Sean is just some guy who lives in the Twin Cities. Updates to this blog are at random intervals.

5 December 2001 - Cindy and I moved to a new neighborhood a few months ago. I used to live in a townhouse, but now we live in a single-family home, amongst lots of other single-family homes. And in our new neighborhood I'm seeing a lot more outdoor Christmas lights on houses than I'm used to. And lighted outdoor evergreen trees as well. And more lights on houses. And lighted plastic decorations. And still more lights on houses. With respect to the people who live here, there seems to be a mighty thin line between healthy holiday season enthusiasm, and outright insanity. 25 November 2001 - So, I won't even pretend to know anything about professional wrestling or anything. But, if I were running things, I'd have this up-and-coming new wrestler and call him "The Paper". Note: If you don't "get" this, please don't e-mail me asking. Just consider yourself fortunate and forget about it. 22 October 2001 - The cubicle across from mine has been vacant for some time, but we just got a new person in our group and she's moved into there. And I see that she's got a candy dish. And it's full of good candy, too. Not just cheap suckers, or little butterscotch candies, stuff like that. Today I see she's got little candy bars. The other day she had some good-sized chocolate mints. So far she seems to be pretty good about keeping the dish pretty full, too. She's always got the candy dish within plain view, on the end of her desk towards me, always less than ten feet from my chair. And it seems that she's away from her desk a lot, too. I must capitalize on this before she realizes her horrible error. 23 August 2001 - I just realized that, three years ago, when I first started this web site, I should have titled it "Sean's Sandbox". Get it? Sandbox-Sandquist. It's just so much more clever. I can't believe I've had this last name for twenty-nine years and so far have failed to capitalize on it. In fact, I wish that that's what I would've made my e-mail address, too. sandbox@millcomm.com. That even goes along with the "in box" of an e-mail address. Now I'm depressed. 9 August 2001 - So Cindy and I have, after an extremely busy couple of months, moved into our new house. However, the day we moved, the thermometer in Minnesota has shot up to, oh, about 120 degrees, and it's stayed there for three weeks straight. I don't think the lawn's been mowed for more than a month now, but, being forced a few weeks ago to move boxes in this heat, I absolutely refuse to go out and cut the grass until it gets cooler. The lawn is starting to look like hell, though, and I wonder if the neighbors are noticing. However, for all the importance I place on lawn care, it's probably just as well that the neighbors get used to the fact early that I'm going to have the worst-looking grass on the block. It is looking pretty bad though, and every day I look at the temperature and wonder if the temperature will go down enough for me to do it that evening. And in fact, yesterday the weather forecast was that a storm front was going to pass by, bringing cooler temperatures. So it looks like tonight is finally going to be the night. I was thinking about mowing the lawn so much last night that I dreamed about doing it. Very early this morning, I actually had a dream where, as far as I can remember, all I did was mow my lawn. And then I woke up. And now I have to do the damn thing again. 25 May 2001 - When Cindy and I want to go out to eat, we usually spend a few minutes deciding which nearby restaurant to go to, and then we go. When my brother Chad wants to go out to eat, he goes to my house. If he's lucky, I won't be home at the time, and he lets himself in. It's a lot cheaper to go to my house to eat than to go to a restaurant. Especially when you want to have beer. The other day he dropped by my house while in the process of running some errands. We spoke for awhile while I was upstairs working with my computer, but, needing to go, he said good-bye and headed down the stairs. I figured he was heading out, but after several minutes I noticed that he was still in the house. I went downstairs to find him just about to head out, with a can of my soda and a couple of sandwiches for the road. I noticed that he doesn't put margarine on the bread when making bologna-and-cheese sandwiches. I asked him why, and his answer was "Too much overhead."* Taking bread out of the bag, getting slices of bologna and cheese out of the refrigerator, and then putting the sandwich together doesn't take a whole lot of effort. But, if you want margarine on the bread, you also have to take out the container of margarine spread, open the container, find a knife, use the knife to spread the knife onto the bread, dispose of the knife somehow, close the container, and then put the container back where you found it. It's just not worth the trouble. Remember any of those old sitcoms, the ones where the main characters are all the members of some family, and then also some "neighbor", who's always dropping by at odd moments, eating their food, supplying the comic relief? That's my brother. * I can relate to this. I don't eat watermelon for pretty much the same reason. The seeds, you know. 15 May 2001 - So I'm playing tennis with my friend Rod, and he's about to serve, but in mid-toss he aborts his swing at the ball and instead uses his free hand to wave about angrily at the air near his face. "God, there are a lot of mosquitos around," he mutters. "Must be because of all the rain we've had." He calls out to me, "What about at your house? Have you had any mosquito incidents lately?" Incidents? I mean, it's possible that I've gotten bitten once or twice when I was outside within the last couple of days, but I think "incident" is kind of a strong word. "Uh, yeah. A group of them got together and broke into my house last week. Stole all my stuff." 26 April 2001 - So a few rainy afternoons ago Cindy and I are playing Mario Tennis on the Nintendo. Tennis is my favorite recreational sport, and I play quite often, summer and winter. Cindy doesn't, though, so last Christmas I thought it would be fun to get her a tennis game for us to play. (And just in case you wondering whether the gift was really for her or just for me, I should let you know that Cindy likes video games even more than I do. Also, I should remind you of the fact that she got an engagement ring as an additional gift just a few days afterward). Anyway, the video game is incredibly fun, and even though the players of the game are cartoon characters, the game play is pretty realistic. The sounds of the ball bouncing off the court and off the rackets are very similar to real life; the same lobs, drop shots, and overhead smashes all work the same, and even the players' court position maneuvering and shot angle tactics are similar to the real thing. I'm constantly calling "Switch" to Cindy, just like I do to my real tennis partners, when one of us is forced to run to the opposite side of the court that we're currently covering. And, I find myself utilizing the exact same strategies in the game that I do in reality, like consistently hitting to the opponents' backhands, or luring the net player towards the center so I can go for the easy winner down the alley. But the best way I can tell how real the game is, is that when I lose the point, I pretty much use the exact same swear words that I normally do in real life. 22 April 2001 - So Cindy and I are having buffalo wings at our favorite place, and suddenly an unfamiliar man walks up to our table from another part of the restaurant. "Are you Evil?" he asks. (This restaurant has that interactive trivia game that's now in a lot of bars around the country, and me and Cindy really like to play it--in addition to the food, it's the main reason that we go there. When you play the trivia game, you have to pick out a handle for yourself, and me and Cindy always type in E-V-I-L.) I've won a couple consecutive games, so the guy just wanted to know exactly whom his competition was and congratulate us. I confirm that yes, indeed, the two of us are "Evil". However, in retrospect, I really wish that instead I had replied, "Isn't that kind of a personal question?" Or, even better, "We actually prefer the term 'morally-challenged'." 20 February 2001 - MY FIANCÉE: (making conversation) So, when you were little, did you collect anything? ME: What do you mean? MY FIANCÉE: You know, collect anything. Like, when I was a little girl, I collected Barbies, stuff like that? ME: (thinking) No, I really don't think so. Not really. But, I did make a scale model of the solar system in my basement once. (Remembering) Yeah, that was pretty cool... MY FIANCÉE: My God, you were a geek! I would like to point out that this is coming from someone who still gets the annual "Star Trek" Christmas ornament every single year. 12 February 2001 - So I cleaned the carpet of my townhouse today. I used the rug cleaner that I got my mom for Christmas this year. Yes, I'm aware that cleaning appliances do not making the nicest gifts, but it's what my mom wanted, she specifically asked for one. Plus, my carpet was dirty. "Here you go, Mom, Merry Christmas! Can I borrow that?" The rug cleaner turned out to be pretty nifty device; the twenty-first century has truly arrived. Apparently they're selling like hotcakes at places like Sears and Best Buy. Basically it's pretty much like an upright vacuum cleaner, with two little gallon bins, one that holds the water with the detergent in it, and the other that sucks up the dirty water after it's cycled through the carpet. The only bad part of the process seems to be those gallon bins. A gallon really isn't a lot--after about three or four minutes or so, the bin with the detergent in it goes empty, and at that point the water stops flowing, and the rug no longer gets cleaned. Needless to say, however, I didn't make this observation until I thought I was done, and then noticed that only about a quarter of my total carpet area was actually wet. The best thing about the machine, though, I didn't find out until I was cleaning my stairs. There's a small attachment on the end of a hose, just like most regular vacuum cleaners have, that's used to reach narrow areas that the upright cleaner can't get to. The attachment has a trigger that sprays the hot detergent water into the carpet, and then sucks it up. Or, as I discovered, is also capable of spraying a stream of hot, stinging detergent water into the air. A pretty good distance if aimed properly. I wish my younger brother Chad were here. So typical. A device that can be used for such good, also has the capacity to be perverted into a horrible weapon. Just as we all learned from Star Trek II. 2 February 2001 - The entity I have sitting atop my workstation in my cube seems to evoke a lot of questions. By far, the most common being, "What the hell is that?" as they point to the fifteen-inch high, dark green, vaguely humanoid figure with leathery bat wings, webbed and taloned hands and feet, and mass of tentacles writhing about where the face should be. So what's the matter with people nowadays? Don't they recognize mighty Cthulhu, the Great Old One, central figure of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, lying dead but dreaming in the depths of R'lyeh until he rises again, when they see him? 29 January 2001 - Cindy and I meet one of her old friends, and we tell her that the two of us just got engaged on New Year's Day. "So, you didn't ask her over Christmas, when she might be expecting it," Cindy's friend says, "and then waited a few days until New Year's, just to mess with her, huh?" Yes, that was pretty much my plan exactly. Except that it didn't work, because Cindy wasn't really expecting any ring over Christmas anyway. According to Cindy, it sounds like she had figured that I'd probably never get around to asking. But I did get around to asking, obviously. But, due to all the planning, and phone calling, and bridal-show-going, and decision-making that all evidently lie ahead of us, it's just the actual wedding date that I was hoping to never get around to. For the past month, I've been telling people who've asked, "I'm pushing for sometime in the first half of the twenty-first century." Apparently that's not soon enough for her though. So, June 29, 2002. 1 January 2001 - It's April, 1997, a couple of years before Cindy and I started going out together, and our mutual friends, Brian and Nikki, are getting married. Actually, they've just successfully finished getting married, and we've gotten through the reception and dinner, and now we're taking a breather from the dance. Cindy and me are both in the wedding party, and we, along with a bunch of other friends, are sitting around talking. Due to the occasion, it's not too surprising that the subject comes around to speculating upon which one of the remaining single people in our group is going to be the next to get married. A lot of the people in our group were already attached at that point, so there weren't all that many of us to choose from, but a couple of people guessed that it would be me, somewhat to my surprise. I also recall that at least one person guessed that it would be Cindy. There were others to choose from, but if I recall correctly, pretty much everybody guessed that it would end up being one of either me or Cindy. But, it turns out they all were wrong. It looks like it's going to be a tie.