Get off my ass, Grandpa!

I need to tell you a story about bikes.

Deep breath.

I was biking on the Greenway in Minneapolis this week and it was getting pretty late. The sun was starting to go down and the wind was getting very intense and I was pretty much alone with no bikers or cars in sight. Then all of the sudden I felt someone’s presence right behind me.

I am thinking “what the who?!” and I turn around and it’s a super old man on a bike DRAFTING off me. We’re talking his bike is so close to mine that my back tire and his front tire are practically parallel and we are squeezed into a tiny bike lane together with miles of nothing in front and behind us. I was not about to let this guy bike that close to me when we are completely alone on the Greenway and he has all the room in the world to spread out and get the frick away from me. So I slow down and move over into the other lane in order for him to pass me. Except he slows down with me and cheerfully says “no thanks!”

That was unacceptable. If he wasn’t going to pass me then I was going to bike too fast for him. I sped up considerably but he stayed right on my bum and it was starting to freak me out because, hello, I’m a lady and he’s a creepy old man (who was going freakishly fast for his age) and I couldn’t see him because he was behind me.

I started to get really frustrated and I kept looking back at him and visibly scowling to try to get him to pass me, but he wouldn’t. So finally, I put on the breaks, stopped my bike, and moved off to the side because we were nearing my exit and I was not about to let him follow me all the way home.

I stop. He passes me! While passing me he says in an again very cheery voice “have a great night!” But here’s the thing. He exited at my exit! And not only that, he continued to go the way I needed to too. So I slowed my bike practically to a crawl because I didn’t want him to know I was behind him, and thank the biking baby g that he did not turn onto my final street. I sped home the whole way, ready to feel his unwelcome presence behind me at any moment.

Undecided voters are crazy.

At my news station we are organizing debate-watching parties during all four of the presidential/VP debates this fall. I am in charge of recruiting undecided voters to come to these parties so we can pick their brains after the debates about whether their minds have changed, what they’re looking for, etc.

The thing is…these people are crazy! I just invited one undecided voter who said that he cannot come because he has five classes and must study many hours a day. He then proceeded to recite to me every grade in every class that he’s taken over the past two years, and then he told me what place he got in his school’s liberal arts fair this year and what his project was.

Really? Is that necessary? I felt like I was stroking the ego of a 5-year-old who had just made a ceramic hand print.

Masks look freakily real these days.

Best falls from the weekend.

The events of 9/18/08.

Spotted 8:25 am: Two roommates presenting third roommate with a birthday suprise sausage, egg and cheese McMuffin with a lit candle stuck in the top. Third roommate is quoted as saying "I can't think of anything I would rather stick a birthday candle in".

A lunch-inspired love email

Lesson Learned: Showing your coworker a new lunch spot goes a long way. Observe the following email I received after doing such a thing.

Subject: Dear, oh darling, dear

Dearest Anna,

I cannot express the amount of gratitude I owe to you on this day, the day you lead my virgin hand deep in to the skyway. The twists and turns to Eddington's were new and could have served a frightful purpose - Minnesotans and small chain restaurants hovering at every turn, waiting to surprise and misguide me. On another day (a day without You) I would have easily fallen to the tricks and ploys of D’Amico, or even a sub sandwich place. But you, (yes You!) dear Anna, (oh Anna!) was there to show me how.

Eddington's has brought such proper spoils, and it is to You I owe my early lunchtime happiness. The chicken tortilla soup, although I know, dearest, is not your soup of choice (the choices overwhelming and abundant!), provides the delicate zest of a chipotle burrito, and the hearty composure of a thick, warm blanket in the bitterest of Minnesota winters.

And that’s a damn load of breadsticks. Oi. I’m too stuffed already.

-w

Coming on a little strong for the doc.

I was so excited about meeting my new doctor today. I’ve always wanted a real doctor of my own because I’ve had random doctors for random things before, but I never had an answer when a form would ask me to name “my doctor”.

The arm rash I went in for was, if you ask me, particularly unimpressive so I feared she thought of me as a hypochondriac. To show her I wasn’t one and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with her diagnosis of “it’s pretty benign, how about you just put a hot compress on it”, I thought I would try to throw a little humor her way.

She asked me when my last yearly pap was and I told her it was this May. She looked confused and double-checked the chart, so I decided to gallantly throw in there “but don’t worry! I’m all yours next year.”

Instead of reacting with a mouthful of laughter and glee, she continued to look puzzled at her chart. She probably just didn’t hear me…right? You would have to be a crazy person not to laugh at that.

Bless this child.

Old lady legs.

Today I got back on the bike after a couple weeks of driving. It felt good to go 13 miles to work by the sheer power of my own tree trunks. Without doing it regularly, however, I was dragging a little. So naturally I wasn't too surprised when a 75-year-old biking grandma hard-core passed me. What did surprise me, however, was that sprouting from her waist was a pair of legs not dissimilar to these:

My week at the RNC.

I'm safe! I walked away from my four days of shooting and editing RNC video coverage with but a mere whiff of tear gas, slightly bloody ankles from my rubbing shoesies, a pesky tum tum ache, and the exhaustion of a professional elephant lifter. But it was worth it! Because here are my babies.
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1. Hockey parents reacting to Sarah Palin's speech. Watch out for the most adorable hockey grandma you have ever and will ever see in your life.


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2. Bike cops part one. Watch for the lady cop who gets cold easily.


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3. Bike cops part two. Although my teammate got a sweet shot of a falcon devouring a pigeon in a tree, we decided we had enough b-roll to suffice.


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4. Bushville. Watch for the puppy!


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5. Peace Team. Notice how all the guys are tall, bald and bearded.