Food and Travels

I was cleaning my desk this afternoon, and I happened across a few scraps of paper lying around with notes scribbled on them.

One was from my last trip to Austria, where I had a memorable meal of Bauernbratl mit saurkraut und semmelknodel. That was something. Knodel is a dumpling, and semmelknodel is like a bread dumpling. Very nice.

The other is a well-worn scrap of paper that hung out in my money clip for a couple of weeks. My family and I were in Providencetown, MA one rainy August day when we ducked inside a Portugese bakery and almost by accident discovered these wonderful pastries called malassada. They were cheap, and looked like they'd go well with a cup of coffee. We were right. Marvelous.

Lucas County

My son John is doing a report on the great state of Iowa. While doing some research online, I happened across a Wikipedia article on Lucas County, the county in which I spent my first fourteen or so years.

I knew there were not many folks there, but I was surprised to learn exactly how sparse it is, with only five towns and cities and a total of less than 10,000 people in the whole county. By comparison, I now live in Dakota County Minnesota; which has about 400,000 residents and dozens of cities and towns. In fact one of several school districts in Dakota County has almost 30,000 student...3x the population of Lucas County.

Lest you think they left out the smaller towns on the Wikipedia entry, I'd point out that I attended grade school in Williamson (one of the five listed towns). My class was the biggest ever with something like 17 students, and when school was in session, I think the population of Williamson was easily doubled.

Drift (A Poem)

Troubles, trials, feelings come and go
But beneath it is this strong
And steady undertow
Pulling us along to
Where we need to go

This current has a name
As you likely already know
We drift along, in the grasp
Immersed in the flow

It is the love we have
The love we show
That makes this whole thing go

Mike's Ringtone Theory

I decided to finally publish a longstanding work of mine, namely a theory regarding ringtones on mobile phones.  

My theory states: "The duration of time which elapses between the beginning of the ring, and the subsequent answer of the call is in direct proportion to the overall annoyance impact of the phone's ringtone."

This theory is derived from practical experience.  First and foremost, my wife enjoys "cool" ringtones.  She also has a penchant for misplacing her phone.  Herein lies the genesis of the theory.

Secondly, I worked in downtown Minneapolis for about a year, and rode the express bus from Burnsville pretty much every day.  This experience led me to further develop the theory.  Note that your typical blackberry-toting professional uses a subtle vibration for a ringer, and answers the phone/text/email within nanoseconds.  Note also that your average college student, with polyphonic hip-hop ringtone may not even hear his phone ring because of a) his apparent coma or b) his omnipresent iPod earbuds.

Obviously there is further field research to be done in order to provide proofs and data to support the theory.  I am currently looking for funding for such research.