Can you whistle the tune 'Economic blues'?

Honest to goodness, I dreamt about the economy last night. I was part of "thinktank" coming up with ways that businesses can increase trade. I don't remember if I came up with any spectacular ideas, but when I woke up at six o'clock to do some exercises before breakfast, I was honestly happy the alarm clock worked.

Then this morning on one of the early morning news channels, I heard that a number of large national equipment manufacturers were laying off thousands of employees. That was followed by the announcement by Sprint that it too was laying off thousands of employees.

The morning paper had a story about many homeowners with a mortgage and without a job who are likely heading to bankruptcy court unless Washington lawmakers can figure out a better plan.

So where's the light at the end of tunnel? I wish I knew.

Luckily, I live in a state that has been insulated from the worst of the nation's economic woes. With the exception of Melroe -- the makers of the Bobcat steer loader -- there really hasn't been any wholesale layoffs. And at least some of the 150 former Melroe employees have been hired by contractors who look to have steady employment for the foreseeable future in retrofitting the existing seven power plants with more advanced air emissions controls. There's about a billion dollars worth of work that's been announced in the lignite industry alone for the next four to five years.

Couple that forecast with the major drilling plans of several oil exploration companies in the Bakken Formation, a large, deep formation that is reached by horizontal drilling and two of the state's "bread and butter" industries appear to be well set to offer good paying jobs to many of our state's residents...and perhaps some newcomers as well.

Both the oil and gas and lignite industries are also major tax payers in North Dakota so the state's budget, which right now is experiencing a record surplus, looks to be healthy. This means pay raises for state employees and teachers at colleges and public schools. Other states, including neighboring ones to North Dakota, are preparing to cut the number of teachers and the curriculum choices they offer. So once again, our state looks financially healthy.

All this at a time when other parts of the country are reeling. So is it all rosy in North Dakota? Certainly not. Cattle prices are depressed, which hurts our ag economy. However, compared to others states -- like Minnesota and California, North Dakota seems to be weathering the recession/depression better than most. And lower cattle prices mean I don't have to pay as much for the next shipment of beef for my freezer.

Perhaps, after having written this, I'll be able to sleep better tonight. How does my view compare to what you are seeing?

Where do you like to eat?

My wife accuses me that I only like to eat at a few restaurants. For Chinese, I like the Rice Bowl in Mandan. For seafood, I like Red Lobster. For Mexican, I like Paradiso. For steaks, I like the Seven Seas in Mandan.

For fast food, I like Taco Johns. For ice cream, I like Dairy Queen. For a salad, I like...well, I don't really like a salad. So I guess I'll eat that at home.

I do, however, want to mention that for a general, all-around casual dining, my favorite is Bonanza. I'm especially fond of their chicken montery. I'm not too fond of their steaks. But I like the charcoal grilled flavor of the chicken montery and a baked potato. I generally start the meal with a Ceasar's salad and finish it with a dish of bread pudding topped with ice cream.

At college, my mom was very concerned with what I was eating...and she had every right to be. My diet often consisted of pop corn and candy bars. I occasionally felt it necessary to eat some meat so I would boil up some hot dogs. For the longest time after college, I couldn't eat a hot dog. However, in the last couple of years I've gotten a little more lax on my food choices. I do prefer to eat a brat or kielbasa to a hot dog...and I like them grilled.

Generally, I have my favorite meal for every restaurant I frequent. For instance, I like sweet and sour chicken at the Rice Bowl, beef enchiladas or taco salad at Paradiso --plus the chips and salsa, of course. At the Seven Seas, I always order the South American steak -- king sized -- and potatoes au gratin.

However, at Red Lobster, I have no favorites. Or should I say "Everything is my favorite." I like the "all the shrimp you can eat." Also, I'm fond of the Ultimate Feast. The last time I was there I had the scallops, shrimp and lobster tail grilled over the hickory smoke fire.

We have a deal with one of our credit cards where we redeem points for dollars off at Red Lobster. Right now we have a card with $40 worth of Red Lobster food. However, we're saving it because Derek and Camila are going to come to Mandan some time in the future and they want to eat there.

To paraphrase a lawyer joke, $40 at Red Lobster is a good start. However, everything helps.

So, of course, my question to the bloggers is this....forget about O.B. and A.G. and let's talk something serious. Where's your favorite restaurant and what's your favorite meal?

This ain't reality, Al Gore

You remember him, the former Senator from Tennesee who believed it was he who invented the internet. The guy who swooped down in a jet, not to attend the negotiations, but simply to sign his name to the Kyoto Protocol, which later was soundly defeated in the U.S. Senate. He penned a book 20 years ago that basically espoused that people would no longer be able to procreate because of all the pollution that exists in the world.

Well, he seems to be the Rasputin of our time. You remember Rasputin? The Russian counselor to the Czars who survived many attempts to kill him. Al Gore seems to me to be the modern day Rasputin. Even losing the presidential election of 2000 hasn't quieted him. And now with an Obama administration and minions who actually believe the drivel espoused by A. Gore, we are set again for wrong-headed, knee-jerk policy making.

Like the phoenix, A.G. rose from the ashes to produce an erroneous documentary that won acclaim by like-minded Hollywood elitists. After winning an Oscar and a Nobel Peace prize, A. set his sites on something even grander -- brainwashing Americans into thinking that energy conservation plus renewables plus a smart grid would mean zero fossil fuels in the United States and plug-in electric cars within in a decade.

To do this, A. has created a hydra of environmental groups that are loaded with cash for buying TV ads. Before Christmas, one of his groups "This is Reality" unleashed an ad that said "clean coal" is as real as "Santa Claus." That was the message and it was said in a number of goofy ways, such as "coal is the dirtiest fuel" we can use to generate electricity.

Really? As compared to what - nuclear where the spent fuel has a half life of radiocativity for hundreds of thousands of years? It would be interesting to ask the good folks in Nevada if they would rather use fly ash from coal-based power plants to build interstate highways in their state or would they rather have the country's radioactive spent fuel in a national depository at Yucca Mountain. They might have a different view of what is really a dirty fuel.

But to A., the number one goal is to attack coal.

To further their efforts, the "This is Reality" group has purchased all the ad space in the D.C. metro stations during January so all the visitors to our nation's capital will have a chance to see graphically that the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" has died. (That actually is the symbol of the group).

What A. is trying to do is change people's perceptions -- not reality. Because the reality is a coal-based power plant built today would produce 90 percent less emissions than a plant built 30 years ago. And that carbon dioxide emissions, which so far aren't regulated, can also be captured and used for enhanced oil recovery or stored safely underground -- just as it is today in the oil fields of southern Saskatchewan or the North Sea off the coast of Norway.

The fallacy in A's thinking is that he doesn't believe that Americans can see, read and reason. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have more than 25 percent of all the world's coal reserves. We also have the ability to use this fuel cleanly and wisely while benefiting our national economy and creating American jobs.

It might surprise you to know than in North Dakota, one in 12 jobs can be traced to our vast reserves of coal which are being mined and turned into either electricity or synthetic natural gas. The mined land is being reclaimed to a condition that is as good or better than it was before. We have mines that have been totally reclaimed -- like the Glenharold mine near Stanton and the Indian Head mine near Zap -- where the person passing by in a car would never, ever know that a coal mine once existed there.

I know this to be a fact, I took my brother-in-law Rich and my sister Susan for a drive through coal country. We came upon a ridge where Rich first saw Basin Electric's Leland Olds Station and Great River Energy's Stanton Station and he asked "Where the black smoke?" There wasn't any plume visible. This was August and the water vapor from the stack was non-existent. Smoke from power plants went out 20 years ago when electro-static precipitators and baghouses were built. Scrubbers remove the sulfur dioxide. Trace amounts of mercury are captured with activated char and carbon dioxide can be captured with ammonia. What's neat is the ammonia sulfate, such as what is produced at the Dakota Gasification Company, is sold commercially for fertilizer. Fly ash from the Coal Creek Station near Underwood is sold as a replacement for cement in concrete.

In the winter, you do see a plume. That's because coal in North Dakota is 30 percent water. Our coal is called lignite. While it has a lower Btu rating because of the moisture, it also is extremely reactive to the gasification process - hence, we have the nation's first and only commercial scale coal to natural gas gasification plant built in the 1980s. Another gasification plant using better technology is in the permitting process.

So wake up America....don't drink A's Kool-Aid. He's been shoveling crap for 20 years. Americans are still bequeathing Americans. And 50 percent of our electricity is coming from coal. And yet the air we breathe in North Dakota is among the cleanest in the world.

Don't let this man's perception ever become our reality.

How must the new president feel?

Yesterday I drove Dad to the dentist for a tooth extraction. Dad's dentist is also my dentist and has been my dentist for over 20 years so I have a strong respect for his judgement. Our dentist said that one of Dad's back molars was impacted and infected...and that it couldn't be saved. So I took Dad to the dentist -- inspite of his protesting that his tooth didn't hurt.

Forty-five minutes later, Dad joined me in the waiting -- minus one tooth.

I spoke to the dentist afterward and told him that Dad didn't really want the tooth pulled but I had taken the dentist's advice over the wishes of my own father.

The dentist said, "Yes, your Dad said the same thing to me before I pulled it, but it wouldn't be long before he began to feel a great deal of pain if we had left that tooth alone."

Those are the conundrums I face as having the power of attorney for my Dad. In many ways, I think there are similarities between my watching out for my father's best interests and the new president being confronted with choices that will be good for some poeple and bad for others.

First and foremost, our new president has to take steps that will boost the economy. It seems that he wants to pass a stimulus package that will create a lot of construction jobs.

Nothing a matter with that...generally construction jobs pay well and construction companies can hire a lot of people that don't have a lot of education to build things -- roads, bridges and buildings.

However, one of the things that the President wants to build is alternative energy sources, such as wind turbines, solar panels, biofuels plants, etc. These sound good unless, like me, you are in the field of traditional energy -- fossil fuels.

There are many reasons why fossil fuels trump alternative sources. For one, they are low cost; second, they are reliable; third, our country's infrustructure already is built for fossil fuel energy.

I'm not saying that alternative energy sources are inherently bad, after all, there's a desperate need for all energy sources in our country and I'm also for domestically produced energy because they do create jobs and wealth among our countrymen. However, we need to go into this with our eyes wide open.

Given the terrible weather that North Dakota has had this winter, there's no way I would want my energy sources to be anything but reliable. And, to be honest, affordability is certainly desirable because my home has used more energy than usual keeping our living quarters comfortable on bonechilling winter days.

I wouldn't be very happy if I only had "blew" electricity, that is, electricity when the wind blows or the sky is blue. Nor would I would like to see my energy bill twice the price that it is now.

So good luck, Mr. President...however, remember that your choices have ramifications on not one, but 200 million people. And while Americans tend to have short memories, we can remember things for two to four years - which is perfectly timed with our election cycle.

By the way, this morning Dad has largely forgotten that he went to the dentist and doesn't seem to be in any pain. However, I told him that he should be doing most of his chewing on the left side of his mouth. I wanted to make oatmeal for breakfast but it turns out we didn't have any. Could be the farmer sold his oats, corn and wheat to make biofuels.

It's officially over....

It was great while it lasted, but Christmas vacation is officially over. I just got off the phone with my wife who told me that our oldest son is leaving this afternoon for college in Minot...to stay ahead of the freezing rain and half foot of snow that's predicted for Friday. He came home on December 20 -- which was the first official day of Christmas vacation.

Within the last week, I started back to work on January 5th and Scott started college on January 7th -- but still we had the remnant of Christmas vacation, which was Derek lying on the love seat with an X-Box 360 controller welded to his hands. However, with him gone, our lives will change.

No longer will Grandpa have the amount of company at home that he has become accustomed to. No longer will we have the constant buzzing of cell phone instant messaging and calls. No longer will we have every other sentence we speak ending with Derek saying "That's what she said."

Our lives will be dull and predictable again. I feel like I age perceptibly when I don't have the youth of my boys around with their "new" ideas on how life should really be viewed, enjoyed and attacked.

Last night, for instance, Derek had a friend with him when I came home from work. They said they had been sled riding down the mammoth hill that sits behind our house and has the letters M-A-N-D-A-N on its south side. Presumably one of the boys had created a small avalanche on the side of the hill while sliding down. But by the time I arrived, Derek was lying prone on the love seat playing Halo on the 360 while his friend was prone in the Lazy-Boy also playing Halo. I could tell that actual movement among the two had been reduced to minute finger and thumb twitches on the controllers.

So I asked (though already knowing the answer) if the friend would be staying for supper. About a split second later, the affirmative answer was emitted by the Lazy-Boy -- never straying from the game on the TV set.

So Schwan dinner it was...fried Blue Hake, fried potaotes and onions, boiled corn on the cob and baked egg rolls and crab cakes. MMMMM good.

But what to do as I obviously made too much for Grandpa, myself and two 20-somethings. Well, I could eat more -- as I am again dieting. However, that would be counterproductive so I asked Derek and his friend if they could please finish the fish and egg rolls. To my surprise, the Lazy-Boy said he had "hit the wall."

So as I began clearing the table, Derek's friend must have hit the wall and bounced back to the middle of the room...for the rest of the fish and egg rolls were completely devoured. From there, the boys went back into the front room as though they had just finished devouring the entire turkey at Thanksgiving. Lazy-Boy covered up and fell asleep, but Derek was game to do something, anything. So we woke up the friend and off to the malls they went. About 10:30, Derek returned with packages of many interesting things that only a college student who's bored really needs or desires. I will, however, tell him that the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts from Hawaii were good...even though I am on a diet.

So how boring will my life be without Derek and this friend or that friend who all peer quizzically at me when I tell them a joke or provide an interesting insight into their lives? Very boring. However, maybe Derek (er, DVD) will continue to update his blog...so I can continue to provide valuable color commentary on the life of a "Son of a Gun."

Scott (Ttocs), you're going to have to ramp it up a notch or two. You're too studious and too busy with work at KFYR-TV to allow my creative (parenting) juices to continue to bubble and spurt. And what's worse, Derek is taking his 360, two seasons of Hank Hill and one season of Seinfeld back to college. Now what are we going to do on our long wintery nights?

Christmas vacation is officially over. I had really hoped to accomplish something, anything.

Winter wonderland

This morning the sky is bright blue and the temperature is minus 25 F. Outside the window is our little park with ne'er one footprint in the knee-deep snow. Across the street is an empty space where a car used to sit under piles of snow, but alas, the policeman came by and put an orange sticker on the antenna and the owners had to dig it out and move it.

This seems a little odd to me because it was the city's plows that first buried the car and then it was the city's police that came and said that it had to be moved.

I've dealt with this before. Living next to the park which is full of dandelions every spring, I've asked the park board if they would please spray the park to free it of the yellow flowers. But to no avail, because the park board doesn't want to spray anything that could hurt the kids in the park. How benovelent.

So, all the homeowners have to hire professional lawn sprayers to kill our dandelions, because if we don't the city comes along and writes us a ticket for not taking care of our lawns.

I once called the mayor and asked him if he could talk to the park board about spraying their dandelions, but he told me the park board is sovreign, which I guess means they have the same power as God.

Anyway, it's a beautiful winter day in North Dakota, and while we have 30 inches of snow, there's a place in Alaska called Whittier that averages 400 inches of snow every year. The people who live in Whittier on Prince William Sound are called "Whitt-idiots."

So it could be worse. How's your winter going?

The picture was taken on Friday, January 2nd, before the policeman came and tagged it. The car was moved on Saturday after a lot of chunks of snow and ice were shoveled by hand.

Day 14. . . and holding!

Imagine, if you will, a picture of Steve being drug by a semi-truck called "Work" while he digs his heels ever deeper into the soft asphalt that we can call "2009." You can also imagine the consternation and bewilderment on his face come Monday, January 5, when he has to be awakened once again by an alarm clock, shave and shower and head off to work. He probably doesn't even remember where his office is or what work entails -- like no afternoon nap!

How quickly these 16 days are passing even though I've done my darndest to make them drag on forever. Even Mother Nature has cooperated by dropping enough snow to shatter every meteorlogical record in Bismarck since weathers records have been kept. Nothing gets more tedious than firing up the snow blower to once again blow my driveway clean.

About 10 years ago, my old barber retired and I asked him where he planned to live in retirement. He said his plans were to load his snowblower into the back of his pickup and head south. When he came to a town where someone asked, "Hey, what's that in the back of your pickup?" he would know that he found his retirement nest. I'm starting to think of the barber and his advice more and more these days.

And yet as I look back at the 14 days that I've squandered on rich food and little or no exercise, either for my brain or body, I can't help but think of the things that I had hoped to accomplish but haven't yet.

For instance, I wanted to buy a camcorder -- but I haven't made it to Best Buy yet. I wanted to buy an electric tooth brush, but haven't made it out of Mandan yet. The list goes on and on.

The worst part about not doing anything is that you have little to write about and even less to say when family calls.

"What have you been doing?" they ask. It's hard to say "nothing" so I've been making things up.

Here's a for instance: "Well, I've been inventorying the knick-knacks in our house. Do you know Belinda has more than 40 clowns scattered here and there?"

"I've been comparing the shades of white paint we have in our bedroom to what we have in our livingroom. I could have sworn it was all the same, but somehow the color looks different now."

"I'm trying to crunch some numbers to see if it's possible for me to retire at 49 and a half, because honestly, I could get use to doing nothing."

Okay, that last one is true....Happy New Year to all. And pray that the alarm clock works on Monday morning.