At Least It Feels Warm in the Ice Arena

It is bitter cold today. The mercury has congealed into sludge somewhere around -20ºF (-29º C). One could be tempted to skip hockey practice and lie under a pile of blankets watching the natural gas meter spin and listen to the furnace run without interruption.

But we went. Feeling adventurous, I took out The Rumbler and let it warm up for a good 15 minutes. Even after the lengthy idle it still complained when I accelerated.

As for hockey practice, it went very well. Jack skated hard and did almost all of the drills. He decided to do the backwards skate station twice and skip the puck handling drills. After practice I bought him a Twix bar and went to pick up his friend Tanner for an afternoon play date. When I brought Tanner back to our car, Jack had saved half of his candy bar for him. What's going on? No breaks on the hockey bench and sharing chocolate?

The kids played well in the basement, they got me downstairs to play hockey with them. When I stopped to look out our egress window I found the Bush Bane- the rabbit that has assaulted our shrubs lay there frozen stark stiff. He must have fallen down and could not get out and froze/starve to death. So my plan of procrastinating took care of our rabbit problem.

Big plans tomorrow. Mom and Dad are coming down for Jack's game and Mike, Choe, and Suki will come after we get back. Right now Jodi's cleaning the house and making Chex Mix by the bushel. Now our house smells like the Quaker Oats factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There is no way it will all be eaten tomorrow. She'll have to freeze it in five gallon buckets.

Knute Nelson

Today is Knute Nelson's 165th birthday. If you know who Knute Nelson is you are either: A) from Douglas County, B) a Minnesota History Buff, C) also named Knute.

Growing up between the towns of Alexandria and Nelson (yes, named for Knute) I was aware of the name. I'm sure somewhere in my childhood someone told me who he was. Leading to my disinterest was the fact that one of the local nursing homes bears his name. A nursing home is not something a 13-year-old wants to associate with.

Besides the nursing home and the town, a ballpark (pictured) and the local historical society are named for him. In fact, the historical society is his old home. It was moved from it's original site to a spot along the railroad tracks (he was elected to get these extended to Alex) on Nokomis. In college I had to stop there to work on an assignment for a college professor who wanted us to research how our hometowns' helped the WWII effort (the old Northwest Creameries produced powdered milk and canned chickens). The building is huge and smells like a house that has out-lived generations of people.

Beyond that, I knew he was a poltician but little else so I checked out Wikipedia.

According to what I read, he accomplished a lot in his life. Besides the epic tale of immigration (loss, sacrifice, adventure*) Nelson worked his butt off to get an education, served in the civil war, and worked his butt off to become a lawyer.

According to Wiki he moved to Wisconsin, practiced law, and became a politician. He married and then headed to Alexandria, MN.

In Minnesota he set up practice and was elected to the Legislature. Tragically he lost three of his five children in May 1877 to a diphtheria outbreak. Imagine that. One month you come home to a house full of children, the next month you've buried three of them.

Despite this he became governor of Minnesota and later a U.S. Senator. Which lead to name a town. ballpark, and nursing home after him.


*(Brokaw should write about this generation- it's difficult to comprehend the courage and/or desperation it would take to make that journey)

Jack 19, Dad 18

Three Topics
1. Geothermal Energy
2. Messy Kitchen
3. Jack's Bedtime

1. I read an intersting column in the Star Tribune today about meeting our energy needs through geothermal sources. According to the article, by drilling down into the earth's hot rocks and cycling water through to create steam, enough energy can be produced to meet the Earth's needs 2,000 times over. This probably won't help Exxon Mobil top it's $40 billion profit from 2006.

2. The kitchen has become my domain. I like cooking and I'm good at simple meals. I like to be efficient so when I cook I keep busy to save time after eating. Washing used pots and pans, scrubbing the counter, and filling the dishwasher while I fetch ingredients and tend to the food keeps me in constant motion. I try to get the boys to set the table but that only works if I put food on the plates, give them the plates, and tell them to sit down.

Jodi, on the other hand, uses this time to decompress. When she beats the boys and I home, she's starts supper and saves up all of the news for the day and is ready to unload when we walk in the door. Once we arrive, the goal is to get the food done.

When the boys and I whine about it taking so long and being hungry she says, "It's not even 6:00 yet," and proceeds to make my kitchen all messy.

Tonight she was cooking and did a fine job making tator-tot hotdish. Good stuff and cornbread, too. So the kitchen was looking pretty good until I saw the frying pan she used brown the hamburger. I swear she turned the dial to "Melt Metal" when she prepared it. Which is fine, once we finished I was all over that pan.

3. It was my night to put Jack to sleep. Earlier in the evening we played two marathon games of hockey in the basement. We played first to 24 (I won 24-20) and first to 19 (He won 19-18 - Got to keep the peace). In his room, went through the usual routine: Open up the bed, Jack painstakingly arranges his 6 stuffed animals in the proper order, he lays on top of them and we read 3 books. Good times.

When we finished I turned off the light and layed down next to him and he says, "Dad, are you going to die before Mom?" Calmly I said, "I don't know honey (although most likely yes and probably righ before retirement or summer vacation. Headline: Teacher Dies Day Before Retirement From Massive Immune Failure- Likely due to years of exposure to germy kids).

After asking that he said, "Will you and Mom die at the same time?"

"No," I replied. What else do you say to your son?

"Jack," I said, "I'm going to live to be an old, old, old grandpa."

Jack responds, "Well I'm going to always be a hockey player. And when you die you can have your stick ready in heaven and I'll bring all of my equipment, the tennis ball, and the net."

Great. Hockey for eternity.

Random Items

Too tired to write coherently on one topic.

Thoughts on the following topics:

Taxes:
Had the taxes done today. The guy made me sweat it out, but in the end I overpaid the goverment for the 7th year in a row. Thank you day care credit and deductable mortgage interest.

Super Bowl
I'm not excited at all for this game. I like Dungy, but I don't think he's going to win. The Colts gave up 375 yards rushing to the Jaguars and the Bears have 2 good running backs. The Colts' backs (Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes) have had their moments, but the Colts could sure use Edgerrin James about now. Plus, it's on grass.

Minnesota High School Wrestlers
The Minnesota State High School League shut down wrestling for the next eight days because of the herpes gladitorium outbreak among their ranks. The virus affects the neck and face and can, in some cases, lead to blindness if it infects the eyes. Wouldn't make sense to cover all of their skin? From what I understand, once you get this virus you have it for life. What do the future spouses of these wrestlers think about that? Will they be infected? How about future kids? If it's serious enough to stop all wrestling why not have the wrestlers cover up and avoid the skin contact as much as possible?

Global Warming
I didn't worry about Y2K. After 9/11 I didn't buy plastic and duct tape to seal up my house from a chemical attack. My basement does not have a radon detector. These predicted events never materialized (yet) and I didn't take them seriously or worry about them at the time. But global warming scares the crap out of me.

You hear people talk about the science. Is it to be believed? I believe Will Steger. The arctic sea ice is thinning. Antarctica has calved monstrous glaciers. What hurt the credibility of global warming is that the true effect is climate change. Some areas will cool, others will receive more rainfall, while others the opposite effects.

According to Steger, we can look forward to Minnesota becoming a Kansas-like climate. Picture mild winters and hot, dry summers. Precipitation decreases and our wetlands dry up.

The solution is to cut greenhouse gases. By doing so we have a win-win situation. We, hopefully, mitigate the effects of global warming while cutting our dependance on non-renewable energy sources (oil, coal, natural gas). Imagine what our foreign policy would be like if we did not import oil.

The existing renewable sources of energy can be expanded without too much of an economic impact on households, but what we need is a multi-directional assault on this problem. We need research and innovation from several branches of science to cut use of fossil fuels to a level that will be acceptable.

It isn't just the US that can solve this. If we never burned another drop of oil, coal, or natural gas would we be out of the woods? What about China's growing appetite for oil and coal? There are 300 million Americans and over 1 billion Chinese.

Imagine what the situation would be like now if our government had adopted the Kyoto Protocol 15 years ago.

Steve Forbes Would Make This Simpler

Tomorrow is tax day for us. We've been going to the same guy now for 5 or 6 years now. The first year I went he charged me $50. The second year he charged me $75 and said that he'll bump me up to $100 next year. We've been paying $75 ever since.

I like the guy. I heard about him from a retired friend from work. I asked if he knew anybody good around town and said, "I'll tell you what, Danny. You go to this guy. He's excellent and he hates the government."

I'm not sure about that (it doesn't come up at our annual meetings), but I do know that we pay a lot in taxes. I don't think about taxes when I get my check because it's not that dramatic of an amount to get too excited about. On the W-2 however, it's a different story. That amount + day care + interest on our mortgage = a helluva lot of money.

We could do the taxes ourselves (I'm told that people do that). I'd rather give myself a dental filling. Those limp gray tax forms you can pick up at the local library make my attention span revert to its 10th grade geometry class length.

I wonder what happened to Steve Forbes and his flat tax? Would you just have 17% taken out of your paycheck and be done. No deductions, breaks, penalties? No goverment officials sneaking tax ammendments into wildlife bills? This could be a new documentary: Who Killed the Flat Tax?

If a Tree Explodes in the Woods ...

Cold is relative. Two weeks of temperatures below zero and 30º will seem warm enough to build a snowfort without a shirt. You'll find people sunning themselves outside ice fishing shacks with metallic arrays under their chins. On the flip side, after a week in July with temps near 100º a 62º night gets the neighbors turning on the furnace and looking for their cuddleduds.

It was cold today and it will stay cold for the next 5 or 6 days. Driving home from work I was looking at the trees and remembered a novel by Gary Paulsen that I read to my fourth graders in years past called "Brian's Winter." In the book the character, Brian Robeson, has survived a plane crash in early summer in the Canadian wilderness. He is able to adapt to life in the woods gradually. One extremely cold winter night he is lying in his shelter by the fire when he is woken by the sounds of what he thinks are gun shots. The next day he goes out looking for the source of the noise only to be nearly killed when a maple tree explodes expelling splinters like shrapnel.

It wasn't quite that cold today though.

Animals don't seem to be affected too much by it. On the farm the cows huddle together out of the wind or will find a bit of sun to lay in. They seem extra furry on these days. The bangs of fur on their foreheads curl into a bushy mass that The Donald would kill for.

I've got neighbors that like the cold. They run their air conditioner constantly throughout the summer. It came on in late April (I kid you not) and didn't go off until November. The really hot days we had last July must have shortened it's life by 10 years. I expect the Lennox people will be out to replace it this summer with some industrial rated unit used in cyrogenic labs.

In truth, I don't mind the cold too much. As long as the furnace works and my trees don't explode.

Out and About

From time to time Jodi and I look at each other and comment on how much we enjoy living in the metro area. Today we didn't say that, but I felt it (and I know she did too).

One benefit is our community center. We're working on getting there 12 times a month each to get a $40 monthly refund from our health insurance. If we make it the whole year it will pay for our membership. Today Jodi hit 12 and I made it to 11.

After Sunday School this morning we packed up Aidan and traveled to Jack's hockey game after lunch. He loves playing in the games and seems to be getting a sense of how to play the game. Today I noticed he was always posititioning himself on the bench to be first on the ice for line changes so he could be first in line to play defense. I'm not sure if he was trying to emulate Dusty or if he was sick of the other team scoring goals and was going to do something about it. I think the coaches noticed him doing that. Jack mentioned one of the coaches gave him some tips on how to stop oncoming offensive players.

He got really close to scoring today. There was a loose puck in front of the opposing net, he saw it, skated to it, and skated right past it. If he would have timed it a bit better he probably would have scored. No matter. We were very happy with his attitude and effort today. He really seemed to be enjoying himself and didn't get sucked into the pushing and shoving that some of the kids were doing today when they got frustrated or caught out of position.

After the game we went to our next destination: Ron and Connie's house (a favorite for both boys) Nana and Papa are going to Hawaii tomorrow with them tomorow so we went to see them off. Aidan was quite content to play with Nana on the floor in the kitchen tonight. That was until Dane and Cole came. Once Dane got there Aidan was busying testing how much he could touch him. When we told him to only touch his feet he repeatedly pulled off Dane's socks.

It was a fun night. When it was time to go the boys didn't quite understand what traveling to Hawaii entails. Nana said, "We'll see you in a couple of weeks." To them that pretty routine during the school year. To help them understand we talk to them about what they might be doing now. Are they on the plane? Are they eating out? Are the on the beach? Are they eating out?

What will be fun to see is how the boys react when Nana and Papa come back looking like a couple of baked beans.