I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.

Today has been a great day. As I mentioned in a past note, the Minneapolis market won market of the year at my job. We had this really sweet lunch at a restaurant called Fogo de Chao, which is a Brazilian Steakhouse. I then got a cool plaque and I was even recognized by the Publisher/CEO of the company. It's pretty cool that the CEO knows my name. I guess I must be doing something right.

1. As most of you know, I am a huge Will Ferrrel fan. His new movie is Semi-Pro where he is a minor league basketball coach. His next movie after that due in July sounds even funnier. It will be good to see John C. Reilly and Ferrel matched up again: http://icydk.com/2008/01/28/will-ferrell-and-john-c-reilly-in-step-brothers/?loc=interstitialskip

2. I have spent back to back 12 and 13 hour work days. I plan on doing absolutely nothing productive this weekend.

3. Yesterday I had a meeting at the Mall of America and ate a restaurant called Kokomo's. I loved it! The prices were great, atmosphere was corny but good, service was amazing, and food was good.

4. I am really upset with the Twins trading Johan Santana for four double A prospects for the NY Mets. In the past three years, Minnesota has traded Kevin Garnett, Randy Moss, and now they have traded Johan Santana. There are no more superstars (except maybe Adrian Peterson.)

5. Did you really think I would not talk about politics? To the surprise of no one, the heavy front runner for the Republicans after winning Florida will be John McCain. This is why Republicans are smart. I have had several discussions with close friends of mine who are Republican. Not one of them was a McCain supporter. They all would have preferred other candidates (Huckabee or Thompson mainly) however they all voted/would vote for John McCain. Why do you ask? Because he has the best chance of beating the Democratic nominee. This is why Democrats will continue to lose elections. They will nominate Hillary Clinton, an experienced, qualified leader who would make a great president... but will get her ass kicked by McCain. Republicans know that Hillary would probably beat a Mitt Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, or Mike Huckabee so they will nominate the candidate with the best chance of beating Hillary. I don't know one true Republican who likes John McCain ahead of the other candidates but they all like him as a person. In fact, so do I and that scares me.

6. Speaking of politics, I admire John Edwards for stepping down from running for president. He ran a clean, well organized campaign and he deserves a lot of praise. I would not be surprised to see him once again be the vice president candidate.

7. To paraphrase the great French thinker Edmond de Goncourt, today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. I really have spent many a night the past five months examining the concept of love and not until I was reading this Frenchman's theories on love did I start to feel like someone understood. As many of you know I was a Speech major in college and I had to do a lot of studying of the famous Greek philosophers. Maybe I should view love as Plato did, "Love is a serious mental disease." Of course I do not wish to share Plato's views on love. Ironically, if I recall correctly, he died alone, never married, while attending a wedding.