Almost Autumn

It's almost autumn here in North Dakota. You can tell it's just around the corner, maybe as soon as next week when they expect a cold front to swoop in (thanks Canada) and hang around for a few days. It probably won't be a hard freeze, but nighttime temps are expected to dip into the upper 30's by midweek.

A few leaves on random trees started sporadically yellowing as soon as a week ago, and now there's a noticeable, yet slight yellowish tinge on the outer layers of most of the trees, like the leaves are trying to change, but the tree is resisting the effort, unwilling to relinquish its grasp on summer. And now, every day brings more fallen leaves to the ground, not a ton, but just enough to be noticeable and portend the great leaf shedding to come.

The past two weeks that I've been back here have been phenomenal weather, warm and pleasant, with very little rain. Everyone says that this great weather has been to make up for what was a cold, rainy summer (by North Dakota standards at least). And even though the past few days have made it above 80 degrees, there's been a difference, the heat doesn't last as long, and begins dissipating in early evening, and the sun just doesn't pack the same midday punch that I felt even last week.

I'm hoping that the majority of fall colors can hold off for a few weeks. My Dad's coming to visit the first week of October, and he always enjoyed fall colors, especially his yearly Columbus Day excursions to New England to visit when I lived back there. I'll have more on my Dad's visit, we're still planning his itinerary, but it already involves a UND football game (The Potato Bowl!!!) and hockey game.

Two New Subscribers

I'd like to take the opportunity to personally welcome two brand spankin' new subscribers to our wonderful little blog here. Now I know that there are others out there who read regularly, but these two have actually added themselves as "followers" to the blog and thus get updates through Google Reader or some other internet reader. Want your own shout out? Then be unique, and become a "follower" (yes this irony was intentional) of my awesome, super-rad blog here.

So without further ado I happily welcome:

Bill - My baby brother. OK, so he's only a year and half younger than me, but if you ever met him, you'd know that "baby brother" is probably more accurate than "little brother". He's like 6'7" and built like an offensive lineman. Since he's my brother, I love him, but I still have never forgiven him for being that tall yet being totally disinterested in basketball.

Bill is currently in school in Northern California with the goal of carrying on the family tradition of becoming a drug dealer. Both parents have been unapologetic drug dealers for decades, and soon he will be too. Technically his degree will be in pharmacy, but it's a fine line between drug dealer and pharmacist, one that I'm not qualified to make, that is for God to decide.

Sara - Leesha's friend and former roomie, and tied for first place in my "Craftiest Person I Know" category. And mind you this isn't crafty like a fox, but crafty like McGyver with flour, eggs, suger, and buttercream frosting. Alycia loves sheep and for her graduation party Sara made cake pops (tiny little cupcakes on a lollipop stick) shaped like sheep that were one of the coolest baked things I've ever seen.

You can see a picture of the tasty sheep to the left. The body is a combination of gluten free brownie and chocolate frosting, rolled into little balls and dipped in white chocolate. To make the sheep's wool, Sara then dipped the balls into her cotton candy machine (seriously, who has their own cotton candy machine? A dedicated craftsperson like Sara that's who) and melted Tootsie Rolls were shaped to make sheep feet and faces.

Sara has started selling these cake pops via the magic of the Internets, and here's her website for her business - Sarandipity Sweets and her blog here that has some cool baking ideas/hints/recipes/musings on life. I would highly recommend both.

Welcome Bill and Sara.

A Wake For Tourist Dog

Considering how rough Shaak Ti is on her toys, we've come to only purchase puppy toys from two places - the discount bin at Petco, and the dollar bin at Target. It was during a recent perusal through the Petco discount bin that we found Tourist Dog, marked by his tacky Hawaiian shirt/floppy hat and camera slung around his neck. Possibly due to homesickness for all the tourists she used to see in San Diego, Shaak Ti took an immediate shining to Tourist Dog, sadly the results were as disturbing as they were predictable.

I must warn you that the following pictures are grahpic, and not intended for young children or those lacking intestinal fortitude.

Fare thee well Tourist Dog, we hardly knew ye.

Decapitated, with innards splling out across the floor, we took a moment to gather our thoughts and had a brief impromptu wake for Tourist Dog. We rounded up his fuzzy innard stuffing as Shaak Ti continued to sadistically prance and play with Tourist Dogs' severed head. The good part about toys like this is even though they may be semi-destroyed, Shaak Ti can still extract an amazing amount of fun out of just the small pieces that are left. She's been dragging around Tourist Dogs' head for the last few days now and the stuffing-less carcass will likely continue to be a source of enjoyment for weeks to come.

In other pooch related news, the front porch perch is up and running. Both dogs, but especially Shaak Ti, spend countelss hours here, surveying the neighborhood and yelling/barking at any squirrels within view.

Shaak Ti models her perch. Note all the squirrel infested trees in the background. We're glad to have such a dedicated and efficient anti-squirrel sentinel guarding us from this ever present arboreal menace.

Limited Cable

It's a banner day today. For the first time in almost 5 years, I live in a household with cable television. Seriously.

After numerous conversations with Alycia, we decided that it was probably best to have some manner of TV access. Our experimentation with our rabbit ear antenna system only got 3.5 stations, three of with were public television, not too helpful. Between the potential cabin fever in winter, and needing to be appraised by the authorities when the tornado/blizzard/Toxic Death Cloud Mosquito Spray is arriving, we thought it best to get some kind of TV.

The cable provider - Midcontinent Cable (which is just a terrible name, it sounds like Incontinent Cable to me, so that's what I call them) has three or four different options from basic cable, on up to super deluxe cable. But even basic cable is $45/month. Damn that's a lot. Apprently after some prying with a customer service rep, Alycia found out that they have an even more basic than basic plan called limited cable. You can only find the description of limited cable in one place on their website, and the description of it is "limited cable". Awesome, that helped me out a lot.

Only with more verbal persuasion was Alycia able to coax the actual channels out of the Incontinet Cable sales rep. So limited cable is: the major networks, CNN, The Weather Channel (Rad!!!), the UND channel (so we can get the Fighting Sioux hockey games) and some random public access channels, 20 channels in all. I think this may be the same plan that prisoners and elderly shut ins get for free from the state, though I can't be sure on that. Now I'm gonna go watch some TV.....

Dinner with the President

OK, so it wasn't the President of the US, only the President of the University of North Dakota, and we didn't actually have dinner with him, just at his house. Though we did chat briefly with the President and his wife upon arriving, they were too busy with their hosting duties to spend too much time chatting with everyone. They were both extremely gracious hosts and we learned that Marcia Kelly (The UND First Lady) has her degree in Speech and Communication Disorders and occasionally guest lectures at UND. I pointed out to Alycia that it's always beneficial to have someone in your field in such an influential position.

The occasion was a welcome dinner for all new faculty and I was invited to accompany Alycia, provided that I got all gussied up in my finest business casual attire. Most of the new faculty that we chatted with were quite friendly and sociable, immediately dispelling my presuppositions of the nerdy, anti-social professor. Since my name tag only had my name and not my academic department on it, some people asked "what department are you in?" and I happily replied "I'm in the Arm Candy Department". This caused some eye rolling from Alycia, a few chuckles, and a quizzical look or two from the non-native English speakers who didn't get the joke. But that's OK, it was all in good fun.

We ended up dining at a table with members of the Nursing School and the Aerospace School, arguably two of the biggest and most powerful departments at UND, and well regarded nationally. One of our dining companions was Bruce Smith (no not the Hall of Fame Defensive End for the Buffalo Bills), Dean of the Aerospace School, which I'm told is the best program of its kind in the country. He had lots of cool stories, and by far a more dynamic and interesting vocation than mine. Sadly in the world of accounting, very few stories start with you piloting across Colorado on a silvery moonlit night. Oh well....

Long Term New Car Search

Alycia and I are starting to kick around the idea of getting a new(er) car sometime in the near future, though it probably won't be a new car, it'll be new to us. Ideally we'd like something with all wheel drive (for those snowy, icy moments in life), and some decent storage in back, like a RAV-4 or Honda CRV size. The goal would be to have enough room for dog crates, as well as enough space for a Minneapolis Costco or IKEA trip.


In the meantime, we'll see how the Northdakotmobile does this winter and then decide in the Spring/Summer of next year what we're gonna do. More than likely we'll get something before summer since the a/c in the Northdakotamobile is out again, and probably not worth repairing.

Tuesday Two-State Adventure

Today was my first day back home that Alycia had to pack up and go to school, so after some tasty breakfast burritos, we headed off in the North Dakotamobile (which is going to need a new nickname since there are quite a few North Dakotamobiles here) and went to UND. I got to drop Alycia off at school and get a guided tour of her building, office, and lab, all of which were impressive. I also met a couple of her colleagues and can now rest easy that she's in good intellectual hands.

After a few hours of work/Internet browsing, I decided that the best present I could give Alycia when she got home was a tired Shaak Ti, and I got ramped up for a run. It's a beautiful blustery day today with scattered thunderstorms, just a fantastic day for a run. I checked the Doppler Radar to make sure there were no heavy showers coming, and we headed out.

Since our house is only two blocks from an entrance to the Greenway, and we're right across the river from Minnesota, I have the unique ability to say that I completed a two state run, which is kind of cool. It was my first run in a few weeks, and my first with Shaak Ti in North Dakota, so it wasn't the best, but we did it. I forgot how hard it is running with Shaak Ti - The Littlest Sled Dog. She pulls so hard, for most of the run, that you not only have to lean back (making your gate bio-mechanically difficult), but you have to engage your biceps and lats and essentially do a low grade lat pull the entire run. This saps much of the energy that I would otherwise prefer to utilize in my legs, which would hopefully make the run easier to complete. I tried to explain this to Shaak Ti, but she would have none of it.

I got away from running in my years in San Diego, there was just too much heat, too many cars, too many concrete sidewalks to run on, and I lost my running mojo. My San Diego neighborhood was great, but not the most conducive to running, and getting in the car to drive somewhere to run just seems to defeat the purpose of running. Running is supposed to be the simplest, most efficient form of exercise, you put on your shoes and step out your door, and just run. That was hard for me to do in San Diego, but here, with access to a lovely paved path along the Red River it should be easier.

Right now I'm sitting on the front screened in porch listening as the rumbles of thunder get closer and closer, and watching the fat drops of rain smack the windows. Add a sleepy puppy, a window rattling clap of thunder, and my post run endorphin buzz, and it's a pretty good afternoon. I couldn't be a happier camper.

Sprayin' For Skeeters

Grand Forks, like a lot of towns large and small, in North Dakota and throughout the Midwest periodically spray for mosquitoes during the peak summer months. Spraying occurs in the evening, during prime mosquito activity time, and is done with low flying aircraft (freaked me out the first time it happened) and/or trucks that drive slowly through the streets.

They usually give a day or two warning when they're going to spray, typically publishing a small article in the Grand Forks Herald. The most recent article caught my eye though, since it contained some information that was new to me.

It started with - "Mosquito control trucks travel with a flashing yellow light at about 10 miles an hour." OK, cool. Good to know that there will be slow trucks around town and we should avoid them like any other service vehicle, or snow plow.

The next important item was a warning - "Residents should not run, walk or bike directly through the aerosol cloud behind the sprayer." What!?!?! Does this really happen? Seriously? And often enough that people need to be warned not ride their bike or jog behind the toxic death cloud that's spewing out of the truck. Is this a game for local kids? Really?

And the final nugget of information - "Residents may want to stay inside for about a half hour until the cloud dissipates." This seems a bit more reasonable, yet still scary. The thing about a toxic death cloud is that it rarely does as it's told. Just like Baby from Dirty Dancing - you don't put Toxic Death Cloud in a corner.