Which seems natural enough, being's how she's from around here and all. But I had dinner and breakfast and went for a bike ride with her boss. No, it's not what it sounds like. There were seperate beds in the interval.

In any case, none of that's all too interesting. What *is* interesting is that all of a sudden I"ve become very busy lately. I know, it's all about me, but if you're complaining, get your own website. Anyways, it seems somewhat rare that I can sit around loafing in front of the monitor, much less the TeeVee. I did catch some of the State Tournament this weekend, which is a pretty big thing around here (yet another difference from California, where most folks could pretty much give a rats ass). It was fun to see the young stars, and even more fun, or maybe excruciating, to see the guys who were just out there putting up the good fight. God bless the underdog. But I seem to get off track.

So yeah, busy. Busy busy busy busy. Ugh. There was a time when I used to think that being busy was a hallmark of a right-minded, hardworking and motivated individual. Maybe I'm just not motivated anymore. Or the other stuff. It just gets me tired after a while. Whah. Bitch rant complain.

Oh, it's not that bad really. It *is* Minnesota, after all. Things don't seem to go really too wrong here. I don't know what it is. Of course, people here are really horrible drivers too, but you take your lumps.

"They say money can't bring happiness, but whoever would have thought that it could bring so much worry? The latest malady afflicting the nation's super-rich appears to be a juvenile version of "affluenza." And no child of parents with stock options to spare seems safe from its ravages. Symptoms include sloth and selfishness and a general disconnect from the average joe. But luckily for those dot-com millionaires with children in tow, help has arrived.

As part of its "financial parenting" service, Wall Street powerhouse Merrill Lynch has contracted with psychologists to help teach the children of its wealthiest customers the responsibility of being fabulously rich. Of course, the average yacht owner isn't eligible, with Merrill Lynch cutting off the service to clients with less than $100 million in net assets.

Chauffeurless friends. Psychotherapist Jessie O'Neill popularized the expression "affluenza" in her 1996 book The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence. Since then, many financial planners have been more than happy to help the rich and conflicted, showing spenders the art of saving and offering hoarders lessons in charitable giving. But thanks to Merrill Lynch, money psychology is now available for the children of the wealthy.

The brokerage has special advisers ready to teach its clients' kids the importance of education and wealth building. Much of the tutelage is focused on answering questions such as why school chums don't fly on private airplanes or have chauffeurs at their beck and call. But if the child has an unfortunate disinterest in the markets or interest rates, a loan from the parents can also be arranged for investing in a "faux portfolio"–the kid keeps the spread if his bets are good.

On the flip side, the scions of the truly affluent will also be taught about the importance of charity, says Merrill Lynch spokesman Erik Hendrickson, noting that "there could even be trips to cancer wards at hospitals." Scott Cooper, a relationship manager with the group, adds that psychologists and psychiatrists are a phone call away should a child reveal "a shade of depression or sense of alienation from peers."

"It costs Merrill Lynch's richest family clients somewhere between $150,000 and $350,000 a year for a basket of services from which they can cherry-pick. Besides financial parenting, it also includes more-prosaic tutoring for parents in subjects such as estate planning. Merrill Lynch says that the program, which is run by its Family Office Group, can serve about 40 families at a time. While only two or three of them signed up for financial parenting a year ago, Cooper says that his advisers are now juggling between 10 and 12 families all the time.

I know it sounds moderately sensationalist, but I think the web is starting to get pretty useful. It's kind of a drag, in a wistful sort of "wish it could all just be online museums and weblogs" kind of way, but what the hell, it pays the bills.

Anyhow, the reason for my entry this evening lies in the application I'm using to write. It's not Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect or Outlook, and it's not Blogger and it's not even Notepad or Homesite. It's a web-based word processor from Thinkfree.com and it's part of an "office suite" of applications that are available online from their website.

It's kind of weird, because it looks for all the world like a windows-based GUI application. And it acts like one. Except it's all on the web. Sort of. You do have to download "modules" that run locally, but all the storage is on their servers, so you can access your files from any web browser. Microsoft's been doing it a while with their web-integrated office apps, but you could only use IE, and the file management was just too ephermeral. But ThinkFree makes total sense, because your files are available EVERYWHERE. Now that's pretty cool.

The drawbacks? Well, I'll only comment on the Word Processor, cause that's all I've used, but the real drawback is that the files are written as html docs, so you're constrained by the boundaries of DHTML and stylesheets. You don't have access to your local system resources, so all your cool fonts can't be used. You can print, but you really can't go crazy with the formatting, cause all you're really printing is a web page.

But you CAN use all the cool aspects of web page formatting, and really easily. They've taken the functionality of html-based formatting and applied a word-processor GUI over it. Something everybody can understand. And you can even save the docs as Write, Word or RTF files, if you want to zip it straight into your old word processor. It's kind of like using FrontPage (what kind of idiot are you?) as a word processor, and storing your files on a server
called the Internet. It's scary, but it's good.

But really, the best part about it is that it's an option to using Microsoft's Bloated and bug-ridden crap. Just imagine, you won't even have to load the 290+MB Office "Professional" suite on your machine. No more of that pesky little "office attendant" zipping around. No more searching and destroying office template folders. No more headaches, PMS or parking tickets, and no more voicemails for the rest of your life. Yeah right.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not really complaining about that, because I truly do think the web's the best informational resource on the planet. But I do miss surfing. Hours spend mindlessly linking across an endless sea of pages, occassionally dropping in on a particularly sweet formation, and generally making it more of a pastime than a task. It was nice. I enjoyed that.

Okay, on to other things.

You know, I think I'm finally getting the hang of this weblogging thing. I've spent the past coupla days perusing other folks' weblogs, cause mainly I was wondering why the hell it was so popular. Used to be, the web was chock fulla drivel in the guise of 'on-line' journals where folks would pour their lives (real or imagined, you got the feeling) onto personal webpages in a pretty stream-of-conciousness manner. Some were actually pretty good reading.

But then they went away. I'm not sure why. Maybe for want of an audience (or is that just me being optimistic?)

Then there was something else called a listserv, or mailing list or whatever. Basically, you signed up to receive a weekly or monthly email somebody compiled, and occasionally felt obligated to read it. It got a little more fun when mail clients were able to handle embedded links, so if somebody sent you something interesting, you could just click and jump right to that page. But most of us got pretty tired of emails constantly filling our inbox, so that fell out of popular favor.

And just about every site on the web at one time or another had a 'page o' links' (wanna see what mine used to look like?). Because, well, that was really the point of it all. Linking and shit. But I haven't seen one of those for many a moon now. Mainly because they were a pain in the arse to maintain, and once you stop maintaining something on the web, it pretty much disintegrates. But if you did manage to find a good up-to-date links page, it was like hidden treasure.

Well, near as I can tell, all that's back, and with a vengeance. Hello weblog.

So far, it seems like the most popular ones are daily compilations of links with a peppering of personal commentary or journaling. Some branch off and become quasi-virtual clubhouses of sorts, while others are straight-up journals. Actually, they're all over the map as far as what they try to do, but let me get back to the good ones. Like camworld, which seems to be written by this new-media guy who spends a lot of freakin time on the net. Or he's got lots of friends who spend a lot of freakin time on the net, cause he's just got oodles and oodles of links.

And funny thing, most of them links are pretty tasty. And weirdly enough, since this guy basically does what I do for a living, I actually learned quite a bit sitting on his site and jumping off to all his links. And they keep coming. And all of a sudden, I'm hitting sites I'd never dreamed existed. I'm finding all kinds of cool angles on all manner of topics that are largely of interest to me. This is good.

There are other weblogs I've hit which veer more towards the personal side. Real personal. Like Keith Brown's weblog about his baby daughter undergoing heart surgery. It's tremendous reading.

But so far, the best thing about weblogs are all the nice fresh links. That's the thing about the weblog universe--it's very temporary. What's written today will be gone tomorrow (or pretty close.) Weblog archives are strictly for the amusement of the author and maybe some close personal friends. Because what's the point of reading a bit of witty acerbic commentary on a link that's long gone? With a weblog, if it's linked, it's active. And you go. Find out stuff you didn't know was there before. I like.

something I used to talk about to fill in those uncomfortable silences during conversations with people I didn't really want to talk to.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm talking about it every day with people I generally don't mind talking to at all. It's Minnesota, man. Three days ago, temperatures were wandering into the 70's, the sun was shining, young adults were mating down by Lake Calhoun, and there was the general feel of spring in the air.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm riding my bike through ice and slush. At least I did on the way to work. But on the way home, the roads were magically clear. We're expecting thundershowers at any moment. Weather happens, around here.

We got a new ping-pong table today. Which is kind of a cute little perk, but what I actually love about my job is that I can be sitting here at home pushing pixels and bits of code around in my pyjamas, doing what I probably would have been doing anyways, and still call it work.

I've got the ideal setup for telecommuting--good desk, nice computer, DSL, and the kind of job I can do twice as well from home, since there's no ping-pong table to distract me.

But it's kind of like the promise of a "paperless office", because I'll never be a full-time telecommuter. There's always meetings and phone calls and desk cleaning to take into consideration. Not to mention coffee breaks, the occasional game of darts, and the all important time spent lounging on the couches in the lobby just shooting the breeze.

Well, that's what weekends are for. In other news, the Voodoo had a little photo session, and I've posted some images on ClikShow. This was my first chance to go through the whole posting process on the site, and so far, it looks like things are working pretty well. I still need to work out some of the admin screens, and I'm sure there are countless bugs I'll be hunting down for a while, but for the most part, it looks good.

Of course, the bigger and better the purchase, the bigger and better I feel about myself. It's a pretty linear equation. The bike was pretty big for me, which is why it made me feel so good. I was feeling really, really good about it, right up until I read about Jamie Zawinski buying a nightclub. In downtown San Francisco.

Then, I forgot about my bike. In fact, whatever good feelings I had about buying the bike instantly evaporated. I became bitter. Enraged, even. I mean, how can buying a piddly little pile of steel and rubber possibly ever compare to buying a whole nightclub? And dammit, why the hell can't *I* buy a nightclub? What really burns me though, is that if things had gone completely according to plan, I wouldn't even be writing this. I'd have probably already bought a night club, if not two or three. In fact, buying nightclubs might've even become blase--something I'd let my personal assistant do just for kicks and giggles. But I get ahead of myself.

Let's get back to the fact that Jamie Zawinski's buying a nightclub (and not me, in case you missed that part.) First off, I don't know Jamie Zawinski. But I know who he is. He's about my age, and he's what you'd call a 'web pioneer.' He's had a personal site since before most of you even knew what the web was. He was the 20th person to ever appear on Netscape Communication's payroll. He helped code Mosaic. He took Mosaic/Netscape Navigator down the road to open sourcing. He stayed with the company through it's turbulent 4.x years. He probably had more stock options that you could shake a stick at. And he was smart enough to stay with Netscape until it got bought out by AOL. Which made his stock options worth something again. A whole lot of something, if you asked me. Then he quit. And most notably, became what you and I would probably call filthy stinking rich. Hence the nightclub.

Rat Bastard.

Of course you're thinking to yourself, why is this guy (meaning me, of course) such a whiner? Why indeed. Well, it's basically because I'm insanely jealous (in case you hadn't picked up on that.) Not just because Jamie's probably got more money than Jim Barksdale (at least in liquid assets), and not just because he's going to buy a nightclub. It's because I just can't shake the feeling that *I* could be buying a nightclub.

How, you ask?

Well, it's a lot like the feeling you get when you watch "Who want's to be a Millionaire". You're sitting there, eating your pizza and farting into your couch cushions and watching these utter morons wend their way through a series of laughably easy questions that you could answer in your sleep, even without the lifelines. And you think, man, I'm a lot smarter than these bozos. *I* want to be a Millionaire.

Admit it, you know that's what you're thinking.

And that's exactly what I'm thinking about this whole nightclub business. I mean, who is Jamie to have so much money, while I have so little? As far as I can see, all he did was show up in the right place at the right time. It was so easy back in those days. Little companies like Netscape and Yahoo and Ebay and Amazon were popping up all over the place, and they were all starved for talent. All's you really had to do was nab yourself one of those early positions, git oodles of stock options of your very own (pre-IPO, of course), and ride the wave to it's now-foregone conclusion. The internet is riddled with stories of people very much like you and me, who've become fantastically wealthy thanks to the emergence of the 'Information Age.' Thousands upon thousands of people who now have enough money to buy dozens of nightclubs each.

In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that a lot more people have become Millionaire's on the internet than on Regis' little game show. And they probably didn't even have to hit the redial number 500 times to get their first interview. Even worse, once you got yourself into the right company, doing the actual work was probably even easier than answering those lame questions on 'millionaire.'

But the reason it makes me so damn mad is because I was *there*. Man, I saw it happening all around me. Living in San Francisco, I saw company after company come up with some stupid little idea, throw the equivalent of your average third-world country's GNP into a marketing campaign, and come up in spades. Bingo, bango, boom. Wealth.

Meanwhile, I was too busy blowing those huge opportunities by sticking with my pathetic dead-end Systems Administration job for a nameless architectural company that was pretty clearly not on the IPO path. Ooh, it just makes me want to kick myself. Really really hard.

But before I go off the deep end, I suppose I ought to remind myself that all is not necessarily lost. There's still time. Of course, it ain't as easy as it was in those heady days of ridiculously gross market overvaluation, but if you're just a little bit clever, untapped millions still await. Just look at all those internet companies who paid $2-3 million for a 30-second spot on during the Superbowl. Most of them were little more than a business plan done in PowerPoint, but that was enough for venture capitalists to pour unthinkable capital into "branding" and marketing so's to carry them into their first public offering. Remember who those companies were? Huh, neither do I. But still. Those guys are RICH now. Right?

And what about all those guys that have already gone public and made their millions? Sure, there may not be a single one that's ever actually turned a profit, but their founders and early employees are still raking in the big money. They're participating in the "maturation" of the internet, developing improved content distributions systems or concentrating on niche marketing or revolutionizing business-to-business extranetworks or somehow, some way, leveraging the power of the internet to do something, *anything*, better than it was done before. Those guys are all making a mint.

And of course there's the folks who were smart enough to sit down for a couple of days and use the ol' noggin to come up with and register thousands and thousands of domain names, which they are now selling for untold millions to all these internet companies who have enough cash to pay through the nose for a name people can actually remember. Those guys are rich too.

Not to mention all the ad agencies, marketing communications firms, publicity companies and consulting organizations that are billing hundreds of dollars an hour to help all these new internet companies make an appropriately large splash in the marketplace when they're ready to sell their... er, whatever the hell it is they're selling. Anyways, those guys are making money hand-over-fist.

So I'm coming up with a plan. Since I don't have the creativity to invent domain names that don't have a number or dash in them (and anyways, everybody already knows that gravy train's making it's last round now that we're getting all those new subdomains), I'll probably have to come up with an idea that I can describe using words like "paradigm, leverage, data warehouse, implement, and would-you-like-cocktail-with-that-non-disclosure-agreement?"

Of course that in itself would be a piece of cake, but just to make sure everything goes according to plan this time around, there's a few more things I need to consider: Firstly, I don't want to do anything that's actually going to contribute to society at large. It's got to be a short-term delayed-consequences sort of thing, because--I mean, I don't want to inextricably tie myself to something that I need to dump in a year or two, because I want to be in a position to sell all them stocks when they're either at their market peak or when the company gets bought up by Microsoft. And I definately don't want it to be anything I might actually believe in, because it might just crush my spirit to see the company crash and burn once all the stockholders realize their investment was totally squandered on astronomical lease rates, remodeling fees, Aeron chairs and clever business cards burned onto miniature CD-ROM's. And one commercial.

But most importantly, I don't want to totally wrap myself up in a company where I actually liked what I do. What's the point in thinking about the long-term when it's most important build the business up to make it attractive enough to sell to the first highest bidder? I sure as hell wouldn't want to end up working for anybody else, and since I'll be forced out of the CEO's chair eventually, I may as well make it easy to let go. Not that letting go should be too hard, considering I'll probably be enduring an entire year of 80-hour weeks spent kissing venture capital ass and ignoring my wife.

Believe me, once I get the new house in Kenwood and the AudiTT convertible (and maybe a Humvee for winter) and a new girlfriend to take to maui (pending divorce) and, obviously, a nightclub or two, it will all have been worth it. And so damn easy.

I'm still working on the idea. It hasn't come to me yet.

I don't suppose you've caught the sarcism bit in there somewhere? I find it odd that some folks wouldn't, but maybe that's more indicative of a particular mindset driven by popular perception than it is literal acumen.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not the least bit jealous of ol' Jamie Zawinski. He's seems to have a good perspective on things, and claims to be purchasing the DNA Lounge in San Francisco for "neighborhood-conciousness and appreciation" reasons, which sounds pretty laudable to me. And I think he left Netscape after suffering bitter disappointment in the direction of the company. Surprise. He was just lucky enough to time it right. And anything he does to the DNA lounge to make it less of a pheromone-soaked hipster hangout, the better. Though I'm not sure that'll actually happen.

It also occurs to me that I shouldn't be too critical of the ol 'net, since in a kind of round-about way, it provides me with a paycheck every two weeks. For doing something I love to do. And the money's good enough to pay the rent and still save a bit to buy my killer new mountain bike. I'm still pretty stoked about that.

Speaking of time, here's one of the coolest timepieces I've ever seen It also happens to be the coolest bit of javascripting I've seen.

Check it out when you have a few minutes to just sit and watch. It's mesmerizing to watch it work while you're trying to build an image of the system in your head. The concept behind the clock is interesting enough, but to imagine rebuilding it in javascript? Somebody's got way more brain cells than they need.

In any case, it's basically a pendulum clock that's operated by liquid. There's a system of siphons which act as logical circuits to divide a volume of water in such a way as to "divide" the periodicity of the pendulum to transform seconds into minutes. For a full explanation, maybe you should just read this.

If I sound bitter, I am. But to be perfectly honest, I'm not *that* bitter. In fact, I'm somewhat amused. Why? Well, honestly, I think it all comes down to the weather.

What I mean to say is, the weather here downright sucks. I mean, it's total shite. The temperatures have been below freezing since mid-November, and will stay that way clear through May. There's snow and ice on the ground, it's windy and gray and the humidity is like -99%. Your lips bleed if you even try to smile. Your face burns the minute you step out the door. You walk around looking like the Michelin man, falling on your ass every five steps because everything's covered in ice.

And let's not even talk about the landscape. Flat as a pancake. Barren. Sure, there are a coupla lakes, and some trees, but aside from that, it's like living on a frozen moon. Like it even makes a difference, cause even if you do care to brave the outdoors, you rarely see any of it since it's light out for only a couple of hours a day. In fact, the only real reason to go outside is because they haven't built any underground tunnels to the Mall of America.

And the people? Well, not only do they talk funny, using phrases like "don'tyaknow" and "you wanna slab of lutefisk with that at all?" (just like Marge in Fargo), but they're hopelessly backward too. Everybody dresses like a buncha dorks in their Minnesota Vikings sweat outfits or blue-black anoraks with the fur-lined hoods, and all the guys have "hockey-haircuts" and are missing at least a couple of teeth in embarrasingly obviously places. The women wear too much hairspray on their frosted ends, and the little ones are always wiping frozen snot off their noses with crusty little hand-knit mittens. I think the only normal people in this god-forsaken land are the grandmothers, who all look like they stepped right out of the "Prairie Home Companion."

Man, that's depressing. It makes me wonder why the hell I ever decided to move out here, considering how good I had it in San Francisco. I mean, it's probably like 80 degrees there right now. And everybody out *there* is spending their weekends on the sidewalks of neighborhood coffee houses, sipping double-tall nonfat cappucinos and talking about how much money their pre-IPO internet company's paying them. Or taking off to Marin for a quick hike up Mt. Tam, or cruising the bay in their friends' sailboats, or spending all night down in SOMA dancing at a private Rave while high on ecstasy.

Or else they're off to the SF Symphony, watching Michael Tilsen Thomas conduct his incomparable world-class orchestra accompanied by the ironically juxtaposed harmonic nuances of Metallica or Spinal Tap--or perhaps by the breathtaking visuals of the mystical and high-flying Cirque du Soleil (for a change). Or else they're in Chinatown buying a priceless jarful of ginko bilboa lovingly masticated by a recently immigrated lotus-flower virgin from Manchuria. Or maybe they're in North Beach, tasting exquisite handmade tagliatelle with a creamy white-wine sauce laced with imported white truffle shavings FedExed straight from Tuscany. And if all that's gotten too boring, they're hopping into the Land Rover for a quick jaunt to Tahoe in the glorious Sierra Nevada Mountains, for a weekend of skiing and fireside romancing, complete with 40-year cognac and hand-rolled Cuban cigars smuggled straight from Havana. Or if they don't like snow, they can just zip up to Napa for a laconic afternoon spent on a wisteria-covered deck outside Robert Mondavi's hillside estate, sipping Vintner's Reserve Carneros Cabernet made from grapes crushed by the nubile toes of Sicilian peasants, just like in the old country.

Christ, with so much to do, no wonder why none of my friends have been able to stay in touch. In fact, maybe they're doing me a favor--it's probably more than a little embarassing for them to have to talk to me, knowing what all I've been missing out on now that I've been dismissed from the garden of Eden. It's probably better that they leave well enough alone.

I dunno, I guess it's my own damn fault for leaving that pleasure paradise for this hell-on-earth. I can't believe I was so stupid.

But I guess the *really* funny thing is, there's a whole buncha freaks out there who I know on a first name basis who have no earthly clue who I am. Like Lance, who inspired me to create my very first frames-based site. and Maggy, who just poured her her heart out on the web. and Philip (anybody else remember Travels with Samantha?. and Karawynn, who gave me my very first (and only) web award. and, well, a whole helluva lot of others.

Basically, a bunch of folks who've decided to publish way too much information about themselves on the web, back when it was cool and interesting and fun and challenging and experimental and hard and exciting and novel geeky and unusual and generally gave you a sense of "goddammit this is what I've wanted to do all along and I LIKE IT" .

Only now, all that's changed. It seems to be a trend. Now, you don't read interesting stuff so much anymore. Mostly, it's a bunch of proselythizing and whining and gloating and criticizing and, well, just generally not being so much fun. Or else it's playing with the latest web toy, or opining about the latest web phenomenon, or sentimentalizing about the ol' skool, creating user interfaces that drive you absolutely mad. or whatever. I dunno what it is. I don't go to all those pages as much as I used to.

Sometimes, I'll wander into the some of those sites' "archives" sections, just to look around at the oddities. Warms the cockles of my little heart. But the new shit? hrmf.

Seems to me like there's a little too much self-concious wanking off going on these days.

But of course, that's exactly what I'm doing. Right here. Right now. God bless the web. What an idiot. Yep, that's me. The supreme(ly idiotic) self(concious)wanker.

But that's going to have to wait a while. I'm tired. I don't want to do anything that requires the least amount of effort, because, frankly, I've had a long day. It started last night, at 00:00 central standard time, like most days do. Thankfully, they usually pause between 04:00cst and 09:00cst, but today, I kickstarted things at around 8:00 cause I had some 'errands' to run.

So after four hours of sleep, I jumped into the trusty Escort and zipped down to St. Louis Park to the AAA office, clutching a pink slip in my hand which had been lovingly signed by my parents-in-law last weekend thereby relinquishing title to the vehicle. (an aside. I love my in-laws. they gave us a car. but I love them for other reasons too. and I'm not just saying that because I know that my mother-in-law reads this site...) But since they gave us the care officially and all, it means I now have to insure it under my own name. Hence, the errand. But, before I can insure, I must have a Minnesota driver's license. Alas, my treasured California license just ain't no good no more.

So I'm at the AAA, where they handle license renewals in this state (so I'm told by the voice-mail system for the Department of Public Safety which I had called yesterday just so's I'd be prepared), and they tell me, sorry charlie, we only handle renewals. You gotta go way the hell out to friggin' Plymouth (lovely suburb that it is) to take a Minnesota State Driver's License Exam. Obviously, being a licensed driver in California for 11 years just don't qualify you for the peerless Minnesota Driver's License.

Fine, sez I, I'll do that, but since I'm here, why don't I go ahead and transfer the Escort's title over to me so's I can register it. No problem there, except that since my name's the only one on the title as 'buyer', I'll have to pay sales tax. Sales tax on WHAT? My in-laws GAVE the car to us. Well, turns out the stupid law states that parent's can give their *own* children their cars, but can't give them to childrens-in-law. So I gotta get Solveig to sign.

Fine. again. Fine. No problem. I whip over to Turtle Bread Company, where Solveig's in the middle of shaping one of many batches of high-quality $5 loaves of bread, and I get her to sign the pink slip (which is actually green, by the way), and while I'm there, I go ahead and fill out the rest of the form with address information and odo readings and whatnot. No problem there.

Then I scoot out to Plymouth and find the Driver's License Testing center, get into line with a dozen other guys who look like rejects from 'the-loser-in-the-corner-of-the-dive-bar-in-a-scene-from-Fargo' tryouts, and eventually find myself in front of a touchscreen computer terminal, taking the license exam. Again, no big deal. Passed with flying colors and all that. Most of the would-be movie stars, I notice, are failing left and right. On accounta they're taking a much more difficult DWI license test. Because they all got their licenses suspended for drunk driving. And they're too stupid to actually study for the friggin' test. I overhear one say that this is the SIXTH time he's failed. He expects to be back Monday. Jesus.

But no big deal. I now posess a temporary Minnesota State Driver's License, (and a defunct CDL, which they unceremoniously cut the corner off of--why, I ask?) and can now register and insure a vehicle in the State of Minnesota. So it's back to the AAA with signed pink/green slip in hand. After waiting about 45 minutes, I find myself back at the same counter with the same clerk as before, and he starts processing my paperwork. After scanning the pink/green slip for a few moments, he asks for the Lienholder's papers. Huh? Now I know Lein's not a common word in the english language, but I vaguely recall that it means that you owe somebody for something and that until you pay them off, you don't actually own whatever it is that you owe them money for. Since the car was Given to us, I don't see how this applies.

Well, it turns out that yours truly, however smart he thinks he is, really never learned to read instructions on legal document too good. I'm always screwing them up. And, true to form, I screwed up on this one too. I checked the wrong damned box on the slip. Where it asks whether there's a lien on the car, I checked "Yes". Jesus. So the clerk pulls out form PS2025-72 Application for Corrected Title/Odometer, which must be filled out and signed by both buying and selling parties. Which means I have to get mom and dad-in-laws' signature. Jesus.

So I ask, just to be on the safe side, whether there's anything else, and absolutely *anything* else I need to do. He asks for my insurance papers. What the f***? The whole reason I'm going through this torment is because my insurance broker told me I need the car to be titled and registered in MY NAME before he can sell me insurance. The clerk laughs and says that they all say that (How the hell can they ALL say that, when the law in this case seems pretty freaking clear?) and says I better get that taken care of. After I get my in-law's signature, of course.

Fine. No problem. I'm now several hours late for work, but I figure, what the hell. Might as well get this over with. So I drive across town to my father-in-law's office at Gopher State Litho, drop into the lobby and ask their lovely secretary if I might see Orton. She says I could, if wanted to drive two hours to Duluth, because he took the day off to go up there for the weekend with his wife. AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHH.

Okay, end of story. That was enough for today. End of game. Time's up. Enough. That was all I could take. So I went to work, three hours late, and fumed. But only for a bit. Because, really, isn't this why we live life the way we do? I mean, things get so boring when everything goes according to plan. I'm sure the entire escapade could have been entirely avoided if the DPS's voicemail had been accurate. Or if I'd filled out the pink/green slip in the comfort of my own home rather than in the middle of a bakery during peak production hours. Or if my insurance broker had been right. Or any of a number of other things. Ah, life.