Entries from March 2003 ↓

So if I had my calendar working, it would show this:

2003-03-31 - Monday - papa roach, 1st ave
2003-04-01 - Tuesday - frank black, the quest
2003-04-09 - Wednesday - new found glory / good charlotte - target center

I’d better stock up on earplugs.

Let it be known that Christie tried and enjoyed the carnitas soft tacos at Chipotle on Saturday, after finding it listed under “Mild” in the new kids-menu handout they have. She used to be straight-up veggie burrito girl every time we went there, but now she’s got another way to enjoy the world’s most perfect food: burritos.

The one they just opened on Excelsior at Hwy. 100 is handy for Minnetonka-based office lackeys like myself. It saves a few miles off the drive we were making to Calhoun, and it’s right next door to the baby doctor.

I’ve also gained an appreciation for the fajitas, whose vegetables I used to find kind of mushy or greasy. Now a steak fajita is a regular order for me (second only to the barbacoa).

And now it’s lunch and I want one, even though I’m meeting Jeremy there tonight before the Papa Roach show.

There’s no Starbucks in Montana?

Or the Dakotas. Sheesh. I thought they were everywhere. Literally.

There is much discussion about what Colin Farrell mumbled to Steve Martin after his goofy introduction, and while it didn’t seem all that funny to me, it wasn’t unclear.

As I remember it, Steve Martin said something along the lines of “our next presenter is successful, talented charming, and young. Can rehab be far behind?”

And Colin Farrell went off-script to say “I’d tell you you don’t know how close to the truth that is, but… you do.”

As in, yup, I’m talented and charming and will probably get out of control in a few years, but it’s nothing I couldn’t have learned from Steve Martin (or countless other old ex-rehabbers).

Thad used these pages to declare Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” video the finest of 2002. MTV played the new video for “Go With the Flow” on 120 Minutes on Sunday, and I think it’s even better.

MTV says you can watch it here, but I don’t trust MTV when it comes to music videos.

We drove the Saturn VUE on Saturday, thinking we’d ponder it for a few months until my lease ran out on the blue car. But then Saturn went and offered me 0% financing for 60 months, a $1000 “loyalty” bonus, and said I could get out of my current lease immediately, as long as I did it during March.

Well, damn.

The VUE is a beautiful car. It’s the first SUV with a variable transmission, meaning that it doesn’t have four gears or five gears: there’s a pulley system inside, like a 10-speed bike, but it has infinite variations between the gears, so there’s no shifting. Ever.

I went with the front-wheel drive 4-cylinder, which I think is plenty for suburban use. I also got ABS which I didn’t have, and Benno will be happy to note that I got power locks and windows. (He was always bitching that he had to lock my car doors himself. Baby.)

I also added the GM CD player (dude, I know) but let me explain. They didn’t have aftermarket CD players. And if you didn’t buy the CD player, then you didn’t get six speakers: you got two. The CD player was $200, and it would have been a hassle to get the premium eight-speaker sound package (another $300) without the CD player. Heck, it would have been complicated to get any VUE without the CD player, but I certainly had the option. I may upgrade in the near future, but at Audio King or something. (I’ll bring Benno, if he still gets the VIP treatment there.)

We went with black, which looks damn fine. They did go ahead and hit a nice sized rock during the delivery process, which chipped the paint under the headlight, but they’re going to take care of that.

Three years ago, I walked into a Saturn dealership with Christie and drove the 2000 SL1. For such a low payment, I knew that the Saturn was for me. (The fact that there wouldn’t be any jerkoff making me sign a cocktail napkin agreeing to pay 24% insterest on a car loan helped a lot.)

I was delighted to find that Saturn would finance a Pioneer CD player. That just sweetened the deal. On March 22nd, 2000, we started our journey together.

That car stayed in parking lots from Dinnaken to Uptown to our own driveway in Richfield. It went as south as St. Louis, over to Wisconsin Dells, and up north to Mutti’s. For 37,900 miles, it served me well.

It was branded with a decal that said “dan.nordquist.com”, a funny little experiment in marketing that never really worked. It had also collected a Blogger.com sticker (Ian Whitney, who had just moved next door to me, wondered online who it could be with the sticker). Band-related tatoos included Ween, Rocket From the Crypt, and a classic white-on-black They Might Be Giants sticker. (A guy stopped me at Baja Tortilla Grill to tell me it isn’t often you see a TMBG sticker. It is at my house.)

There was also a Macalester window sticker that Tim gave to me.

Today, it was traded in. While I got the most excellent replacement car money could buy, I do already miss it. A moment, please, for the car, and then I’ll tell you what we did in the name of Our Family. :)

Got this in my mailbox today:

From: Deborah Conger
Subj: Iraqi countryman crashed an Apache with a gun when he saw US Navi officers fking his mule

…and then it goes on to advertise the bestiality porn. I’m telling you, you want to make sure your email address never gets published on the internet.

Weekend went well. The babies are registered at Target, so if you want to buy them something, be our guest.

Target’s guest, anyway. You’re always a guest at Target, did you know that? Ask Benno. Or anybody at Target. You’re not a customer, you’re a Guest.

I know at least Christie will enjoy this, and maybe some other people out there will be overwhelmed by war news, too. Right now the war seems like everything and nothing… something that should be shocking, but an idea that we’ve become ever so accustomed to over the past six months. (It’s written for teenagers, so don’t blame me.)