom Seaver's record of ten consecutive strikeouts against the Mets.

  6. Two players in MLB history have over 300 homers but had zero homers while playing with the Twins.

    Spoiler SelectShow
      1. How fun it would be to go back to 1973 and look at the faces of Twins fans after telling them that a rotation featuring both future HoFers Blyleven & Carlton would eventually win a World Series…and be technically correct.

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