It's beginning to look alot like... easter?

The Shovel
is coming out of retirement today. I have been a striking against winter for a month now and today I concede. Winter, you win. I will shovel my drive-way today.

Edu-ol-it-ics
The state is gushing red. Our state's constitution condemns the red. I'm not talking about communists, republicans or Target employees (at least not today); I'm talking budgets. According to the state constitution, the government must balance its budget every two years. Today we stand roughly 935 million in debt (priceless, huh?). This means our fine legislators must take out their, knifes, scissors and hatori hanso swords and begin cutting because lord knows any more taxes* will lead to an increase in aneurysms.

One issue apparently not on the cutting board: education. Good for Minnesota. In fact, education is expected to increase funding (not enough to keep up with inflation though). Now, you might ask, "gee golly, why is state funding for education so safe?" The surprising answer: Q-comp! Who knew... According to Norman Draper's report for the Star Trib, "DFLers ... are still hopeful they can get a modest funding bump this year. One proposal would raise that 1 percent in additional funding -- about $49 million -- in part by spending unused funds sitting in the state's Q-Comp fund, reserved for districts that want to overhaul the way they pay their teachers."

Now here's the burning question: what would happen to those schools running q-comp programs?

TO BE CONTINUED....


*unless new tax income will be spent on more stadiums, preparation for the republican convention, or fighting the growing insurgency from canada.

Wheww

Some Serious Stuff
So mama T, the most amazing woman alive, is mostly alright. I can't even explain how relieved I feel. Turns out the owie in her lower innards is in a pre-cancerous stage. In a few weeks she'll have a section of her lower innards removed and will be in the hospital for 3-7 days. Luckily, no more cancer treatments are necessary. We are terribly lucky.

Twinkies and Haiku
Lavelle had the brilliant idea to have the Twins players attempt to read haiku and then film it. This is hilarious-- probably more so to an English teacher than to anyone else. Mike Redmond cracks me up, TK's haiku about Cuddy is a knee-slapper and Morneau, he's just so canadianly cute :)
Here

Chuck and Dons
I'm going there shortly. I will spend way too much money. At least I'll feel okay when I get my chuck bucks this quarter...

Fencing settled

After two days of in depth research and various powerpoint presentations, Ben and I have decided to go with a cedar dog-ared style fence. Thanks to photoshop I can already imagine what it will look like...





Note: we actually didn't choose this style because it's name references dogs.


Twins stuff
Lirano threw buckets of crap yesterday. Morneau still did not hit. Reusse thinks this team will be luck to finish 4th in the ALC. I don't care. I still can't wait.

Here's an interesting side-note from LaVelle's blog.

"... we started talking about bats. Morneau likes maple bats with thin handles. The others prefer ash bats with thicker handles." (March 11th)

How Canadian is Morneau? So loyal to his homeland that he even swings with their national symbol. Unfortunately the Twins promotions dept has finally taken our Morneau's Canadian-ness to an all-too-cheesed-up status with their new radio ad. Come on, Dudley Do Right and Justin Morneau...




Finally... Did you know...
that treating cancer can cause cancer-

Beginning to Thaw

Today we walked. We did not walk for 20 minutes; we walked for slightly over an hour and at the end of our walk, we were not numb. Mind-blowing.

On our walk we met a portly young man trying to walk two English Bulldogs. This must be what an Iditarod participant looks like Eagan-speak. As these two beasts lunged towards my Penelope, I instructed her to sit and stay -- guess what? She did! The portly fellow scolded his dogs (who he could only try to drag away) and looked in awe of my mild-mannered bully- I feel proud.

This thawing means that tomorrow I can continue Yard Clean-up V. 2.0 -- Not looking forward doing this, but I am looking forward to having it done. I'm also meeting T-Diddy for breakfast in Uptown. MMMmmmmm hashbrowns.

Morneau sucked today. I'm disappointed in my Canadian lust package. He's not faring so well in the pre-season. Punto's still lackluster in the batter's box too -- As much as people hate the Punto, I can't help but cheer for him.

At least Morneau's not sucking at poetry reading... Check out Boof-burger trying to recite a poem about the Twin's new HWP (heavy weight pitcher) Livan Hernandez-- here

Fencing

Penny tells me it's still to cold to walk for more than a half hour at a time.

I agree with her. She may be stubborn but I'm tired. Mostly I'm tired of worrying about who's going to yell at me next about my dog's mad jumping skills. I'm pretty sure my wacko neighbors are just jealous that she can jump nearly three times her height. I mean, dude-- who doesn't want to be able to jump three times their height?? If I could jump 15 feet, I would jump onto ceiling fans and throw popcorn at people from above. Then again, many of my neighbs just suck-- Eaganites seem to think my angel and her mad jumping skills are potentially dangerous. The only way to totally, 100% alleviate these worries and the neighbor's suckiness is through... Fencing.

Today I went fencing. I started by measuring the perimeter of my yard. My fits the shape of a quadrilateral. It has four sides, none of with run parallel nor have the same length. I spent the morning trying to draw a scale images of my yard. This was not an easy task, so I settled for 'close enough.' (see image and hold a mirror to it to decipher my code) http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

I took my measurements to my local HD. There I priced out a number of wooden and vinyl options. Looks like wooden fences will run 2-4 thousand, where vinyl will run 3-6 thousand. I'm not picky-- I just want 6 feet of non-see-through material that will block out my yuck-ball neighbors and allow my babies to run freely but not jump freely.

Now we have decisions to make... oh ... we also have to wait for the winter to leave--


One more thing... Boof blew yesterday.

TMill