J. Michael Andresen

Again, don't forget to enter the 2009 Prognostication Quiz ! As an added enticement, I forgot to say that there will be a prize to the winner! In keeping with tradition started at Eric's party a year ago, the winner will receive a deluxe themed gift bag. Send in your answers now before you forget! Katie and I have service for ten with the china pattern we chose for our wedding. We had registered for 12, though, and have recently decided to acquire the two extra place settings before the pattern is discontinued. The cheapest way to get the china is to go on eBay. Katie found an auction that had our pattern, the Lenox "Vintage Jewel". Unexpectedly, it was also the angriest eBay posting I had ever come across: I really don’t want to part with my beautiful Lenox china, but divorce is forcing my hand. This China has NEVER BEEN USED. It sat in a hutch for a year. Then I found out my husband had a major spending problem, $90,000 in debt, 50k of that in CREDIT CARD DEBT. I w

First, if you haven't already sent in your answers, please participate in the 2009 Prognostication Quiz . It's lots of fun! Over the weekend, Katie and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center to see an exhibit on Eero Saarinen , a famous Finnish-American architect. I found out about the exhibit shortly after I returned from my August trip to Boston. While there, I went to see a show in Kresge Auditorium . Kresge is a fun building because the roof is an eighth sphere, supported primarily on three points: I'm sure I'd heard the architect's name at some point in my undergraduate years, but I knew that I had long since forgotten it. Jan was quick to respond, though. He knew it was Eero Saarinen, who also designed the MIT chapel. I was highly impressed! The cover article of the next issue of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts magazine announced this big Eero Saarinen exhibit that would be split between the two local art galleries. Funny! A

The 2008 Prognostication Quiz was a big success, with 27 entrants battling it out over the year. Matthew B. was our big winner. Sadly, I ended up dead last, the only entrant who couldn't even get two answers correct. I will try to improve on that this year. The quiz is open to anyone and everyone! I keep people updated throughout the year as each event unfolds. It's lots of fun! Added 12/31/08: There will be a prize "gift bag" for the winner! Originally given out by Katie and me to the game winners at Eric's party on 12/31/07, these popular bags of goodies are well worth playing for! Enter now! 2009 Prognostication Quiz Deadline for entries: 12 p.m. on January 10, 2008. Send answers to jmandresen at gmail. (Send 14 answers A to F plus one tiebreaker.) 1. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many of the world’s nations are free, partly free, or not free.

A couple days before Christmas, Katie and I took our relationship to a new level. There's one particular nighttime activity that I find immensely pleasurable. I was always too bashful to ask Katie what I really wanted to do with her, though. Why did I change my mind and finally ask Katie? I guess because we have been married for a year and a half now, and to tell the truth, our usual nighttime activities were getting a bit stale. (I knew that Katie agreed with me on that point, as we have openly talked about that part.) Also, I figured that Katie might be in a more generous mood since it's so close to Christmas. I set the mood very carefully. I started by surprising Katie with a romantic home-cooked dinner when she got home from work. Then I steeled my nerves, swallowed the big lump in my throat, and tentatively propositioned her over the pork tenderloin. She blushed mildly and smiled, pausing just a second or two before softly answering, "Yes." It was truly incredibl

Reasons I believe the man that Katie and I saw across the street today was in fact Kris Kringle a.k.a. Santa Claus: 1. He was very old. 2. He had a long, snowy white beard. I didn't get a picture, but I swear it looked exactly like this: 3. Neither Katie nor I had ever seen him in the neighborhood ever before. 4. He had Santa-like generosity. When we first saw him, he was shoveling the sidewalk to of the house across the street and just to the right. We know all of the occupants of that house, and none of them fit the description in #2 above. Christmas is a time when some people have family members (perhaps elderly bearded parents or grandparents) visiting. He blew that theory when he finished the one sidewalk and moved on to the next house! He shoveled that walk and then moved on to a third house! Katie and I were actually getting excited at this point that we might get our walk shoveled for free. (I had not yet gotten to shoveling out from under yesterday's storm.) Sadly, a

I've waited and waited, but I just don't think we're going to have another hurricane. The hurricane season ended on November 30, but I still held out hope. It was quite a teaser when Paloma turned into a hurricane the first week of last month. That was the eighth of the season. One more hurricane would have meant that I would not end up alone at the bottom of my first annual quiz. That ninth hurricane was not forthcoming. I must finally admit defeat. The answer to question 11 is C. Eleven people predicted this: Matthew B., Sandy, Pete, Megan, Jodene, Jeremiah, Laura, Beth Z., Liz, Jorge, and Rachel. The eight hurricanes settles two of the intra-relationship grudge matches. With that final extra point, Liz passes Jeff (3 to 2), and Megan passes Rob (4 to 3). (Katie was already going to beat me 2 to 1, Ryan had already squeaked ahead of Heather on a better tiebreak, and Jodene completely thrashed Oraldo 4 to 2.) This, then, is likely to be the final top of the leaderboard: 1.

Michael: Sometimes I feel like a cocaine addict. I like to take 100 mg of caffeine in the afternoon, but my pills are 200 mg. That means I need to split them. I typically split a pill on the counter with my pocketknife. I put one half pill back in the bottle and swallow the other half with water. But there's a fine white powder left on the counter from the cutting procedure. I wipe it up with a finger and then lick the finger. Can't let any coke go to waste! Katie: Coke and caffeine are certainly similar. :) Michael: Maybe someday I'll upgrade from my pocketknife and the counter to a straight-edge razor blade and a pocket mirror and really freak people out. Katie: Does anyone ever see you? Michael: Not usually. I am known as "the pill guy" though, for my proliferation of Coenzyme Q10, fish oil, multivitamins, ibuprofen, and caffeine bottles. Katie: People say "the pill guy"? Sad! Michael: Every now and again someone will happen upon me downing some pills

I was going through some old files the other day and found this interesting image, from the famous series of advertisements for Absolut Vodka: I've written recently about being a Scrabble nut. This image appealed to me for that reason when I cut it out of a magazine in college. It is sadly clear, however, that the designers of the ad perhaps knew the rules of the game, but were not true Scrabble nuts. Can you find the two places where an illegal word must have been played in order to create this game board? I'll leave the answer in the comments.

Katie and I stopped by to see Liz, Jeff, Maria, and David for breakfast on Saturday morning. Maria was in top form. She decided at one point that she wanted to go swimming. Jeff enthusiastically (and over Liz's halfhearted objections) set up the wading pool in the living room: You will notice that Maria very carefully put on her rain boots first, so that her feet would not get wet. She was so concerned about Jeff getting his feet wet that she demanded that he put his boots on, too. Jeff instead took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs before getting in. This appeased her: Another kid-friendly activity we did with Maria was decorating Christmas cookies. Some friends of Liz and Jeff made them a very generous gift of a few dozen undecorated cookies along with three colors of icing all ready to go in individual squeeze bottles. Liz and Jeff took turns helping Maria frost the cookies. Katie conversed with whichever parent was not decorating with Maria. I, on the other ha

It's not often you get to tell a fun story about projectile vomiting. Katie's friend Heidi and her two kids Madeleine (age 10) and Ethan (age 6) were over to visit yesterday. At one point while the adults were talking, Madeleine and Ethan were playing an odd game. Madeleine would recite the alphabet and in between each letter, Ethan would belch. He kept the belching going by periodically taking large gulps from a can of diet root beer. I noticed the children playing this odd game and pointed it out to Katie and Heidi. Enjoying the attention, perhaps, they continued three times through the alphabet. They had gotten to "Q" on their fourth time through when Ethan suddenly erupted: a long, perfectly cylindrical column of brownish liquid exploded from his mouth and violently smacked Madeleine across the face. No one was harmed, though, and the efflux seemed to be over 99% defizzed diet soda with no remnants of lunch. The adults tried to be somewhat stern so as not to encou

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v

On Saturday, Katie went to a girls-only social event. My initial plan involved working on manuscript review that is due this week. When the time rolled around, however, I felt more like a glass of scotch and a movie. After being ridiculed by Rachel in the comments of a prior post for not having seen Jaws , I decided to give that movie priority on my to-see list. I greatly enjoyed the movie. It was well made. I particularly enjoyed the score by John Williams and how the Jaws theme "snuck up" in the music when the shark was stealthily approaching. My favorite bit of score was actually an eerie use of silence, when the shark made an dive carrying three buoys, which everyone thought would be impossible. The frightening realization that this was a powerful shark coincided with that eerie silence to great effect. After finishing Jaws , I was surfing channels and doing a crossword puzzle while waiting for Katie to return from her unigender activities. I happened upon Ace Ventura: P

Katie's parents were kind enough to invite my immediate family over to their house in Hudson for Thanksgiving dinner this year. We had a lovely dinner for ten: Tom, June, and Laura from Katie's immediate family plus Ila Kay, her cousin once removed; Cherie, Missy, Tina, and Jeremiah from my immediate family. Katie's family (mostly June) made a turkey, turkey gravy, two kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, rosted cauliflower, cranberry sauce, and two relish trays. Katie made a green salad. My sisters brought rolls. Jeremiah was asked to bring sparkling cider but went shopping too late to get into a grocery store and brought sparkling wine instead. Mom enjoyed that. Meanwhile, I just showed up and ate. That's my favorite. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera. I often have plans to bring it along but then fail to follow through. (I find I forget things more often the older and more decrepit I become.) I was inspired at one point to take o