MARCH MADNESS and an ACE IN THE HOLE

Hello Minnesota Gopher fans and the rest of you. Well, they made it into the NCAA tournament. I am very glad. OMG Did you just read that? I am very glad. How subtle Minnesotan is that now, ay? Let's insert a golf clap here. Sheesh. I've been corrupted. Oh well, now we'll see if they can make it past the first round. I think so. They play Xavier on Friday. Schools that start with the letter 'X' rarely get too far I've found. In fact, when you think about it the letter 'X' itself is mysterious and well, to coin Ellen's DJ on her daytime show, Dodgey. Other than X-rated and X-Ray, 'X'words aren't even pronounced as 'X'-s. How sneaky is that? Xylophone uses the 'Zy' sound. Xavier whats-his-face who won the Oscar for No Country for Old Men uses the silent 'J or hah' sound to pronounce his name. What's up with the wacky 'X' anyways? Interesting. Wow, what a digression. Back on track now shall we? The Gophers play Friday and good luck to them. I have Kentucky versus Kansas in the final with Kentucky taking the title. Maybe they'll call them Xansas for an added boost.

Speaking of sneaky, I actually learned of a shenanigan today. Did you know, I mean did you realllllly know that those back room card games happen for real? Now I don't mean a bunch of guys pretending to be card sharps in somebody's garage on a Saturday night, or a bar sanctioned TeXas Hold 'Em contest at Champps(yawn). I mean the real McCoy. Now pronounced XCoy. Well they do and here's how I know. Tammy and I have joked for a couple of years now about the "man cave" I work in, and how I wasn't specific enough when I created more men being in my life. I've got mostly guy cavemen friends now. Anybody see the movie "Knocked Up"? If you have, add ten years on those guys and they are my co-workers to which I lovingly refer. OK, so my manager recently resigned and his last day is this Wednesday. He's moving to a new cave across town with some more modern cavemen (they carry golf clubs now - rimshot) to sell PDU harness cables in a regional territory (in case anyone cares to know and if you don't know what PDU cables are, you really don't care, trust me.) That means Friday night was his night where the office took him out to thank him and say goodbye and give the guys a reason to drink on the company's dime. Now, also please note that when I say guys, I literally mean all guys as I am the only woman on the sales team and there is only one other woman in the entire office, warehouse included, and she works up front, rarely seen. I did not attend the event however, I have been to a strip club before, but I was getting the scoop today. What to my wondering ears was I hearing? Two of my buds were in a BACKROOM POKER GAME. A real one. The place was a nearby watering hole which shall remain nameless, but "Tom" (wink-wink) was talking about already being fairly swacked when he joined the game in the back room and had to pay money literally under the table. Then the two guys that played in the game went on to relate how the game went, who won what, who was staring them down etc, all on the hush hush. Not that they were bragging about it, I think they were surprised these games went on as well. They accidentally stumbled upon it themselves, with the old, "where does this door lead" dealie. Why am I sharing? I don't know, I just thought it was interesting. It's 2010 and this stuff actually happens. It was all hushy hush and everything. Ok, maybe I am naive, but have YOU played in a backroom game with strangers and for real? I didn't think so.

Not too much is going on at Sodium Manor that plays out in this blog, though Sarah did make the 'A' 14U softball team for summer, and she has a shot at making the high school team as an 8th grader. Practice/tryouts are all this week. So that's cool! I won't keep you any longer for now. GO GOPHERS!!!!

Love,
Diane

My Special Purpose

Hey all. Whazzzup? Here is my...

INNOCUOUS ORTS OF SORTS: Some people search their whole lives to find a special purpose. Some do find one. Many others ultimately give up and settle into a routine of mundane predictability, or if you are King Henry II, married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, you may simply “blunder onto peace” while waiting for the King of France to grow up and fight or some such sort of thing. Me? I have blundered onto my own special purpose and I don’t mean like Steve Martin in his movie, “The Jerk”.


What is my special purpose, you may whisper aloud, eagerly inching forward in your chair, your nose mere inches from the screen? You’ll never guess it, especially not my own mother, since I showed no inclination toward any such talent as a child. It is…drum roll please… Official Toilet Paper Roll Changer of Sodium Manor. Ta-Dahhhhh! Yes, I have deduced my purpose with the sieve-like penetrating mind of a Sherlock Holmes, the seductive deductive reasoning of a Hercule Poirot, the, the, angelic visions of Bernadette. Too much? Ok, well, anyway, I AM the Roller Derby Queen. How else can one account for the fact that if I do not change the toilet paper roll on Sodium Manor, it will not get changed? I know it’s not rocket science, but I did just save a bunch of money on my car insurance. Are they related? Perhaps. All I know is I am the changer of the roll and I am the only one who is apparently able to touch the spare rolls from the hall closet. Or, if by some miracle, someone dons an Ove Glove and hot potatoes a roll onto the bathroom counter, well, making it on to the actual spindle is another epic tale indeed. It sits on the counter staring straight up like a Cyclops, never making the leap to the trapeze bar. I am fairly certain Tammy “could” do it, maybe, with some practice, but she does practically everything else in the house, so when would she ever have time to master an intricate process such as this? Time and time again I am struck dumb, staring at the holder, mesmerized into ogling the tiny cardboard chamber, hanging gloomily yet somehow taunting me, daring me to sit down anyway. It’s tiny bits of end roll scrap clinging to the tube like it cut itself shaving several times. At our house this is an almost daily occurrence, and yet am I the only one, through sheer timing and panache, who glimpses this intimate baring of the roll’s soul? It would seem so, since it is always I removing the spent tube and replacing it with a new double sized roll. Kind of like welcoming in Baby New Year at midnight; so long Father Time, Hello, Charmin. I now own my talent and brag of it often. It used to come out as a bellowed question to the sky, loud and exasperated, “Am I the only one who knows HOW to change the toilet paper rolls in this house?” To, “I AM the only one who knows how to change the toilet paper rolls in this house.” So there you go. I own it now, and may we never have a drip dry "incident" again.

Aside from the epiphany of yes, I am queen of the roll call, we finished up Jake’s birthday weekend Sunday. Saturday we were off to the Mall of America where other people change the rolls. He and two buddies played around at Nick Universe all day while we shopped for Sarah's confirmation dress. Found one. Yips.

This past Saturday we went down to Burnsville to see Cathy and Andrea and have dinner and play games. The dinner rocked! I even ate not only mine, but the rest of Tammy's asparagus. That chicken sauce is to faint over. Tammy made us all homemade chocolate brownies with walnuts, and they were frosted too. Score. Then it was a good old fashioned game of Monopoly, complete with old wooden houses and hotels and white one dollar bills. We had a blast. Tammy won, the land tycoon, but for the first time ever I actually had Boardwalk and Park Place and had a hotel on each. It was my eventual undoing of course, but still. I had Trump hair for the tiniest of bits.

In the meantime, I better get going to work today and then its Idol Tuesday. Enjoy your week everyone. I love you all!

Bald, Style or Guile?

Hi everybody! I am compelled to start this blog in the middle. So yesterday Tammy and I had Ken come over to do a little more electrical work before Nick starts putting the new ceiling up in the basement. As a thank you we took him to Serum's for wings where we hooked up with Nancy Dexter. I should have suspected the night would turn bizarre when Dexter's boyfriend Steve came along. It's not common. Let's put it this way, when I saw Steve walk in my first thought was, oh great, Steve poked his head up so there's going to be six more weeks of winter. He's usually a backgroundhog boyfriend, not a forefront. Anyway, during the course of the mega pans of wings we ingested we began to discuss a Spongebob episode, one where Spongebob is in the weeniehut talking to the nerds. The topic? Is bald a hairstyle? We had a blast discussing it. I mean, if someone purposely shaves their head is it a hairstyle? Do you need hair to have a hairstyle? What if you are genetically bald with no choice, is that no longer a style if in fact a shaved head is a style? I would be curious as to what you readers think. Is a bald head by choice a style? I say yes, but Ken says you have to have hair to have a style. The jury remains on the fence and my sides hurt from laughing.

After such witty reparte we all went over to Ken's to play pool. He lives right on the Rum River with a super great view. Anyway, he has a pool table and a killer stereo with a rocking 80s dance mix so we had a ball. The Go-Gos, Wham!, Wang Chung. It was great! We were dancing and shooting pool. It was a lot of fun and different as we didn't plan it. Then Steve left in a huff and we aren't sure why but he can get that way sometimes. I think it has to do with his groundhog roots. He doesn't get out much. So Nancy came home with us and we three hung out on the couch watching an old Medium episode. She left this morning and we've just been hanging out and doing laundry. Well, actually Tammy is attempting to hang the new blinds above the sink but I can hear frustration coming from the kitchen so I'm staying in here and blogging. Works best for everyone, LOL. One little more bit of touch up and that kitchen is done done done. It 's super great.

The rest of the week was pretty much the same. Homework, running around, you know, the usual. Oh but Friday night we dropped off some stuff for Sarah at her dad's and then went over to Bruce and New Nancy's to see the new TV and flooring they have. We ended up chatting and laughing over there for quite a awhile. Great times.

Oh and this year I am closer than ever to actually seeing all the Oscar nominated movies prior to the Oscars. We watched Inglorious Basterds, District 9, and The Hurt Locker, all in the last week. That brings us to having seen five of the 10. So far for me it's Inglorious Basterds but I think that's becasue I really enjoy The cleverness of Tarantino's stories. District 9 was unusally good though. Interesting. I had a hard time connecting with any of the characters in the Hurt Locker, but I don't do war movies very well. I still like Battleground with Van Johnson as my favorite, so that tells you something about me.

I guess that's about all there is from Sodium Manor this past week. Jake turns 12 on Tuesday so this weekend we have his kid party and family party, so that means I better get cleaning... ahh well. That's what it's all about, NOT the hokey pokey. Take care everybody. I love you all.

-Diane

Friends, Romans, Canadians, Lent Me Your Ears

Hi there. A friend of mine posted this old softball picture on Facebook and I just had to share. It's 29, yes that is correct, 29 and older than Cathy, years old. I'm in the first row middle if you can't figure it out. Those were the days, my friend.

Well,well welcome to the blog, to the week that will mark the 2010 Olympics from that rogue country, oot and aboot, Canada. Minnesota has lots of people in this year's competition so the coverage will be lively. They are already waving Lindsey Vonn's SI photo all over the place. Puh-Lease. I'd roll my eyes but they might get stuck that way. Could someone tell these athletes, yes this also means you, Danica Patrick, to save the innuendo and scantily clad eye candy. Go Daddy, my foot! It takes away from your sport. Do you think the guys respect you more in the morning? Ok, no preaching today. One of these days I will offer up the preach blog, "Preaches and Gleen" but I'm giving up preaching for lent. Ok I'm lying. No matter how clean I try to get my jeans I always have lent in my pockets.

Now, the Superbowl is over and the super snow keeps coming, and we are hunkered down and waiting for spring, more than I can remember in winters’ past. I just watched an American Experience on PBS last night about the Donner party, snowbound in 1846. So I got that going for me, knowing we have plenty of frozen pizzas and peanut butter, so no human parts will be ingested at Sodium Manor this winter. Well, in an non-sacrificial way that is. I cannot speak to any secret ceremonies that may or may not take place in the dark recesses of the basement. You think we keep all these animals for sheer joy? Ok, enough Dan Brown secrets for now. I have said too much.


Speaking of basements, on Monday Nephew Nick cut the right stairwell wall down at a diagonal slant. It’s like cutting the cheese only bigger and much much louder. He’s not even finished and already the stairway down looks and feels so much better. It no longer feels like you are walking down a leaning elevator shaft, or mine adit (yes, I do love crossword puzzles, why do you ask?) We will finish that off in the next few days or weeks, and add a banister and railing, and it will seem like a whole new descent. The biggest problem I foresee is that for now, because that carpet is so worn and nasty, we force the dogs to trod upon it to get the mud and water off their paws. We send the dogs down those basement stairs as they come in from the garage as a quick fix. Once that carpet is replaced, oh, and it will be replaced, I will have to actually bend over and wipe their paws with a towel. Egads! That’s eight paws. (If they were cats would that make them an octopussy?) Aliens observing from above are taking notes that we as humans should respect. Who actually rules the planet when a human’s job is to follow our dogs around, pick up their poop, feed them, and then wash and dry their feet when they enter the house? Who’s the boss now? Um, yeah.

A big Happy Birthday shout out to Cathy, who celebrated last Saturday, and to my sister-in-law Christy, who will celebrating on Friday, to coincide with the Olympics. Awwwww. Nice. Happy birthday to you both. Oh and a kudos out to Amy who is blogging her grandmother's life through letters. It's pretty great. Give it a shot. www.athendrickson.blogspot.com

OH I could prattle on, and often do, but I think we are done for now. Kids made honor roll. Score! Tammy's well, score! Life is good. Trifecta score! Enjoy your week and I love you all. Fo real!

Diane

Sports Withdrawl - the in between weeks

Here is to another week, locked in the frozen grime laced snowy wastelands of Minnesota. We are nearing February and its the time of year I loathe. I'm over the super cold, over the short gray days, driving to work in the dark, and returning home in the same inky blue. I'm tired of using more windshield wiper fluid in one day than a dehydrated in-patient's IV holds. Did I mention I'm over it? Happens to me every year. Opposite of the polar bears waiting for the arctic freeze to return and seal meat to prosper, I'm waiting for green grass, bonfires, and 16 hours of daylight. Soon. Two more days until Puxatawny Phil peeps out from his groundhog hole to tell me if there will be six more weeks of winter. I heard he's on Twiiter now though I doubt he even leaves the hole. He has his PR groundhog assistants check I'm sure.

In the meantime, we've been getting caught up on movies. We saw Julie and Julia this weekend. What a sweet movie. We're halfway through the Hangover. Jury's still out on this one. Guy humor for sure. We have the Wrestler up next, followed by the Hurt Locker. I am hearing many things on Avatar, so I may have to actually venture into a theater soon.

I guess I'll say the big excitement for this past week was the bomb threat at the high school that closed the high school and junior high last Monday. Somebody didn't want to take that bugger of an algebra test, that's what I figure. Some goofball used yellow spray paint on the doors of the high school saying, "Mass bomb 1-25-10". Personally I thought they were talking about drunken communion but it was enough to shut down both the high school and junior high due to bussing issues etc. Nice. Um, did they not realize that these days schools have cameras all over the place? Dorks. Of course there was no bomb but it gave the police dogs a nice outing.

The kitchen is all but finished. The new window treatments are up and everything is touched up and painted except for the baseboards at the bottom of the cabinets at the floor. This weekend we finish that and move into the laundry room to peel wallpaper and paint those walls a Smoky Slate, to match the kitchen. At least our projects have helped the winter time pass. Tammy's nephew Nick was over last night to give us pricing on materials to start moving that basement bedroom wall out about a foot, finish the ceiling in sheet rock, getting rid of the drop ceiling, and cutting out a hole to open the stairway leading down there, where we'll add a banister. That will be the BIG project. We'll take our time and have fun.

Tonight is Sarah's band concert. Go clarinets! Jake's isn't until April. He's a baritone man. Right now the Gopher men's basketball team is being smoked by Ohio State. Bummer. Sports yes, but not the same. I was able to tape and watch Serena kick Henin's butt at the Australian Open. I guess there are some sports on worth watching, I must just have the football blues. Well, then again I am a Bears fan, so that is an on going condition. Twins and Bears. I'm ready.

That's about it for this week. I have no rants or raves to report. But I'm glad to be alive, healthy, working, and loved. So I got that going for me. And Jake's got a 12th birthday this month. Sweet. Here's a great week and yet another chance to win that Powerball! XOXO

A Happy Belated Birthday to You, Tammy Graham!

Twas not so long ago (two weeks more or less) that Tammy became the first of this clan to turn 45. We May birthday girls will just have to wait our turn, right Dexter? Right New Nancy? Right MJ? Here on Sodium Manor I have been so pre-occupied with kitchens and internet modem blow ups and snafus that I was not able to properly acknowledge this milestone in this blog until now. So in honor of Ms. Graham's 45th birthday, she has given me permission to include this cheesy wheezy lemon squeezy, sweet in a goofball way, poem I wrote for her in honor of our life (well, and demonstrating for Sarah how easy it is to create a poem in less than an hour when money is tight and Xmas gifts are in demand and no, they don't all have to be romantic-ey and ewwwwy). So here goes.

Love in our house looks like this:

The sound of the washer at midnight
The buzz of the dryer at dawn
Cooking our eggs Sunday mornings
And John Deere mowing our lawn

The bellow of kids up the stairway
Loose sand from the dogs coating floors
Our TV too loud in the front room
The cat crying out near the door

Our house staying clean for a minute
Stray socks being flung in the hall
Making spaghetti for dinner
Nursing the tears from a fall

The laughter of kids being silly
They jump out and scare us for fun
Talking of homework and stories
Helping each other stay young

The paying of bills at the table
The projects that move up our list
Simply put our life is amazing
Each day is a wonderful gift

a-blee a-blee a-blee that's all folks. Until next week, another day another project.

Love,
DIane

How to get How to get to Sodium Street...

(To the tune of the Sesame Street song)



Sundberg Day

Sweepin' the clouds away

On my way

To where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get

How to get to Sodium Street?





As you can see by the photo it’s a Sundberg Family Christmas on Sodium Street (a.k.a Sodium Manor), with a few non-Sundbergs thrown in for good measure. Just to be clear Tammy's a (nee Sundberg). Ah, but is there a Grinch in this Sundberg clan? A Cindy Lou Who? It’s up to you to determine for yourselves and remember: Only YOU can prevent forest fires. Notice Jake and Sarah are almost as tall as their mom in the middle. Time flies. We had an excellent Christmas Eve gala at our place with plenty of great food and great people. I heard the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day. Now it’s the new year and I’m calling forth a year of creation and wide-eyed wonderment. Um, yeah, so let’s blog all over this cat house.


Most of you already know that Tammy and I have been spending a lot of time at Home Depot. What you may not know is how different the experience is for each of us. Often times one of us will pop into a Depot (we have several in the area to choose from) on the fly to pick something up. That is where the similarity ends. Here is how the experience goes for Tammy when she enters a Home Depot alone, or with me bringing up the rear so to speak. In she walks and the aisles seem to part for her, everywhere she goes men are falling all over themselves asking her if she needs anything, can they help in any way? Heck, they place their orange aprons over melting snow puddles so she can cross the floor. Rose petals magically appear floating softly from above and angelic music coos all around. Only a small exaggeration, trust me. I’ve witnessed it with my own two peepers. It’s quite fascinating from a sociological standpoint. You’d think these guys just got off a deserted island or something. She says its creepy (I hear tell it’s one of the downsides of being hot. LOL). It’s kind of funny because Tammy is actually quite handy and can use practically all power tools and has done so numerous times including saw-like thingees, ratchety doohickees, and mega drills. She installed her own invisible fencing with Nancy Dexter’s help at her old house, and created and laid her own tiled fire pit another time, etc. So when she goes in Home Depot, she is no helpless Nell looking for Dudley Dooright to save her. Although the guys there seem to think that is exactly what she needs, or else as my theory says, they just want to get close enough to slip their telephone numbers into her coat pocket.

Cut to me. I AM Polly Purebread looking for Underdog to help me. Our new dishwasher came the other day and we needed a longer steel braided cable than what was used in the old one, so I agreed to stop at the Depot on my way home from work. When I enter a Home Depot alone? Picture this: The workers scatter like cockroaches. You can hear the echo of my boots as I wander toward the plumbing department. Crickets begin to chirp loudly in the background, and I think I can sometimes hear paint drying. My HelloOOooOOooos bounce off tiers of scaffolded product with no reply. I am the only human left on the planet. Well, it seems that way anyway. I keep looking around for the floating eyeball and Rod Serling to announce I just stepped into The Twilight Zone. This time, after wandering for a bit I found the plumbing department, desolate of course. I did espy a couple of worker bees near the flooring row but as soon as I saw them, they saw me and buzzed off to somewhere else. I found the aisle where I think the braided tubing loiters, and an old fuddy duddy worker meandered by in slo-mo, and saw me perusing the items, clearly concentrating and carrying a bit of trepidation. I glanced at him. He picked up his phone from his belt and made a personal call, walking away from me. Seriously, were my cooties showing? Annoyed at this point I think to myself, hey, I’m no dummy, I can figure this out. Let’s see, here’s the braided tubing, but I need at least 8 feet and these are only 6 feet long. Hmm, I must need a brass coupler, now where would those be? I was close. I could smell it. But close wasn’t going to cut it, so I left the aisle on a mission to find Grandpa Walton and force him to help me at pencil point. He was hiding (he claims picking up a loose screw) in the electrical wiring aisle. He saw me. I pounced. I dragged him by the ear to come and help me, and he got me squared away after I suggested a coupler to him and he agreed (eyeroll). Anyway, that’s how different our Home Depot lives appear.

Short story long, we spent NYE weekend sanding and painting the kitchen cupboards (Irish Mist- a white with gray undertone) in preparation of the new granite counter tops that will be arriving soon. We still have some cupboard doors to finish but everything else is done and new contact paper has been laid, and the kitchen put back together. By week’s end doors will all be back on and it will be looking good. We are picking up new handles and hinges tonight.

On a side note as many of you also know, it is colder than a fart in a dead polar bear up here right now, and yesterday we took Sarah and her friend shopping in Maple Grove as her Xmas gift cards weren’t getting any younger. So while we were waiting for them to meet us at Pot Belly’s, we enjoyed a sandwich and did some people watching. It was maybe 4 degrees outside, -11 with wind chill or something. What do we see? A woman in FLIP FLOPS. Not a girl. Not a teen or tween. A full grown 30-something woman sporting flip flops. I swear only in Minnesota. On the way home I bet we saw a total of about 15 snow mobiles tooling around. No flip flops on them however, just on the woman shopping. Seriously...

Guess that's it for now. This weekend we get to hang with Cathy and Andrea and I'm thinking there may be a lasagna in our future with garlic bread and salad. Hmm... Until next time, I love you all and Happy New Year to YOU!