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They finally hauled away my enormous pile of brush this morning just before 8am. Now I can back out of my driveway without dodging branches.

I was worried that they might not take the pile because I hadn’t cut everything down to the requisite 6-foot lengths… but in my defense, that requirement was not made known to me until I got home last night since the postcards they were supposed to send out at the beginning of the week to explain the details of the storm debris pickup process didn’t arrive until yesterday.

I kind of cheated anyway. I had a big pile of brush behind my garage that I’ve been meaning to cut up so my regular yard waste service would haul it away for me but I’ve been too lazy to do that so I put it out with the stuff from the storm.

One of my neighbors has lived in his house for 42 years. He’s the original owner. Tonight he said that this was the worst storm this neighborhood has seen in his entire time living there. I had lots of branches down in my yard and, of course, my power is out. The park between my house and Adam and Heather’s has four large trees uprooted and the port-a-potty has been blown into the area where the skating rink normally is… an area which is flooded now. You can smell the port-a-potty chemicals from the street (since it is laying on its side, I’m assuming it all spilled out into the newly formed pond that it’s laying in).

The worst damage is across from the park where a large tree snapped and landed on not one but two vans. Here are pictures of the aftermath. There are pictures there of the tree on top of the vans. You can see the white van that is half-covered but you can barely see the blue minivan that is completely covered by the tree.

Check out this eWeek article about Microsoft’s battle with the EU over their antitrust remedies. I’m quoted a few times in the story.

I woke up this morning to an annoying beeping sound that wasn’t my alarm clock. It was one of the Leak Frogs I have downstairs. The one in the well closet, actually. I was worried when I went down there but there wasn’t very much water so there wasn’t really a problem. The sump pump is keeping up with things just fine. It’s nice to know he Leak Frog is doing its job, though!

The Fast-talking Funny-Guy and Channel 9 Meteorologist, Keith Marler, got a second chance today to pronounce the name “Sparby.” A few months ago, he botched it when he read my dad’s name as the winner of their daily “Time Out for Trivia” contest. Today he got it right when he read my name as the winner.

I’m not sure what I’ve won. They show who the contest sponsor is on the site each week along with the prizes they’re giving away but right now it still says they’re giving away 4 passes to the Renaissance Festival. The thing is, the date above it says 9/3 to 9/14 so I don’t know if they’ve extended that to today or if they’re giving away something different (the bumper before the commercial break said that Time Out for Trivia is sponsored by Kowalski’s Market so maybe I’m getting groceries?).

Update: They just called to confirm that I won. It is a Kowalski’s gift card and I have to go to the station to pick it up tomorrow.

By the way, the question was, “What is the most common lake name in Minnesota?”

The options were:

A) Lake Mugwump
B) Long Lake
C) Rice Lake
D) Mud Lake

The answer is D) Mud Lake. There are 201 Mud Lakes in Minnesota.

There’s still junk scattered around the family room that needs to find a home in the garage and now I’ve started going through the front bedroom so I can finally get all of this vintage Commodore stuff up on eBay. We’ll see how far I get on that today. I’ve had the AC off for the last several days but it’s 83º and sunny outside right now and I need the house cool if I’m going to make progress.

I did do more reading on the whirlpool installation and I think I have a pretty good grip on what I need to do so hopefully that comes along soon, too.

Dustin has been pretty good today… just tagging along around the house while I do my stuff. I stop to play with fetch with him every so often, too.

I’m trying to ignore the fact that I have to go back to work on Tuesday. This was the longest vacation I’ve ever had but it still wasn’t long enough.