This last week was pretty awesome.  My parents were in town and I got to show off how incredibly worldly and sophisticated I have become by taking them to many, many different places to have coffee.  I'm really glad they got to come and see Helsinki, meet my Finnish friends, and generally be assured that I am safe and sound even though I have decided for some reason to live on a different continent than them (for a while).

Since they appeared on this blog last time, my parents were trying really hard not be the next one to do something goofy enough to be recounted here.  Mom lost.  We were walking by the Presidential Palace when she noticed two figures standing motionless out front.  "Look at those fake people!  They look so real," she said.  "Mom those are absolutely real people," I said.  "What?  No they're not, I bet you a hundred dollars."  I stuck out my hand to shake on it, she immediately slapped it, grabbed the iron bars of the gate with both hands and shouted over the traffic noise to the guards who are maybe 30 yards away (so really loudly, in other words) to "HEY!  WINK IF YOU'RE REAL!"  Needless to say, they were real, but they were professional enough (and Finnish enough) not to laugh at us.  One of them was definitely smiling though.  I haven't seen a penny of that hundred dollars.

Someone asked me the other day why I only blog about mishaps and stuff that goes wrong.  I told them it's because stuff that goes right is tremendously boring to read about.  For example, the things that went right today:  I spent most of the day in a cafe working on a PowerPoint presentation for a meeting I have later.  After that, I went to a comic book shop.  After that, I came home and made chili for dinner.  It was pretty good, but not great.  Boring, right?  That's because 99% of life is boring.  If life were truly interesting, no one would come to read this blog, or watch television, or take naps, because they'd be too busy doing awesome crazy stuff all the time.

Anyway I would love to continue blogging but Lyndsey is watching Jersey Shore and it's really hard to write when a bunch of juiced up spraytanned harbingers of American cultural death are on TV.  Whenever you feel like you've got the world figured out, watch some Jersey Shore.  It keeps you intellectually humble.