Say What?

I put out one of our hummingbird feeders a few days ago in anticipation of the little flyers' return. I'm maybe a little early but not by much. It's my understanding that hummingbirds return to the same place each year so I want to be sure to not do anything to cause them to set up home elsewhere. For any former controllers visiting here not connected on Facebook, you'll be interested to know that 3 controllers from Minneapolis Center retired this past week: Brian Vance, Kris Henderson, and Scott Goerdt. Brian and Kris's retirements were expected but Scott's, not so much. He told me he woke up a couple of Mondays ago and decided then and there that he was done (I'm somewhat paraphrasing). There were lots of smiles on their faces at Celts Pub in Farmington Wednesday afternoon as a group of us gathered to congratulate them and tip back a beer or two. There's a new mountain bike trail coming to Lakeville between I-35W and Lake Marion. I showed up Saturd...

My 4-month-old MacBook Pro faltered on me a week ago. I noticed it was taking an unusually long time to boot-up and also the Touch ID was no longer working. I worked with Apple support and they determined it was likely a hardware issue. I brought it in to the Apple Store at Mall of America on Friday and got it back Tuesday afternoon. That was quick I thought. They replaced the motherboard and it's functioning fine now but for whatever reason, they reformatted the SSD (Solid State Drive). I spent most of yesterday getting it back up to speed. I still have a ways to go. We've been with Verizon since before the advent of flip-phones but our relationship with them has come to an end. We've switched cellphone providers and are now with Google's Project Fi . I'm especially liking my Pixel XL phone and its ability to stay connected to wifi—a problem that continued to plague my LG G4 for the nearly 18 months I had it. Rachel is traveling in South Dakota this week so I...

“God of mercy and compassion, you never neglect your children in need. So bless us with your healing presence that we might remain by your side on this road of sorrows. In Jesus’ holy name, Amen.” I was in church last Sunday morning and the above prayer was recited in unison. My mind immediately leaped from where I was standing next to Tammy to the photos I'd seen earlier in the week of starving people in South Sudan—horrific images, many of them children. It made no sense at all that we were saying this prayer with full knowledge of the suffering being endured by some. (And now the Trump* administration is intent on slashing funding to these desperate people so we can grow our already obscenely large military even larger. Trump* supporters—is this what you voted for?) I can't tell you anything about the rest of Sunday morning's service because I never got beyond the line about God never neglecting his children in need. As we walked out to our car I considered asking T...

I stumbled onto a kinda cool website recently where you can search out a myriad of streaming radio stations around the globe while brushing up on your knowledge of geography at the same time. Here's a link . There's a house a few blocks away that has a sign in the front yard that encourages people to "Love your neighbor". I first noticed it about the same time a Muslim family moved in a few doors down from the home with the sign. Someone vandalized the sign recently by wrecking the metal frame supporting it. I hesitate to read too much into that. I was walking Toby and Charlie Sunday morning when I noticed the homeowner out front—I commented to him that I liked his sign while expressing disappointment that someone apparently thought differently. He quickly went to his car's trunk and gave me an extra one he had, minus the metal support. He said a church in St Paul was giving them out. I've been taking the pups on some extra long walks lately—walks in exces...

I'm not vain and neither am I considering flying my Learjet to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun but I'm pondering the question: how far would I drive to see a total solar eclipse? I may be about to find out. This very rare event  in a city near me is going to happen on August 21st, 2017 and it will put Lakeville in an area about 80% eclipsed. To get to where there will be a total eclipse I'd need to drive to Lincoln, NE., a little more than a 6 hour drive . I think I'm off that day, and I think I'm in! I checked this site for future total solar eclipses for the rest of my life and it appears the one in August will in all likelihood be my last (and first) chance to experience one. Missing out on it would be even more upsetting than not realizing The Paper Kites were in town last Saturday night at First Avenue! Our Google Pixel phones are on their way after a wait of a few weeks while they were sold out. Rachel dropped her LG G4 in the tub last month...

My nephew Dan recently sent in a sample of his DNA to 23andMe to have it analyzed. The results showed that he had a close match (of the 1st or 2nd cousins variety) with Emily, a woman in Montreal, Canada. How could that be? They exchanged emails. It turned out that Emily's mother, Cynthia, was born to a single woman named Erie in 1947. Erie never married but took the last name of her daughter's father even though she'd lost contact with him and I assume never heard from him again. Emily told me that they were always told the name of Cynthia's father was John Gilmore. My father's brother Jack also went by John. From what Emily has told me about her grandmother, Erie was a strong, independent woman having served in the Women's Army Corp during WW2. She taught veterans job skills at a vocational school after the war in Brockville, Ontario , a city some 2+ hours southeast of where my father and his brother Jack grew up in Douglas, Ontario. I've learned that m...

The thought of having my DNA analyzed for a more precise understanding of what sort of mutt I am has been mildly intriguing to me. I considered doing it a while ago but I was told that the results are quite vague and to not expect any sort of real definition that can point one in a specific direction to see where their ancestors came from, so I took a pass. But now I'm not so sure it's all that useless. A family member recently sent his DNA off to 23andMe to see what he could find. He found a lot! I won't go into detail but what I can say is that there's another branch to our family on my father's side that none of us knew existed. It's quite cool and the photos I've seen leave little doubt that there's a connection. I hope to be able to be more specific in the near future but now is not yet the time. My go-to road bike is a 2006 Serotta Legend Ti  with 48,000 miles (77,000 km), and it continues to serve my needs well. We've been through a lot...