Say What?

Excuse me while I reminisce a little. 42 years ago tonight I was in my first few days of boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago. I remember sitting in my barracks on New Year's Eve 1975 and thinking how a mere three weeks earlier enlisting in the Navy was in no way one of the options I was considering. I had watched nearly all of my friends leave for or enroll in college that fall while I remained behind working factory jobs with no real future plans. I acted on my sister's suggestion and went to speak with a Navy recruiter in Brooklyn Park. Chuck Wilson would shepherd me through the process. Everything happened so quickly after our initial meeting where I took an exam to see if I qualified for any schooling after boot camp. Chuck then scheduled me for a physical examination at a facility in Minneapolis. I remember asking him about how late in the recruiting process could I still back out. He replied that once a person has had their physical he likes ...

I'm 22,029 days old; or said another way:  I'm 60. When my father was this same age it was February 18th, 1986. My mother was the same age on February 25th, 1988. (You can make your own calculations with this calculator .) I sometimes find it interesting to see myself from a different perspective—a perspective where my dad and I are on equal footing with respect to age. It's something that causes me to squint my eyes a little and think hard to recall thoughts of my father from back in the day. My dad and I were alike in a lot of ways but in many more ways we were complete opposites. It wasn't until I was in the Navy and working as a radarman that I learned my dad had held the same position when he was in the Canadian Navy. You would think I would've already known that. I can count on one hand the number of times we sat down and just chatted about life in a meaningful way. I don't think I was the exception among my siblings in this regard but perhaps I was. I...

I've been staying busy down in our glass shop working on building an inventory of miniature stained glass panels/sun-catchers for my Etsy account . I had one sale right away last week when I went live with my virtual storefront but nothing since then. I plan to add some lesser expensive panels to my inventory to entice people to take a chance on someone like me with no track record or reviews to recommend my work. Expand the photo to the left to see a collection of some of my pieces. A few in that mix are copies of designs done by Frank Lloyd Wright and are not for sale. I'm enjoying losing myself in the art form again. I let Pandora supply the background music and can easily spend 6 hours or more at a stretch working on a project. It's relaxing. I'm officially certified to flip Lefse unsupervised! Tammy gets together with her aunt Joyce each year around this time to make several dozen of the Norwegian flatbread. Joyce was here last week but Tammy needed to make e...

Tammy is deep into the series Game of Thrones . Season 5 is sitting on the bench in the laundry room waiting to be returned to the library. She's often up in her craft room watching it while working on projects. Every once in awhile I'll hear her yell out, "Oh noooooooo!!" I know enough about the series to know that many of the favorite characters are killed off when you least expect it. I think I'll pass. Cindy (Tammy's sister) was in town this past weekend and they went to see  Daddy's Home 2. Tammy said it was "hilarious!" I think that's more my speed. We went to Tammy's nephew's home for Thanksgiving and enjoyed ourselves a lot. Brady and Kaylee's 2 little ones provided most of the entertainment. It was nice visiting with everyone (John, Stacy, Rick, Karen, and Eric were also there) while watching the Vikings try and lose a fairly large lead. Kaylee used to be the lead cheerleader for the Vikings until recently and can only...

I've been getting in some nice walks with Toby and Charlie in the cooler weather. I use various Garmin devices to track my activities throughout the week and I recently decided to track my walks with the pups separately rather than mix them in with my solo walks or golfing; mostly so I could more easily see how far we're walking together each week. The results are in—here's a typical week for us. That's 13.45 miles (21.65 km). Or viewed another way . I mentioned in a previous blog post how Toby loves to run. He's not at all an alpha-male but when he's leading us in a run and Charlie tries to take the lead, Toby runs even harder to stay in front, sometimes leaning his body into Charlie to keep him from passing him. I think that's so cute! Tammy and I went to see Le Ride a few nights ago. It played across the country for one night only in select theaters. I was prepared to go alone but Tammy was also interested in seeing it. There was a time when we both u...

I was hoping to get in at least a few more rounds of golf this year but my golf season has come to an abrupt end. Our temps have cooled considerably to where we're hovering around freezing with no relief in the long-range forecast. But even if the weather were to cooperate I still can't play. I crashed my fat-bike at Murphy last week and landed hard on my chest, injuring my ribs on my right side. I think I may have caught my right pedal on something causing me to crash on a part of the trail that's not at all technical. I was down before I had a chance to react. My left leg was cut up as well as my face just to the right of my right eye. I hurried home and cleaned up before Tammy could see me but there was no hiding from her that I'd crashed. Crashing goes with the territory, especially on the trails. And if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I've avoided trail riding for much of the summer because I know there are risks on the trails and I didn...

Last week was a full week. My aunt Eva passed away on Monday, the 16th; her funeral service was last Friday morning. Eva was just shy of her 92nd birthday and by all accounts was ready to move on from this life, wondering why it's so hard to die and why was she still here. She was a part of every one of our summers growing up as we'd vacation near her and her family in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I can easily hear her voice in my head with her Yooper accent filling her kitchen. I had so little contact with her in the last 45 years but still, she will be missed. Visits to the U.P. won't be the same without her sweet presence there. My aunt Maria flew in from Florida and kept me company on the 6-hour drive to Winona , near where we stayed. It had been more than 11 years since I was last in the U.P., and being there made me realize how much I miss it. We only stayed 2 nights but I was able to manage to get in 18 holes of golf at the local course where I'd spent many ...

The leaves have been piling up fast in our yard and rather than wait a week between mowings to vacuum them up, I've been out there every 2 to 3 days. They're a lot more manageable that way. I love fall but not this aspect of it. Two more metro area courses were added to the PCC membership I have for golfing, bringing the total number of courses I have available to me to 57. The two newest additions are courses I'm familiar with from when I was a boy: Hyland Greens and Dwan Golf Club , both in Bloomington. Dwan is an 18 hole course but not particularly long while Hyland has gone from an 18 hole par 3 course to 9 holes, all still par 3. They removed the inside 9 holes and turned them into a driving range. I went out to Hyland Thursday afternoon to play it for old time's sake. I remember the last time I played there—it was 22 years ago and I was with my former stepson, Dave. I returned home to a message from my sister on my answering machine that our dad had died. It...

It's been more than a week since the largest modern-day mass killing in the United States. Republicans were all on point in the days after the shooting, stating that now was not the time to talk about any sort of meaningful gun control legislation. They were apparently too busy organizing their thoughts and prayers. People of all political stripes were posting their favorite memes on Facebook -- memes which best aligned with their convictions about what to do, or not to do. The meme to the left is a good example of what conservatives were posting. I couldn't help but notice that the examples used in that particular meme all resulted in stricter controls for each of the methods listed. Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb to kill hundreds, and the government responded with much tighter controls on the sale of the kind of fertilizer he used to make a bomb. The 9/11 terrorists used box cutters to commandeer aircraft and fly them into buildings, and the government responded wi...

I've completed tapering off prednisone and I'm steadily seeing glimpses of my old self. There were a few difficult days last week where I had to force myself to get out of bed but I can tell that my adrenal gland has awoken from its prednisone induced slumber as the color slowly returns to my world. I'm still struggling to push hard on my rides but that will come. The headaches have been done for more than a month but I'm reluctant to send my oxygen bottles back for fear that another phase is just around the bend. I've been absent here for more than a couple weeks. I tried to sit down several times to tap out an update but every time I did it felt like I was forcing it and I never like to approach this hobby of mine with that mindset. And where do I even begin with so much of what's happening in our world with Trump* behind the wheel; threatening to destroy North Korea and its population of 25,000,000 while his evangelical followers cheer him on ; his continua...

I'm in a bit of a funk as I complete my taper from prednisone, a drug I use as a prophylactic to minimize the disruption of my life from cluster headaches that I recently wrote about here . Prednisone is both a godsend and a curse. I'd be lost without it for those weeks and months when I'm desperate for relief from severe headache pain but it comes at a price: irritableness, aggression, mood swings, shakiness, sleeplessness, and lethargy bordering on depression. Those are just some of the more obvious side effects for me. There are other, less noticeable but more adverse reactions that come with the prolonged use of the drug. But still, I readily take it for the relief it provides. Prednisone suppresses the body's adrenal gland and its ability to manufacture natural corticosteroids (especially cortisol). It shuts it down completely. Weaning off the drug is important to allow time for the adrenal gland to once again begin its own cortisol production, and that takes tim...

And just like that, another decade races past! I struggled more than ever when faced with turning 50. There was something about that number that was unsettling to me and it took me a while to come to terms with it. Funnily enough, I'm not feeling the same sort of concern about having just turned 60. I'm embracing this new decade! After all, 60 is the new 40, right? Rachel bought me a fun gift for the garage—my own parking spot saver! It's perfect! A closer look . The USS Fresno was the ship I served on when I was in the Navy in the mid to late '70s. And Rachel celebrated another birthday as well. She turned 26 on Thursday. Drew hosted a party for her at his home in Rochester and it was  such a nice time! Well done, Drew! I attended my 2nd annual Red Eye Open golf tournament this past week at Fountain Valley Golf Course in Farmington. It's a tournament for retired controllers. I didn't play as well as I'd hoped to but I had a lot of fun. I'd like ...

Bucket List: view a total solar eclipse. Check! What a fun adventure and experience that was! I first made mention in my blog of wanting to view the eclipse from a position of totality back in March and then proceeded to cement our plans to make it happen by booking a room in Lincoln, Nebraska. We left late Sunday morning and joined the steady flow of traffic on I-35W as we made our way south. Traffic was heavy but it was moving along at a good clip. Eclipse fever was building! We chose Lincoln for its proximity to where totality would be occurring, knowing that we'd likely be viewing it from some other city nearer to totality based on cloud cover. All of the forecasts indicated we'd need to drive west in the morning to improve our chances of a cloud-free sky. We didn't mind. The extra hours spent on the road to make it happen were all worth it to us. We chose to drive toward Grand Island, Nebraska and possibly a little beyond. We eventually settled on Ravenna, Ne...

Donald Trump* is an idiot. A racist idiot. If his words of this past week didn't convince you of that then I'm not sure there's anything he can do to dissuade you from your misplaced belief in him. If, when faced with questions about Trump's* stability and his fitness to serve as president you turn to the propagandists of right-wing media to quell your fears, what good have you done toward really understanding the danger he presents to us all. If you find yourself accepting of the idea that it's okay for Trump's* campaign to have been in collusion with Russia to subvert our election process or if you find yourself equating the Nazis who marched in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia with those who rose up to stop them, your mind has been corrupted and it's more important than ever that you take a step back and come to terms with that. The assertion that anything other than Fox News or other far-right media outlets friendly to Trump* is "fake news...

I went to the Mall of America last week to do some laps on a rainy afternoon. There's a new yarn art display on the north end that's quite cool to see. Walking laps gave me a chance to try out the Garmin foot pod Tammy got me that more accurately keeps track of my indoor distance when I can't get a GPS signal. It worked well. My Cluster Headaches made a return 3 weeks ago after having left me alone for the past 30 months. That's the longest reprieve I've had from them since they first began to afflict me when I was a senior in high school. I wrote several entries for my blog during my last phase of the headaches but I've been reluctant to publish those writings. They're a little too personal (even for me) in places. I do intend to publish them all at some point. Here's the first of those entries written in January, 2015. I was at a very dark place then, trying to remain hopeful that the headaches would cease any day but faced with the reality that tha...

We're once again able to park both of our cars together in our garage for the first time in nearly 2 months. Our main-floor remodel is wrapping up and we're very pleased with how it's turned out; we couldn't be happier! There's still more to be done but our home is livable once again and for that we're grateful. A guy can only hang out in his garage for so long. And I'm going to finally learn how to cook! I promised Tammy that when we got our kitchen put back together I'd make an effort to learn something more about preparing a meal than how to make a sandwich or using a microwave as my main source of heat. She wants us both to take a cooking class. I think that's a great idea. Keith and Jason came by yesterday morning to install a final section of cabinets in what used to be our front room. Maybe it's still our front room; I'm just not sure anymore. It's such a different look than what we're used to and we're both liking t...