A great day for lemonade

This is the second day this winter that I've stayed home from work because the roads to and from were such that traveling is at your own risk. Actually, I probably should have stayed home another two days but went to work at my own peril. And, of course, if you included the lousy traveling conditions that occurred when I was off on Christmas vacation, there were probably another two days that could have been classified as "snow days."

Last week, I saw a picture of a frozen, white longsleeved shirt "flying' from a pole in the snowbank in eastern North Dakota that said, "We surrender" written with red spray paint. That's the way I feel.

Generally, this time of year, I want to start a few tomato plants in my house that can be transplanted into the garden in late May. This year, however, I didn't plant any tomatoes. Perhaps it's because it seems May will never arrive. Instead, we'll just keep having more snow days....perhaps through July.

It used to be that North Dakota was the only state that seemed to get hit by this miserable winter...but now the winter seems to have widened and blanketed everything west of the Mississippi.

Anyway, today is a quiet time away from the office. It's a perfect day to eat some home-made soup, take a nap and catch up on a couple of projects that you never seem to have time for.

When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Jobs that I would hate to have...

On Monday night during the blizzard, guess who showed up on my doorstep dressed in his yellow slicker with a big smile on his face?

Give up? It was the Schwan man!

Then it dawned on me that if he wasn't out selling his frozen foods in the freezing froth, he wouldn't be making any commission. Hmmm...that doesn't sound like a job I'd like to have. Instead, I came home early on Monday because they were pulling the plows off the streets in Mandan and I wanted to make sure I got home.

I got paid for the last two hours of the day...but I didn't really work.

Then tonight it occurred to me that there's another job I wouldn't want. That's being a weather forecaster on the news.

Right now, there is absolutely no right forecast. Grandpa wants it to heat up and melt the snow. But if the snow melts, there is more chance of flooding. So the people who have river water running up to their homes don't want to see a warm up...at least not quite yet.

Well, the forecast wasn't for warmer temperatures any how. It was for more snow and cold weather. So Grandpa said a curse word at the weatherman.

I'm not sure if curse words travel through the TV screen, but my bet is that people fed up with this terrible winter have actually cursed the weatherman to his face.

Can you imagine going to the grocery store or Starbucks and having an irate viewer lay into you because of your weather forecast?

That reminds me of another job I wouldn't want to have...working for Northwest Airlines. The other night the midnight flight to Bismarck got diverted back to Minneapolis because of fog. The next flight with open seats to North Dakota's capital city was at 8:20 the next evening. On hearing that joyful news, many of the passengers decided that they would just return to their town of origin. But there was a glitch. The airline wouldn't give the customers their luggage.

Yes, that's right. The luggage had to fly to Bismarck the next night whether the passenger was going or not.

Can you imagine the bedlam of unhappy campers at the Northwest ticket booth when they heard that news?

So I guess I'm more contented than ever with my job.

What jobs would you hate to have?

Reconnecting on Facebook

You don't get to be 50 years old without meeting a few people along the way...and some of them you might even like to visit with again...if only you could reconnect with them.

So, a week or so ago I joined the Facebook crowd. It took a little (okay, a lot of) help from my son Derek, but "presto" and I'm there with the hip, cool crowd. - creating photo albums, instant messaging, wall-to-wall conversations, etc.

Well, the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Two weeks ago, my only tool was a blog -- which allows me to unburden myself of these majestic thoughts -- but now I have a new tool. This one helps me reconnect with old high school and college buddies.

Once upon a time, I was young and playing tuba in the high school band. In fact, I played the tuba for six years...and for all six years the boy playing next to me was Anthony Perrella. This friendship was made even more interesting because when my dad was in high school, one of his best friends was Anthony's dad. In fact, they were boxers together on the Roundup team.

Anyway, I reconnected with Anthony through Facebook...and I got a call from him last night when I had come home early from work. Anthony is now in Billings and works for a company that is a contractor for the lignite-based power plants in North Dakota and the Tesoro refinery north of Mandan.

I also reconnected with my favorite roommate when I went to college in Missoula. His name is Tony Apa. Since getting his baccalaureate degree from the University of Montana in wildlife biology, he has earned his master's and doctorate degrees as well.

I never would have known this about Tony -- who now lives in Colorado -- if it hadn't been for Facebook.

So, new tool, new reacquaintenances. Remember the Oldsmobile commercial that said, "It's not just your father's car." Well, when it comes to Facebook, maybe the slogan should be, "It's not just for your kids anymore."

Or in the words of Seinfeld's Kramer, "I'm out there Jerry...and I'm loving it."

Thank you fellow bloggers for your support....

On Saturday morning I picked up my second win with my Toastmasters speech about customer service. Once again I was the only contestant.

But what made the contest so special was the support shone by my fellow bloggers - Randy Meissner of "More Words to Ponder"; Gary Van Dyke of "What a World"; and DVD of "Number One Cubs Fan." And while he doesn't have his own blog, my brother Ar Vee -- who is a frequent commenter on almost everyone else's blogs -- was also in attendance.

I now advance to the divisional competition which will be at Basin Electric's headquarters in a couple of weeks. This will give me the home court advantage as my Toastmasters meetings are generally at Basin Electric.

I don't know why there are no other contestants. When I was in Toastmasters 10 years ago, participation in these contests was a lot better. Somehow, they must have fallen out of vogue. Well, I hope I'm leading by example and that next year there are several more participants.

Contests are important because they are not only fun, but the competition helps you improve. You can watch how someone better than you performs and then try to learn from them.

Even though I was the only contestant on Saturday, I felt great about the win because I thought I did a great job....and in the end, you are really only competing against yourself.

Now...onward and upward. The photo is of me with my brother Randy (Ar Vee) and my dad helping me hold up the hardware -- first place!

The purple paint was peeling

For give me, I couldn't resist the alliteration. Tonight after work, Grandpa and I removed all the Christmas lights from the house and fence that had been up there since about Thanksgiving. I can't remember if we put them up before or after. But I remember that they had been up a long, long time.

We wanted to open our front windows this weekend and couldn't open them very far because of the little colored lights that we're hanging over the window.

A couple of nights ago, I tried to pick up an extension cord that had sat in the snow for four months and found out that although the snow had melted, it was still frozen to the ground.

Well, tonight was the night. The lights on the window came down and the extension got rolled up and stuck in a box in the garage for next Christmas.

One thing I noticed, however, is that the purple Christmas lights on the fence were all starting to peel. The glass wasn't peeling, the purple paint on the lights were. Now what caused it flake off? Was it the heat? Was it poor paint? Or was it the fact that they had to endure one of the toughest winters on record?

I don't know the answer, but I know we'll have to replace the purple lights before next year.

In case you forgot what our house looked like when it was decorated and deluged with snow (more alliteration), I'ved posted this picture. I think there are even a couple of visible purple lights before they lost their paint.

Please, Lord, no more winters like this one.

Grandpa and I were so delighted to have the darn Christmas lights down that we celebrated with a dinner out at Bonanza!

We're getting old honey...

Last night as Belinda and I stood in our driveway waving goodbye to Derek and Camila...the truth hit me again. I'm getting old.

The first time I remember waving goodbye to someone...and really hating to see them go...was when we lived on the hill in Roundup. Janet and her husband David had come to visit from Mankato, Minnesota, where he attended seminary. At the time, I had no idea where Mankato was. It seemed like it was on the other side of the moon. Having driven there a time or two from Bismarck, it is a long ways away...but even longer if you were driving from Roundup to Mankato.

Anyway, I remember standing there waving goodbye with the rest of my family. I had a little tear in my eye as my oldest sister left us again after too short a visit.

Jump ahead a few years to when our kids were little and we were the ones visiting my folks in Roundup or Belinda's folks in Glendive. Now it was me packing the luggage and the kids in the car and heading east...always east. I have always liked traveling west better. I didn't care if the setting sun was in my eyes for the last 100 miles of the trip, or even if I hit every bug between Forsyth and Roundup, I liked heading west the best.

And yet at the end of every visit, there was always that time when Grandma and Grandpa would come outside and wave goodbye to us.

Now yesterday it was Belinda and I staying home and Derek and Camila leaving. But not before I got a couple of nice hugs from Derek and we had eaten some apple pan dowdy.

Yet, I still had a tear in my eye and the thought -- that visit was just too short. Nothing had changed in 40 years.

This morning in the funny papers, read the "Family Circle." One of the kids has curled up in his mother's lap and says "Thank goodness we're not too old for hugs."

Amen and amen.

This Thursday my brother Randy and his family are coming for a visit. I already know it's going to be too short. And I'm not looking forward to waving goodbye. I miss them already and they haven't even arrived yet.

And then I look at Grandpa. How many times has he waved goodbye. When my mom was dying, he slept in a bed next to mom's hospital bed and held her hand night after night...until the morning of June 19, 2006, when she left Roundup for heaven. That's the goodbye that is going to be the toughest.

Whoops, I'm tearing up again. Well, all we can do is make our welcomes all the more cheery and the time we spend together the best we can.

More Obamanomics - this time cap and trade

Yesterday the President defended his position to support a "cap and trade" mechanism to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In addressing a CEO of a company who said the added costs would hurt his company financially, the president answered in "political speak" saying that the cap and trade system needs to raise money but not punish people. (Our president is a master of the doublespeak. Remember ArVee's band "The Underwater Fire System?" Obama would be all for that.)

Since I know a few things about cap and trade...let me give you my opinion.

First, listing CO2 as a pollutant reminds me of the old pork producers' commercials about calling pork "the other white meat." Remember, that we exhale CO2 and plants use it during photosynthesis to create green leaves and fruits and vegetables.

Second, a cap and trade system raises money by setting a cap on how much CO2 can be produced and then allocations are made as to how much a ton of CO2 is going to cost. As the cap is reduced, presumably the cost of allocations rise. However, the downturn in the economy can turn this scheme on its head. For instance, in Europe, which already has a cap and trade system, the economy is so bad that the allocations sell for a lot less than than they once did. So if the U.S. were to set up a cap and trade today, companies would want to buy "affordable" allocations from European countries who would be more than willing to trade paper for American dollars.

A quote from Dr. Robert Peltier, who is editor of Power magazine, brings this point to light: "How does the president convince voters that shipping boat loads of money to Europe is good for the U.S.? That's a stimulus package we should avoid."

Nevertheless, the U.S. House is already holding hearings on a cap and trade system and a spokesperson for the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office told the subcommittee that reducing nationwide carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent could cost the average household roughly $1,600 annually. "Those price increases would impose a larger burden on low- and moderate-income households than on higher-income households, relative to either their income or total spending," the CBO spokesman said. And it should be noted that the President's plan is to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent, not 15 percent.

Well, one legislator (Jim McDermett, D-Washington) at the committee hearing said that isn't fair, but if utilities are going to insist on passing these hidden costs on to consumers -- like this is first time that has ever happened -- then it is up to government to collect the cap and trade money from everyone and give some of it back to the poor....while using some of it to pay for healthcare reform, education reform, the down trodden, the depressed, the illegal aliens, etc....and maybe even some for the study of rats in San Francisco.

Where have we heard that before? More wealth redistribution.

A better alternative to cap and trade is simply to impose a tiny tax on each ton of carbon. So instead of paying 6.9 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, you would pay 7 cents. Since America uses so much electricity, that little 10th of a cent would represent billions of dollars that could be used to retrofit the 600 coal-based electricity generating stations in the United States with equipment that can capture carbon, build the pipelines to transport it and store the CO2 in deep underground geological formations, such as unmineable coal seams that act as a sponge for the CO2. (A point to remember here is that underneath the two coal seams that are mined near Beulah, North Dakota, lie at least another 17 that are too deep to mine economically.)

When the plants are all retrofitted, the tax can be removed. And the electric utility industry will be making a huge contribution to reducing greenhouse gases -- which is really what Americans want, not wealth redistribution.

However, if cap and trade passes, it will never go away because it will become another government entitlement program to help redistribute wealth from those dead beat millionaires (who farm, own businesses, go to college to hold professional positions at companies and buy stock) to those hard working bums.

I don't believe there is any way for any of us to stop this runaway "cap and trade" train. Not with Obama in the White House along with Pelosi and Reid running the Congress. However, Americans, some of you voted for these folks. So open wide, the medicine tastes pretty bitter....at least to me. And kiss your outdoor barbecue away...it produces CO2.