Lefse Time, and a Thank You

We were living in a snow globe today! Snow began falling in the wee hours of the morning and continued throughout the afternoon. We received about 7" (18 cm) by the time it quit. I was enjoying our mostly snowless winter but there are silver linings in this kind of weather for me as well; namely fat-biking. I was able to get out last night for a walk—my usual loop around Crystal Lake—ahead of the snow. It may be a while before I can do this walk again. It was such a peaceful couple of hours spent in upper 30º temps. 

Twitter continues circling the drain under Elon Musk's leadership—I use the word "leadership" loosely. I'm a little bummed because I enjoyed the site. It was the source for a plethora of information of all shapes and sizes as well as an abundant supply of cute and heartwarming animal videos. Musk has opened it up again to the vilest voices that had previously been banned from the platform and also to accounts that spread disinformation, while at the same time he's dismantling the infrastructure that helped police hate speech and disinformation on the site. It's no longer a place I care to frequent much.

It's lefse making time of year again. Tammy had Katie and Becky over for a few hours last week showing them the art of the process. They had a lot of fun. It seems like it's mostly a wintertime kind of tradition but I'm not sure why. 

We traveled to Rachel's inlaws over the weekend to make lefse with Doc, Bernie, Jennie, and their side of the family on Sunday. Up until now, I've been content to flip the lefse on the griddle but I jumped into the deep end and tried rolling them as well. I think I did alright, actually. It's fun!

I've been enjoying some rides on my indoor trainer using the Rouvy platform. I switched to it last year when I grew bored with the Zwift app and its cartoon world that I'd been using for the previous 5 years or more. It's a good platform but it no longer held my interest. Rouvy uses actual video from roads all around the world. The resistance of my trainer changes to match the gradient of the road, making for a very immersive experience/workout. The site also offers challenges that I find motivational. I just finished a 3-ride challenge of some climbs in Italy; one, in particular, had 6040 feet of climbing in 19 miles (1841 meters in 31 km). That's a lot! And truth be told, I actually get a better workout on my indoor trainer than I do outdoors no matter the time of year. I have a tendency to push myself harder when indoors than I do outdoors as evidenced by the average watts I achieve. But having said that; I still enjoy outdoor rides much more than indoor rides. 

I stumbled onto a video last week while scrolling through Facebook that floored me. It's by Simply Red from a concert they performed in Amsterdam 4 years ago. I like their music but had somehow never seen this performance. It's so good! I found the DVD of the concert on eBay and ordered it. I'm listening to it now. Check this out. (The blog continues after the video.)

I was very pleased with the results of the midterm elections as Democrats made a strong showing, mostly nullifying a "red wave" of conservative voters that many were so sure was going to happen. It made no sense to me given the politics of our time with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the threat posed to our free and fair elections (in other words, the continued viability of our democracy) with so many Trump-supported candidates running for election oversight positions and other positions of power who were toying with the prospect of disregarding the will of the voters. I believe all but one of them lost. There's still one election left to play out in Georgia for the Senate but I'm confident that Ralph Warnock is going to easily prevail over Herschel Walker, a man who has no business even being a small-town mayor, let alone serving in the U.S. Senate. Early voting is strong there with young voters again turning out in large numbers, boding well for Warnock, the Democrat. My thanks to the young voters among us who made the results of the midterm elections possible.

I really didn't intend to talk about politics this much in this post but I can't close this entry without mentioning Trump's dinner guests at his country club residence in Florida one week ago tonight when he hosted Kanye West and White Nationalist Nick Fuentes. This was the former president and very likely the next Republican nominee for president in the next election if he's not in prison by then (which is my sincere hope). Republicans, please do better. A strong 2-party government serves us all the best but not when voices of the opposition party are those of antisemites and white nationalists. 

I'll let a segment from Rachel Maddow's show last night explain what I'm referring to. 

That's all I've got.