Chris Halverson’s Blog

Blogging to you live from my deck. I took the day off today since it’s now the middle of August and I still have about 5 weeks of PTO to take. Oy, it’s going to be hard to fit it all in. Again. I do this every year, you’d think I’d learn by now.

It’s been beautiful around here the last few days. Well, “nice” if you mean in the 90s or so, but I can handle that despite the fact that I’m not what you’d call and outdoors person. Outdoors to me means sitting on the deck having a drink and ideally a cigar. Lawns are looking a little brown, but our new landscaping looks great (we had a new retaining wall put in earlier in the summer).

I did find a new cigar store that I think I’ll come to love. Previously I went to one that is close by and has a decent selection, but the staff knows absolutely nothing about cigars. It’s attached to a liquor store and is staffed by people from there instead of having dedicated cigar store people. It’s nice because it’s close, but other than that I was left wanting. I used the new fangled Internets and did what the kids these days call a “search” (I used “Teh Google”) and found one further from my house, but fairly close to my office that is really nice. It has a 400+ sq ft walk in humidor and couches and chairs to sit at and smoke in the store! They have a big screen TV and free WiFi. ZOMG! I went up there about 1pm today (Monday) and there were like 4 people sitting around chatting and smoking. The sales people were knowledgeable and helped me pick out something new. I’m now sitting on my deck trying it out and I have to say I like it. Locals, if you’re in the Maple Grove area it’s called Tobacco Grove, check it out.

Oh, I finally learned how to blow smoke through my nose without passing out and choking to death. When done a few times during a smoke of a decent cigar, it does add a lot to the flavor.

The August heat does mean one thing in this area: The Minnesota State Fair. I know Drizz is already getting psyched for the beer drinking, kid chasing and people watching.  Personally, I’m of the mind that humanity basically sucks, so I tend to avoid things like the fair. Seriously, I get no enjoyment out of watching overweight people either squished into clothes that are too small, or hanging out of wife beaters while letting their 8 kids run all over the place. If I wanted entertainment like that, I’d just watch CMT or something. My guilty (geeky) fair pleasure is listening to the fair police on the scanner. It’s amazing the stupid things that stupid people do when they get looped up on Leinies in 100 degree heat. Hopefully they haven’t moved to digital yet (I forgot about it last year, so for all I know they already have). I do send the boy out with some money to bring me back a bucket of Sweet Martha’s cookies, but other than that I avoid it like the plague.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 1:33 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.