Say What?

In the nearly 29 years I've lived in our home, and of the abundance of squirrels that have made and make our yard their home, I've never once seen a baby (or juvenile) squirrel among them until this past week. It's so adorable! I've been seeing it sunning itself on top of a feeder on the side of our house. Tammy commented that it seems lonely because it's always by itself, never interracting with other squirrels. I'm not sure what to make of it because the squirrels we have around us are all gray squirrels but this little one appears more red than gray. I suppose it's possible that it becomes more gray as it ages. How fun it would be to get it to take food from my hand but I don't see that happening. I'm content to observe it from behind a window on the side of our home.  There's an Instagram account I've been following called babygirlbabysquirrel . The owner of the account rescued a baby squirrel from another animal's mouth in September ...

This week started out nicely. I took advantage of some unseasonably mild temps Monday afternoon for a 34-mile gravel ride to the southwest. My quads were a little sore from more miles than usual on my indoor trainer the previous week so I was hoping the ride would loosen them up a little. Later in the afternoon, in a matter of maybe 20 minutes, I began to feel weak and shaky. I had to lay down. Then I got the chills and couldn't warm up. I spent the evening shivering by our gas fireplace with a blanket over me. Except for a trip to GS Labs in Shakopee to a  drive-thru Covid testing site  the next day, I had no idea that I'd be on the couch or in bed until this morning (Friday). The testing site performed 2 nasal swab tests for current Covid infection and one finger prick antibody test to see if I've had any previous exposure to the virus in the past few months. They were all negative. My illness had all the makings of a bad seasonal flu but one that hit me harder than an...

Until I bought my first fat bike a little more than 9 years ago, I'd been strictly a road cyclist my entire adult life. I'd been eyeing those strange beasts with their larger-than-life tires for about a year when I took a drive to Freewheel Bikes in Minneapolis one night to have a closer look. Steve offered me the keys to one to take out into the neighborhood to see what I thought. I was instantly hooked. I felt like a kid again on those fat, bouncy tires and I know I had to have been sporting the biggest smile.  Steve told me about the trails along the Minnesota River bottoms and how they'd be a good place to get a feel for my new bike. It was an area I was familiar with having literally run thousands of miles along Black Dog road in the shadow of the power plant's stack in my former life as a runner, but the trails themselves? They would be a new experience for me. The next day I excitedly took my Mukluk down to the river bottoms  via a stop at my mom's and Tim...

I finished work on the larger stained glass panel I mentioned in my last update. I'm pleased with how it turned out and I'm also pleased to have all of the windows in our sunroom once again mostly protected from bird strikes. Here's a link to more photos of the panel on my Instagram account where someone commented that I "must be a perfectionist." I replied that I am and that it's sort of a blessing and a curse. All of my life I've been someone who needs order to my surroundings. I don't do messes well. The lines in the stained glass panel work really well to satisfy that need in me. There's order in the chaos of those many lines. With the remaining weeks of winter, I hope to keep adding to my somewhat depleted inventory of sun-catchers in my Etsy shop  before turning my focus to more outdoor activities. We came out of our polar vortex deep-freeze that gripped much of the country a couple days ago. Our daytime highs are well above freezing and eat...

In his closing remarks of Trump's 2nd impeachment trial today before turning the stage over to Trump's defense, lead House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin remarked: "In the history of humanity, democracy is an extremely rare and fragile and transitory thing."  Many of us have grown to take for granted our democracy and the guardrails that our founders put in place to prevent our grand experiment from coming undone. I have a new appreciation for their insight all those years ago. I'm not sure there are many Republicans who appreciate Raskin's words, for if they did, there would be little hesitation on their part to find Trump guilty of inciting the failed coup on our nation's Capitol a little more than a month ago in his last-ditch attempt to retain power. So far, they're showing little appetite for doing the right thing. I'm no longer much of a patriotic person, but damn, even I understand that insurrection matters, especially an insurrection inci...

I've been devoting my stained glass hours to the new category of sun-catchers I've been working on; the mini minis I spoke of a few blog posts ago. They're fun to work with. I hope to do more before moving on to other projects I've been contemplating—larger projects for our home.  I'm 63 years young, or as the boy in me might say, I'm 63 and a half! I've posed this question here before but it's been a while: Do you ever wonder where your parents were in their lives at the age you are today? It can be an interesting question to ponder.  This online calendar  makes quick work of figuring out the dates for you. My dad would've been the age I am today on March 25th, 1989. I always seem to ponder this question with respect to my father rather than my mother. With the calculated date in hand, I'll then go through my online collection of family photos and try and find one of my father that's closest in age to the age I am and then proceed to reminis...

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and reached for my phone before getting out of bed—a routine I fell into when our country took a hard right and ventured down the road to fascism . Thankfully, we put the breaks on that shit with November's election and are in the process of trying to right that wrong. It's going to take some time. A post from a friend on Facebook caught my eye and fit nicely with a blog post I'd begun laying the foundation for yesterday. Paul is a gifted writer all on his own so it's unusual for him to share a 'copy and paste' from an unknown source. It caught my attention.  Here's what he shared:  "Found online: Huge numbers of our population believe in a complete alternate reality. Alternate facts as it were.  But just as intensely as I believe they are deluded, they think I am the one who is deluded. Maybe I am. So how can I be confident in my perception? It can be quite difficult.  But, I have found that in times of political confusio...