Jamie Thingelstad

Tammy and I enthusiastically went to see I Heart Huckabees last night at the Uptown. We had seen a preview a while ago and it was completely confusing but hooked us in a big way. I won’t try to explain this movie. You can imagine that a movie that is focused around existential detectives may be a little odd. It is. And the cast is great. Highly recommended.

The movie isn’t in general release yet, it will be released this Friday. A hidden bonus of seeing it in limited release were some free Huckabees t-shirts. 🙂

This past weekend we spent our weekend up on the North Shore just north of Two Harbors, MN at the Grand Superior Lodge. Tammy and I drove up on Friday with a dinner stop at Bellisio’s in Canal Park in Duluth. Tammy’s family joined us and we turned this weekend into the first Olson family vacation.

We had breakfast at the Rustic Inn Cafe just across from the lodge on Saturday and then made our way to Tettegouche State Park to check out the falls. The weather was very cold, just barely above freezing. The hiking was scrapped because of the weather being so cold. We celebrated two brother-in-law birthdays that evening with dinner back in Duluth at Angie’s Cantina.

Sunday morning we went to Gooseberry Falls. A trip to the North Shore isn’t complete without seeing Gooseberry and the weather was much better this day. We hiked out to the shore of Lake Superior and admired the water for a while. Everybody else took off to head back home that afternoon and Tammy and I spent another day at the lodge on our own just reading and watching a movie.

We had a great breakfast at Betty’s Pies, another North Shore staple, and then headed back to the cities. It was a nice time, if a little cold. I put some pictures up from the weekend as well.

The Uncivil War is not a book I would have typically purchased for myself. It was sent to me along with an invitation to a discussion group. Humorously enough it was sent by a law firm while Lebedoff goes on at some length about how lawyers are one of the specific groups that typically make up his unimaginatively titled “New Elite”. I’ve been particularly interested in the presidential campaign this year and this book showed up at the right time so I decided to give it a read.

Lebedoff’s text describes a “New Elite” that he believes are fundamentally against majority rule, which he ascribes as one of the most important functions of the American democracy. He believes that this New Elite is in the process of trying to take America away from Americans. While Lebedoff proclaims the book to be non-partisan it is somewhat hard to believe as he spends the first 170 pages of the book showing how Democrat = Liberal = New Elite and how the Republican = Conservative = The Left Behinds. The Left Behinds are his name for those that believe that the majority is right.

It’s hard to swallow his naming and categorization of people in these bins. Perhaps any text that tries to take such a simple approach to the American public is bound to have these type of problems. Perhaps it’s also my own personal beliefs that conflict with Lebedoff’s and make his theories seem so conspiracy theorist and convoluted. Of course the author could simply write me off by saying that I were one of the New Elite. As any prejudiced label is bound to do, it makes the argument simple by writing off the opposing opinion. Something that he proclaims the New Elite does all the time.

It took 180 pages and nearly the entire book for Lebedoff to make any reference to a republican agenda or elected official as a member of the new elite. He picks Newt Gingrich and even when he does he pardons Gingrich with temporarily using New Elite tactics. Please…

I do believe there is a “New Elite” but it’s not limited to liberals and educated people. There clearly is a desire to minimize the majority electoral practice in favor of the game of politics. And both parties are equally guilty of this.

As a final note, I found it somewhat revealing that while the author goes on and on about majority rule and how important it is he makes no reference to the fact that Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and lost the election. As Lebedoff even uses this election as an example of the success of the Left Behinds, I find it surprising that there was no reference to an action that flies clearly in the face of what Lebedoff suggests is so critical to the future of America.

Last night Tammy and I went to Defending the Caveman by Rob Becker. I’d heard this was a really funny show and was not disapointed. Becker’s 100 minutes of reflection made me laugh pretty hard.

It’s worth checking out if you have the opportunity.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a Francophile, but blocking cell phone signals in theatres sounds like a great idea to me!

I got to be the spectator today while Tammy did her longest running event ever. Today was the Twin Cities Marathon and Tammy ran the sister event in the morning called the TC10 or the Shortcut to the Capital. Her longest run prior to this was a 9 mile training run and she wasn’t starting with a lot of confidence this morning. She has had trouble running because her knee has been hurting every time she runs.

Today was no exception, her knee started hurting her after a couple of miles but she kept going. She was able to make the whole 10 miles and averaged just below 10 minute miles. She was disappointed since she felt the run wasn’t too bad, but her knee was absolutely killing her. Without the injury, she felt she could have done so much better. She’s limping around fairly badly now. I’m sure it will be better in a couple of days, but she’ll need to take it easy for a bit.

I was very proud of her either way – and it was kind of fun to be the spectator and photographer.

Having your own website is pretty fun. You get to be your own editor and can decide what things you feel are important and want to share with people. Sometimes things happen that really don’t seem that big. For example, you may get rain gutters installed on your house. Why would you ever put that up on a web site? Who else would ever care about that? Probably nobody.

You may think that getting a new vacuum cleaner would be the pinnacle example of such trivial nonsense that has no place being shared with others around the world. It’s just a vacuum cleaner! Who cares!? Really. Get over it.

Well, I’m telling you, this is not just a vacuum cleaner. This is a miracle machine. It sucks dirt and cat hair with an efficiency that brings a tear to your eye. It leaves a visibly cleaner and more enticing carpet in it’s trail. It is the Dyson DC07 Animal.

First off, how cool is it that the vacuum is called Animal. Really, they’ve figured out how to get a man to actually care about what the vacuum is. Animal! Grrr! The thing is big, tough looking and purple. A manly purple, none of this lilac business. It could be in the shop, but it’s meant for your house.

The real sweetness is tasted when you fire this thing up after reading the instructions. You really have to read them, it’s a bit complicated. This is a turbine vacuum. No bags for this baby. And it’s got this super cool clear turbine thingamajig where all the dirt and most notably cat hair spins around like it’s in a little tornado. We ran this thing three times in a row in one room and took a half-gallon milk jug stuffed full of cat hair off the floor. There was more there, but we stopped for now.

When you take the dirt tornado thingamajig off it’s like this Ghost Busters contraption that you take over to your trash can, pull a trigger, and the bottom flips off and the junk falls out. Yeah baby!

If you have a pets, you need an Animal. This thing will suck the eyeballs out of a frog through the patio door. Amazing. I’ll be sleeping on the carpet tonight.. it’s that good. 🙂