Spring can't be far away...can it?

It seems we've had our snow since Veterans Day last November...that's because we have. And while January and February haven't added any to the 60-plus inches, neither has it taken any away.

And yet, we're moving into the latter days of February. Certainly there has to be a rainbow following our winter...but each morning when I search the Bismarck Tribune for the "good news" of a spring thaw, alas, I'm once again disappointed by a forecast that calls for "more of the same, subfreezing temperatures."

What makes this situation even more exasperating is that places like Billings and Rapid City -- where my relatives live -- have experienced temperatures in the 40s and 50s, recently!

Of course, it's this blanket of white covering our ground that keeps our temperatures so darn cold. Where once we had snow, we often have a sheet of ice...like on our sidewalks where man nor beast is safe to walk.

I've strategized about how to get rid of this nasty ice and return the sidewalks to something passable, but alas, there is not enough salt to melt the stuff because the water that causes the ice is coming from the piles of snow in my south-facing front yard.

So this winter, we've all learned to walk re-e-e-e-a-l slow and to walk with our feet squarely on the ground. If you see us hanging on to our cars, fences, houses or any other unmovable objects, it's because we don't want another ice-scraped thigh or butt cheek.

And yet I know that spring is coming for a variety of reasons. One, I've received my garden seed catalog from Guerney's. Two, we're about to file our taxes. Three, the sun is staying up longer in the evenings and coming up earlier in the mornings.

Yesterday, I stood behind a glass door in the front of our office building and felt the warm rays penetrate the double insulated transparent panes. However, when I decided to open the door and feel the sun's warmth, I quickly discovered the mirage. The warmth I felt indoors was aided by the 70 degree temperatures of the natural gas-heated building. The cold I felt outdoors was a reflection of the five-foot piles of snow.

So here's to spring, you beautiful thing, and be gone, you piles of snow.

Sunday nights...a special family time

One of the privileges of having Grandpa live with us is we have now come to look forward to more visits from my brothers and sisters. Prior to July 2006 when Dad moved from Roundup to Mandan, the only relatives that came to visit were my nephew David and his family (who live in Plentywood) and my sister Janet and her family (who live in Rapid City). Now we are visited by my brothers Randy and his family (who live in Bozeman), Gene and his family (who live in Billings) and my sister Susan and her husband (who live in Pocatello).

But nearly every week, we have the opportunity to visit with them as they call or we call to find out how we're doing and what's new. Last night was just one on those opportunities.

My sister Janet spent the weekend in Parkston, South Dakota, watching her grandson Joshua while his parents sprinted away to Sioux Falls to attend a concert in honor of Valentines Day and their third wedding anniversary. Joshua is the little boy, now nearing his first birthday, who had such a tough time of it for the first six months of his life because he couldn't produce any red blood cells and needed lots of transfusions. However, that all seems to be behind him and the little boy is now learning to walk. What a champ.

Gene had spent the better part of his week at basketball games and his youngest son Colton is one of the players for the Broadview team. They are heading into districts this weekend and have even made plans to head to Miles City in two weeks for the divisionals. Now that's an optimistic Dad. We wish Colton and his team the best.

Talking about sports, Randy and his family spent their weekend in Havre watching his youngest son Patrick play hockey. Randy was joined by his oldest son Gary for the trek from southwestern Montana (Bozeman) to northeastern Montana (Havre). Although Pat's team didn't win, Randy said it was fun watching them play as Pat gives it his all out there on the ice.

Then there's Susan and Rich way out west in Pocatello. We found out that their oldest child (Dylan) is planning on getting married on July 11th. They just had another wedding in Bozeman when their daughter Marissa got married on the last day of January. Their youngest daughter Lindsay was the first to marry. She and her husband Kris are waiting now to hear about an offer they made on a motel in Washington.

Now, we also got a call from Dad's sister Ruth out in Salem, Oregon, Ruth had five children, three sons and two daughters, however, the youngest daughter Amy was killed by a drunk driver on Christmas day probably 20 years ago. Anyway, Ruth told us that three of her grandchildren are expecting babies in 2009. She had two great grandchildren in 2008, as well.

So, all in all, Sunday night was very eventful for the Van Dyke family. It's part of our tradition in keeping up with one another. Sure, we exchange e-mails every once in a while and an occasional card, but the glue that keeps us together are the Sunday night phone calls.

Economic Stimulus or California Bailout?

President Obama and his Congressional Cronies appear on the precipice of signing into law another $800 billion stimulus package -- but I wonder, how much of it is going to California.

The once "Golden State" is broke. Spending has increased dramatically as the state has put more prisoners behind bars and paid for health care for uninsured children among other goodies. But the state's citizenry has been unwilling to pay for these little extra's. Instead, they have received a reduction in their taxes, through ballot box initiatives.

In the end, it's meant that California's state politcos have "fished" out the state rivers and lakes for cash so instead are looking for a bigger pond --namely the federal government for bailout money. Enter California's Nancy Pelosi, who just happens to be Madam Speaker of the House, and I think you know where we're going with this.

North Dakota doesn't need a bailout. And yet our Democratic Congressional delegation walked march step with the other donkeys -- not because we need it, but because California needs it. What we get is socked with the bill.

The hypocrisy is that our Senator Conrad has nearly broken his arm patting himself on the back for the past 20 years telling everyone who will listen what a "fiscal conservative" he is. And yet when it came to bailing out California, he showed little or no willingness to do what was right and say, "we're going to have to tighten our belt and do more with less."

No, what Senator Conrad says was "This is serious and we've got to do something even if it's not a perfect bill."

Not a perfect bill? What in fact we're doing is following the California path into the quagmire of debt with no hope of ever getting out.

A state auditor last week in California summed up his state's budgetary doldrums with this telling tidbit: "Like homeowners paying off one credit card with another, they used accounting gimmicks and more debt, rather than raising taxes or cutting spending, to balance the books. As the economy worsened and tax receipts plummeted — from $102.5 billion last year to an estimated $87.5 billion this year — the house of cards collapsed."

The irony is that our country won World War II, survived the Cold War against the Soviets, and to date, anyway, has made headway in our other military battles. How ironic it would be if we lose our freedoms not because of terrorists or a vastly superior military, but because of irresponsible "fiscal conservatives" who are willing to "get along by going along" with idiotic Left Coasters who have some feeling of entitlement that we all should be paying for the ills that they have put upon themselves.

If this is a dream, somebody pinch me because I can't stand the nightmare any longer. I'm looking for a leader that can lead. Anybody seen anyone like that? I don't know what happened to hope in a mere two weeks time, because it's a fear of what it is happening in Washington, D.C., that has overtaken this country's financial markets.

Looks like a good time to stash your money in an empty coffee can -- if you still have that much cash.

The reason I'm spotlighting Senator Conrad and not Congressman Pomeroy or Senator Dorgan is they don't really try to hide the fact that they take their marching orders from California House and Senate leaders. However, I really felt like Senator Conrad would stand on principle. Boy, was I wrong.

Weee! The pain is excrutiating

Part of the Van Dyke economic stimulus package following the Christmas holiday involved buying a Wii system for our flat screen TV, which was our economic stimulus package last summer. So far we've stimulated the Mexico (TV) and Japanese (Wii is made by Nintendo) economies.

As a family, we have found the Wii Sports bordering on addiction. Considering that nothing is on TV, we have come to rely on bowling, primarily, and tennis, secondarily, for evening entertainment. However, the $300 or so shelled out for the Wii system wasn't enough to jump start the global economy, so we have invested another $90 in the Wii Fitness program and another $120 in three more remotes.

Last weekend, DVD was home, and the remotes, the Wii Sports, the Wii Fitness and Uncle Steve's gimpy left shoulder all got the workout of their lives. By Sunday morning I was suffering Wii-kness of the lower back and left shoulder primarily. However, DVD is now considered a "pro" bowler along with his father and younger brother.

What are the accolades you achieve from being considered a pro? Basically, you get stars on your bowling ball. So only mom has a non-star ball...which means Scott and I will be doing a lot more bowling as Bea firms up her skills and reaches the coveted "Star" bowling ball.

DVD, however, has left for Minot so my shoulder and back are feeling better. I got up early this morning for my weigh-in and training, however, Grandpa decided that a light on in the livingroom must be a sign that breakfast is being served. So I got a total of four minutes of Yoga in before I made his breakfast and brought in the morning newspaper. Then it was off to the shower and breakfast for myself. After reading the paper, it was out the door and off to work.

Maybe tonight, it will be quiet in the house and I can return to my starry green bowling ball, or my "Sun Worshipper" Yoga pose.

Whatever happened to coming home from work and enjoying supper and watching Flipper, or the Dick Van Dyke show? Anymore, seems work is more relaxing. However, I've got to keep honing my skills. DVD will be coming home next month and we're expecting company from out west and we want to make sure we can beat Unc ArVee at bowling.

Hopefully, Scott will soon learn to wrap shoulders in his sports training classes at college (he's now working on ankles) so that I'll be able to continue my daily Wii workouts.

The smell was not as sweet as first imagined

Scott wrote a paper for his composition class this week about landing his first job. For him, his first job is the one he still has ... camera operator at KFYR-TV.

However, many years and many miles have gone by since my first job. When I went to college at the University of Montana, I lived about five blocks off campus on the top floor of an old and rather large home. One block away was Eddy's Bakery, which I walked by and smelled adoringly each day.

Somewhere along my junior year, I decided the time had come for me to quit walking and buy a car. The problem, however, is that I had no dinero. But wait, perhaps that good smelling bakery would give me a job. So one day I stopped and picked up an application. The next day I dropped it off.

Then some time passed. It was the weekend of Aber Day. For you non-UM people, a man named Aber must have been important because they named one of the tall residence halls after him. And, although he was a teetotaler himself, a wild Saturday of boozing and rock and roll was named in his honor.

So I was sitting home one Saturday in the spring when all of my friends were attending Aber Day when my phone rang. It was a person from Eddy's Bakery and they needed someone to start that night. My guess is that I wasn't the first person that they called, but I was home while the others were sitting on a hillside outside of Missoula drinking from a thousand kegs of beer and listening to Jimmy Buffet and other top notch entertainers.

My dream job soon turned out to be a bad place to work. For a while, I stood and placed bun pans on a conveyor belt. Then I switched to the other end of the conveyor belt where I had to shake the pans so the dough was correctly positioned in the depressions in the bun pans. I did this incorrectly one night (probably bored out of my gourd) and found out the next day that the local McDonalds drive-ins had rejected all our buns for their Big Macs. Anyway, I got a free bag of Big Mac buns -- as the rejected buns were left sitting on the back deck of the bakery.

After failing at making buns, they moved me to the oven -- which was an eight-hour nightmare of taking buns, loaves of bread and whatever else that was done baking and tipping the baked goods onto a conveyor belt to cool before wrapping. You had to be extremely fast at this because the goods were coming out of the oven at a rapid and continuous pace. You also had to like being burned because the pans were hot.

Anyway, I continued to work there until my junior year was up. I stayed in Missoula the summers of my freshmen and sophomore years to attend summer classes, but when I was a junior, I returned to Roundup. I worked that summer as well. My neighbor Dick Palagyi asked me to deliver milk for him. He was the Darigold man in Roundup. That job was much more pleasent than working at Eddy's. And by the time the summer was over, I had enough money to buy a used car -- a 1971 Pontiac Lemans, which I bought from the Lemon Orchard in Missoula.

So no longer did I have to walk by Eddy's Bakery. But I'm sure if I had, the smell would not have been so sweet as it was the year before.

Now, fellow bloggers, what are the memories of your first jobs?

Bad service

We're in a recession. People are supposedly looking for jobs, and yet it seems that servers, tellers and cashiers are providing some of the poorest service ever.

For instance, Scott stopped at a gas station last week. Along with buying the gas, he picked up a box of Dots, the gooey, fruit flavored variety. The cashier said, "Don't you want three boxes?"

Scott assured her that one was enough.

She said, "But they're on sale for three for a dollar." Then she admitted that she didn't know how to ring up just one box.

So he came home with three boxes of Dots.

Last Saturday, we ate with Belinda's uncles at one of the local restaurants that serves breakfasts to various coffee klatches. The service was beyond bad.

The waitress took our orders and then left. In a half an hour, she started bringing plates of food and asking who ordered, "Two eggs scrambled, bacon and white toast."

Well, no one did. But if you wanted to eat, your choice was to take it or re-order and wait for another half an hour.

The problem, however, is that after eight plates, she quit coming back to our table and started giving food to another table. Since there were 12 of us at our table, you can imagine the disbelief as my wife and I sat with nothing in front of us...and no more waitress. Luckily an aunt on a diet gave me a half a piece of unbuttered toast while I waited.

Finally, after regaining her attention, four of us re-ordered. Another 20 minutes elapsed and she started bringing us plates of food again. Not necessarily ours, but it at least it was breakfast items. So we all got served....something.

However, we began wondering how we would get our bills since the waitress obviously had no idea what food she had served and to whom.

Twenty minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with a handful of slips. Like our food, she started reading off this item and that item and waited for us to raise our hand and claim a slip. Mine totaled $7.50, which I considered "in the ballpark" for what I had ordered. However, the cup of coffee was not included on the bill. I didn't feel any need to tell her.

Before I left the table, I placed a dollar bill down and made a bet with the uncles that she wouldn't have the guts to ask us, "So how was everything."

She didn't...however, I left the dollar as a tip. Still, I couldn't imagine being this waitress. She had the plates screwed up at the table next to us as well. Think how long an eight-hour work day would be if you continually goofed up people's orders.

So where are all these people looking for work? I can remember when Patti, David and Karen's mother, was waitressing in Roundup. I don't think she ever wrote down an order and she never missed placing the right plate of food in front of the right person. She also could add up the bill and never use a calculator. Are there still waitresses like that or are they just memories, like Republicans in the White House and the Packers winning the Super Bowl?

The season of my discontent

The Super Bowl is half over. I've come to the realization that I watch the game...well, for the game. Not for the commercials and not for the half time entertainment. So I'm writing instead of listening to Bruce Springsteen.

At the end of the night, my football season will be over. Nothing will preoccupy my time on TV until baseball season begins. My Sundays will be devoted to taking naps in the afternoon. My Monday nights will be...well, just another night of the week.

Outside my home, we still have huge piles of snow. The inflatable snowman that Belinda put up after Thanksgiving is still waving his sign that says, "Let it snow." I would love to take the billboard for bad weather down, but he's frozen into the ground. So with February upon us, who can I blame if we get another six feet of snow this month? To my neighbors, they probably think I'm the cause because we've got that stupid snowman asking for more snow.

About two weeks ago we bought a Wii game. And then 10 days ago, we bought a Wii Fitness module. So we've been "working out" on the Wii system.

Last Saturday night, a friend of Scott's came up to me and said, "Geez, Slim, have you got a personal trainer? You've really slimmed down."

I hate to admit it, but couldn't contain my laughter when I replied, "Yeah, I'm on the Wii Fitness Program." It's probably better for you than nothing, but I don't or can't do the more strenuous exercises that Scott can do. So I'm left with "rowing the boat" or performing a "step-on, step off" rhythm exercise.

This morning when I stepped on the Wii Fitness platform at 6 a.m., the game said that I had gained two pounds from yesterday and it asked me what I had done to gain so much weight. It listed several options so I clicked the obvious: "Over eating."

Then the game scolded me for "over eating"...hey, did it think I got in this shape because I was star quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers?

So more of my discontent is coming out. And while I gained two pounds today, Scott lost two pounds. Now my goal is to lose 20 pounds in two months. Frankly, that's always my goal. Scott's goal was to gain six pounds by bulking up by doing these exercises.

The Wii game tells me every morning that I'm obese and Scott is underweight. I keep thinking, boy to only have Scott's problems.

Tomorrow is the first of three "paydays" at work for the six of us that are dieting. Last week I was fourth out of six people. My hunch is that unless five of the six really pigged out on Super Bowl Sunday, I won't be taking home the $60 either.

I had good intentions, but as Grandpa has told me so many times over my life time, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

So what do I have to look forward to? Well, next weekend Derek is coming home from college. Perhaps I can beat him at Wii bowling.

February's a short month so even if it snows every day, at least we're getting closer to spring. But if Algore comes to Mandan, I'm going to take out all my frustrations by turning on my snowblower and pounding him and his limousine and his private jet with a steady stream of snow and ice.

Who knows, maybe I'll lose a couple of pounds and the Wii system will like me again.