Trip to Duluth

Sister Lorrie (and by no way do I mean Nun), nephew Bobby and Niece Erin made the trek to Minnesota this week.  Yesterday we loaded up in the truck and headed to Duluth.  It was only about 45 degrees and windy as all get out.  While we were there we toured the S.S. William A. Irvin iron ore ship.

Our tour guide, Hugh, was a winner!  He was interesting and full of information.

http://www.decc.org/attractions/irvin/

Making Plans to go to Michigan

It's been 5 years since we went to Michigan Speedway.  This time it will be a little different.  This time we'll be camping on the infield.  Yippy.  Jerry Katz is going to drive up from Alabama and meet us there the weekend of June 12th.  Stay tuned for more updates. 

The Doggie Snuggie? Really?

Ahhh Yet Another "Interesting" Photo

During the Nisswa American Legion Easter Egg Hunt Lindsey get's extremely "friendly" with the Bunny.  And who know's why Josh felt he needed to befriend the furry critter.

Lindsey and Kaylie liked the bunny.  Kaleb and Kiehra refused to participate in a photo op with this creepy rabbit.

Pictures Tell A Thousand Words

What's the odds the dog would be taking a dump in the background of this photo taken is Dad's sap shed?

New Gutter

Well the gutter that Makita and Doc hung for me almost 10 years ago came down last night and a new seamless gutter went up on the West side of the house.  Josh showed up with his work trailer and did a fantastic job.

Fellowship at Stella's

A week ago, prior to Easter, Stella hosted WNF.  The gang colored Easter eggs.  It was Marley's first Easter.

Upgraded Electrical

Yesterday I had the electrical service updated in my house.  Yeppers.  Went from fuses to breakers.  Good grief. 

Bye bye fuses!

Farewell to Uncle Fred

This Saturday Uncle Fred was taken from us.  Fred was a great guy.  He was always happy go lucky.  A positive thinker.  A bright spot.

Uncle Fred was a great husband, father and friend.  He was a hunting buddy to my dad and my brother.  He was a great cook.  He enjoyed his labs and fly tying.  Fred found the fun in everything he did.

  He'll be sorely missed.

Sale on Eggs

Cub has a sale on eggs this week (due to Easter I would imagine). If you spend $25 on other items in the store you receive a dozen large eggs FREE. Well I can hardly pass up FREE. So yesterday I headed over to Cub to get my FREE eggs. Stella was to host a potluck WNF that evening. One item I usually prepare for these type of occasions is deviled eggs. Perfect. FREE eggs! So I went around and around the store trying to spend $25. I picked up some fixins for a salad. I'll bring that to WNF as well. I bought some mayo to make the deviled eggs. Then from there it got interesting. Hmmmm what to buy to jack up my purchase to $25 so I can get my FREE eggs. I was finally at the point that I thought I had $25 worth of stuff in my basket. Now to get my FREE eggs. I trotted over to the dairy isle (since when is a chicken egg a dairy product?). The shelves that house the large eggs are empty. I hunt around and can't find any large eggs. They have medium. They have extra large. They even have what they consider to be a jumbo egg. But no large. Oh well, I'll take extra large and try to slide those through at the checkout counter. No way Jose. They weren't going for that. They asked me if I talked to the guy in the dairy department to see if there were more FREE large eggs. What guy in the dairy department? Have you ever seen a guy there? Me either. He must be behind the secret curtain or something. I said I don't know of any such guy. The gal running the checkout beside the counter I'm at says she'll go back there and find the guy in the dairy department (aka OZ) and get the correct FREE eggs for me. How nice of her. So she ran off with my extra large eggs to retrieve some FREE large eggs. Now I'm "that guy". The guy that you don't want to be behind in line because you're going no where fast. And sure enough there's a fellow behind me looking at me like I have committed some heinous crime by trying to slide the extra large eggs by as the FREE large eggs. And as I’m standing there being “that guy” while the checkout clerk from next door is retrieving the correct FREE eggs; I see that the fellow behind me has a dozen of the coveted FREE large eggs. Hmmmmm. “Hey there Fella, I see you were able to locate the FREE eggs”. “Yes ma’am. They were on a shelf up higher”. I’m thinking “well lah tee dah”. But instead of saying that I asked him if he’d give me his FREE eggs and accept my FREE eggs when checkout girl came back. He agreed (because he didn’t like me being “that guy”). So he gave me his FREE eggs. The girl at my checkout counter did some scanning and subtracting and some such stuff so my eggs would be FREE. Finally I’m on my way (with a bunch of groceries I didn’t really need but bought so I would be entitled to a dozen FREE eggs. Once I’m at home I take a peek at my receipt to see how close I was to meeting my $25 obligation. $26.18. Pretty good huh? Hey wait a minute. What the hell. They gave me my FREE eggs (I see $1.55 rang in and then $1.55 rang out, clearly representing my FREE eggs) but then right above those transactions is $1.59 rang in for the extra large eggs I initially tried to sneak by the checkout girl. The eggs that were taken back to OZ in the dairy department. Well kiss my grits. I went through all that and didn’t get anything free. As a matter of fact I paid four cents more then those stupid large FREE eggs cost in the first place.

Then I went to boil the NOT FREE eggs and two of them are broken (no kidding…I’m not making this up) and the broken eggs have acted as super glue.  Now a half a dozen eggs of the remaining eggs won’t budge from their cardboard coffin. Understanding that pulling and twisting would be a further disaster I end up soaking the cardboard off the eggs. Much later I finally have deviled eggs and I'm off to WNF. So what do we do at WNF? Color Easter eggs. I didn’t even ask Stella how, when or where she got her eggs.

Did Summer Make an Appearance?

Yesterday it hit 70 degrees here.  Mother nature is one crazy dame.  I'm sure we'll pay for it one way or another.  We put Makita's "environment" together last night.  Patio furniture, canopy and fire pit is ready to rock and roll.  It looks a little weird with no leaves on the trees.  We were going to finish my garage stairs but Makita got called to a grass fire (they're already pretty bad...we need rain).

Oopsie Stairsie

Big problem in my garage.  The stairs to the attic broke.  Ooooppps.  We're trying to put in new ones.  It's like the blind leading the blind on this.  You would be repulsed to hear us.  Every word in the book, combined with some occational yelling outbursts and a few Ouch's, as we insure ourselves.  Hopefully it's completed tonight.  Needed to go buy some shims and a new saw blade (don't ask).

Bob's Back in USA

I'm very happy to report that Bob has made it back to Minnesota save and sound and to stay! 

Whistle Booger

Let me play you a tune

Caribou Coffee

Love the coffee.  Hate the new logo.  I'm not sure what happened to the caribou but now it looks like an African Indian Warrior or something.  What was wrong with the woodsy one?

I also love dollar Mondays at Caribou.  Nummy nummy! For $2.00 you can get yourself a medium hot chai.  Then you can forget to put the collar thingee on the cup and walk home.  Without the collar thingee you receive second degree burns.  You could change hands if you weren't carrying a bag of groceries in the other hand.  You would actually have to stop, put down the bag, switch coffee hands and then pick the bag back up.  Too much messing around.  Don't worry.  I have ice on it now.

Fire in NE Brainerd

Makita (a Firefighter) had an "incident" in the yard tonight.  He must have been distracted by the WCHA Hockey Championship or maybe the PBR RE-RUN.  He put our super duper nice cast aluminum fry pan that Ellie and Dave bought us on the gas grill with a bunch of oil in it in an attempt to prepare to fry fish.  Well after lighting the grill to heat up the oil, he forgot to go back and check it.  It got hot.  It got really really hot.  It burst into flames.  Bottomline, I had to go online and order a new pan.  It's cremated. 

Be Prepared

Yesterday afternoon Makita rolled back into town after two days of Irish Drunkenness (aka St. Patrick's Day celebration) in St. Paul. He barely hit town and he had to go to Wadena to fix something at the radio stations there. I was worried he wouldn't make it back for our pre-planned outing of "Little Italy" night at the American Legion.

About 5:30 he called and said he was 25 minutes out. I decided I could use a little exercise prior to gorging myself with pasta, so I told him I was going to take a stroll toward the Legion which is in downtown Brainerd. So off I went.

I don't know what I was thinking but I didn't bring an "ear-brassiere" to cover my ears. The wind is howling and by the time I hiked a half a mile I have an ear ache and can't feel my face nor my earlobes anymore.

I also neglected to bring any Kleenex. Before long I have a serious snot problem. I believe if I could have felt my face I would have felt a steady stream of snot running down it.

At one point it starts to rain. This may have been a snot washing blessing in disguise. Although it didn't mix well with the hairspray I had sprayed on to what now is a rats nest of a hairdo.

I walk down cemetery hill. Nice and quiet. Walk up the other side. Burning calfs, freezing ears, snot faced and crazy hair'd. Then came a ray of light. The cutest little dog you ever did see being lead on a leash by what looks to be a nice young man. I'm a huge sucker for dogs. As they approach I start talking doggie (baby) talk to the little guy. The doggie lets me pet him. The doggie's daddy is terrified of me. Probably thought I was going to ask him for some money which he would decline to give me because he would suspect all I would do with it is buy more alcohol.

I made it all the way to Stella's house and was about to go beg for her to let me in but then here came Makita. He offered me a Hardee's napkin to clean off my face….must have been bad.

The Italian food at the Legion was good. The swelling of my ears went down after a horrible bout of red throbbing. So let this be a lesson, be prepared. I believe that's why they made backpacks.

This and That

St. Patrick's went by with little celebration.  I went to the Brainerd History Group monthly gathering.  We toured the old Carnegie Library Building on N 7th St. on Washington St.  Interestingly, all of the original paperwork starting in 1902 and leading up to its completion in 1905 followed all of the owners since its closing some 20 years ago, and is still there. This includes the first letter sent to Andrew Carnegie to solicit for funding and the corresponding responses, architect's bids, lists of building materials and costs, and more. One can find the signature of all of the who's-who of Brainerd of the day.

After that snoozer Stella and I went to the Log Cabin to grab a bite.  We were aiming for some corn beef and cabbage but struck out.  We were quite bluntly told "we've been out of that for hours".  Fine.  But in full Irish tradition I did have a black and tan.

I (with the help of Nick Alleman and Makita) finally secured an electrician today to change the electrical from 100 to 200 amp service in my house.  It's WOW expensive.  I may need to sell lemonade in the driveway at lunch time to help supplement that project.  I suppose there's permits and hermits and kermits and such that will need to be pulled for the city of "I HATE BACKWARDS BRAINERD" (notice I renamed it).  I'm thinking Baxter is looking more and more attractive.  Oh sure they're taxes are higher but they're future forward thinkers.  Not stuck in the past (old fart council - get a grip).  The only job left in Brainerd is working for the City of Brainerd and they're getting rid of most of those jobs.  But I digress.

Happy St. Patricks Day

Life Without the Internet

Who would have thought that we would become so dependent on the internet? Probably just about everyone. We’ve become very dependent on it, not unlike like the automobile, electricity and the telephone (kids, that was a thing we had wired in the house to place and receive phone calls).

So here I sit, an hour into my work day and without the internet. I’ve taken up writing as an optional career, just in case the internet never comes back and I’m not able to work at the job I would usually do.

I have to say it’s very hard not to go bizerck waiting. Bizerck, by the way, isn’t in the spell check of Word. Well it shows its spelled wrong but it won’t show the correct spelling. If I had internet I would Google the word and Google would ask me “Did you Mean Bezerk?” or whatever it is.

I just checked again to see if it’s still out. It is.  What shall I do with this idle time?

I can’t read the paper because I’ve elected to read it online each day instead of physically receive it.

I can’t pay my bills because I do that online as well.

Internet is rather expensive too. I have Charter (I thought they filed bankruptcy…I’d check that out on the internet if I had internet right now). If you bundle Charter internet with what amounts to basic cable, it runs me about $120 per month. That seems high to me. I use the internet all day long while I’m working, so that’s probably worth it. But you can’t just buy internet. You have to buy the digital cable to get high speed internet. So then I find myself watching the TV because I’m paying for it. This may be contributing to my weight problem. I wonder if I could sue Charter for making me fat. Other people have tried to sue the fast food franchise for making them fat.

Still no internet….. arrrrrrr.

I have a group of radio stations in Marshall MN that are schedule to work with me 25 minutes from now. I typically would use the internet to tap into their computer so I can see what they are doing. We’re kind of in crunch time on this project also. I wonder if I could drive there faster then the Charter service guys get this fixed. If I had to guess, Marshall is probably 4 hours away.

I just went and updated my Facebook using my cell phone (kids, you’re familiar. It’s for texting). That’s very interesting. The cell phone has internet but the house doesn’t.

It’s still out. I called Charter again. They kindly told me in English and thank God, Spanish that they are having trouble in the area. I better call Marshall.

Well Marshall is on stand by and I’ve started painting my nails.

Can”t type very good now. Don’t want to mess up nails.

Calling Charter again. It’s been over two hours now. I’m evolving from bizerck to cry baby. Whaaaaaaaaa. Stomping…ranting…crying. Same darn message.

Here’s insanity. The freak’n TV works. Maybe I’ll have to watch it and eat something and get fatter. Bastards.

You may have noticed I’m getting more and more hostile.

Maybe I should go for a walk or something. No wait … a fellow trainer called me and wanted me to look up something on the internet. Good grief. More crying.

Eat a pickle and watered a plant. Still no internet.

Holy Hannah…finally it’s back! 2 and a half hours later.  Well life is back to normal.  Gotta run.  I have things to surf.