Unlike others I know (*cough* wadE *cough* Jason), I’ve never had trouble with the affliction known informally as “pee-shyness“. The thought of whether I’m next to someone else or not doesn’t even cross my mind. Wait, does that make me pee-cocky? That’s fun in a couple of ways, isn’t it? Hee hee.

Where was I? Oh, right. Despite my lack of modesty in the men’s room, I don’t go out of my way to shoulder up to fellow relievers. Bathroom, uh, tasks are private ones; I want to give people as much space as possible, and expect the same in return. Hence, I bring up the topic of stall etiquette. (Oddly, Alex and I both ran into this separately one day last week, and were similarly perplexed.

Imagine, if you will, the following bathroom layout, where X = urinal, O = little boy urinal, and | = divider. This is the loo layout at work:

X | X | O

When nobody else is around, I take the far left position. If that’s occupied, I take the far right. If those are both occupied, I take the middle, but that’s the only time. (If all three are occupied, I go in the sink.) (Just kidding.) (Sorta.) We’ve recently taken on a fair number of non-Minnesota native workers here, though and I’ve noticed is that most of them will come in and pick the middle slot, even if all three are open.

I would never, ever do such a thing. Would you? Do these people not consider that weird? Are they more pee-cocky than me? Is this a Minnesota thing? I’m not sure. I wish they’d hurry up and start paying heed to local convention; at some point, someone’s going to catch me going in the sink.

My first post for this little website measured in at a cool 807 words. I was always more of a bullet-point guy than a screeder, but, even so, my posts from that era routinely topped 1,000 words. In 2003, at roughly the same time, we introduced both the Gambit and the Forum. The former was a avenue for us to do a daily, while shorter, update; the latter was your standard web bulletin board (except with way smarter comments and cooler avatars). By definition, my writings got shorter. The Forum dried up a couple years later, and, soon after, so did the institutionalized Gambit. (A Gambit still got posted occasionally, but not according to any specific schedule). After a brief flurry of publishing after implementing our snazzy new WordPress publishing tool, I pretty much stopped posting entirely. My last single-authored post was 14 months ago; even that one was pretty brief. These days, my sole avenue for written creativity comes courtesy of Facebook’s status update feature. That’s a max of 140 characters, in case you’re scoring at home. (Or if you’re by yourself.)

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wadE and Wade have teamed up to give you the most indepth analysis of the upcoming 2009 NFL Wild Card Weekend… well… the most indepth analysis you’ll find on simpleprop.com at least…
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i discovered imeem.com last summer while desperately searching for a dashboard confessional cover of a weezer song (this one, if you’re interested) that i’d heard years before but wasn’t available through itunes. i expected it to be a hassle– only 30 second snippets, a cost for downloads, annoying pop-up ads, etc, but found nothing of the sort. true, you can only stream the songs (vs downloading), but that’s not unexpected. in addition, the site makes you register after a certain amount of free listens; however, to date i haven’t received one e-mail based off of that registration. (plus, when you register, you’re allowed to create custom playlists of your favorite songs.) from my experience, it’s just like real.com’s Rhapsody player, but without the pesky $14 charge.

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“i love the yankees. they are better than ‘cats.’ i want to play for them again and again.”

if the yankees move forward as threatened, the above is about the only thing that players and managers will be able to say about the team if they ever write a book about their experiences in the big apple. this kerfuffle, of course, has been brought about by the release of joe torre’s new book, “the yankee years,” outlining his years in pinstripes. in it, torre (although one would argue it’s more tom verducci doing the talking) spills all kinds of dirt about the team and its players, particularly alex rodriguez.

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