Christmas Cookies with Emma

Emma, our cute little six-year-old neighbor, loves to bake, and cookies are her preferred order of business. She and Patty did the Christmas version yesterday -- sugar cookies, specifically -- as Emma says they're the only kind to make.


Here she is, hard at work.

Rolling away.


The all-important decorating phase.

Decorating continues.


Enjoying the finished product.


Little sister Tamsin stopped by for the fun.

Into the Hibernus!

Well, it happens every year. It snows, then the temperature tanks. Eight inches (20cm) of the white stuff last night. Now there's a blizzard warning: winds gusting to 40mph (64kph), temperatures on either side of 0°F (-18°C), and wind chills in the -30° (-34°C) range. I look out the window and don't see Spring in sight. . . .

Here's a shot I took of our backyard on Christmas morning, 2009. We'd had more than a foot (30cm) of really wet snow.

"Every mile is two in winter."

   -- George Herbert (1593-1653)

     English poet and clergyman

"I have a recurring dream about being cremated -- not a nightmare, a relief."

-- Eddie Ryshavy, resident of Plymouth, Minn.,

commenting on the cold, in the Minneapolis

Star Tribune, 12-30-09.

Here's roughly the same shot, taken February 10, 2010.   You'll notice the snow is a bit higher.  Despite his protests, I put Guinness on top of the pile, thinking it might help show scale.

It's hard to see here, but on the horizon is a nice example of "hoar frost."  Basically, it's frozen dew. Quite pretty, actually. (This is our alley, facing west.)

Hubbard Squash

Patty has a thing for squash, but perhaps things went too far this morning when we picked up this 28 lb. (13kg) Hubbard version for $5 (€3,5) at the St. Paul Farmers Market. Needless to say, we'll be eating it, freezing it, making pies with it, etc., for some time. I hope it's good!


This shot also shows context. The thing was creeping out Patty a bit, so she covered it with a jacket.

The saleslady at the Farmers Market said to open it by dropping it on the driveway. It worked great!

Here are all the pieces!

Here's Patty "puréeing" the whole thing after baking it. I estimate there's enough to make 20 pies.

Madison-Milwaukee, 8/09

Patty and I just had a great time in Madison (the University of Wisconsin at Madison is my alma mater), primarily to run the city's inaugural Half-Marathon. I beat my Fargo time by about three minutes but finished in the lower half of my age group. Patty -- with a bad knee -- failed to better her Fargo time but managed to finish sixth in her age group. It was a brutal run: many more hills than Fargo, but Madison's a beautiful town, and the course was very nice.

Enjoying a brat and a beer at State Street Brats. I think my mother -- an alumna of the University -- used to work here. (I've subsequently learned I was wrong about this. State Street Brats didn't open until 1989! It was in business as The BratHaus before that but well after my mother's time.)

This is the cubby hole where I used to study when I was a student at Madison in the mid-70s. It's on Floor 4M at Memorial Library.

This was Union South, where I used to work as the Student Building Manager -- making $2.75 an hour. We'll see how the new building improves on the old one.

Here's my roommate, Burrell Eveland, and I on the day I graduated in May, 1976. The shot was taken at the front door of our apartment.

Here I am in the same place in August, 2009. Apparently, the neighborhood's tanked a bit.

On to Milwaukee! We had dinner at Mader's -- a great German restaurant and a Milwaukee institution. This was the appetizer. For the entree, I recommend the goulash with spatzel.



Here's Patty at Sunday brunch at the famous Pfister Hotel. It was the first time I've ever had a shrimp cocktail the first thing in the morning.

On Sunday afternoon, we saw the Brewers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates. Outdoor baseball was great!



Here's where I lived from 1954 to 1963, in Whitefish Bay, a north suburb of Milwaukee. I didn't realize it when I was a kid, but it's quite a neighborhood!

2nd Grade

Rootie Kazootie, Baseball Star

For several years, I (Mike) had been thinking about a book my father read to me when I was a kid. All I remembered was that it was about baseball, and there was a mouse in the cast of characters. Ten years ago, when the internet wasn't what it is now, web searches yielded nothing. At one point, I even swapped a few e-mails with someone at the Library of Congress about how to find this book, but without a title or an author, I was in a bad way.

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My quest ebbed and flowed over the years, until earlier this summer, when I again tried a search of "mouse AND baseball" -- this time at some obscure book collectors' web site. I hit on an image of the cover (above). It looked familiar, so, after 10 years of searching, I now had a name. From there, it was on to a few auctions on eBay, where prices ranged from $13.50 to $259.00. I ultimately found a copy in California for which I paid $7.25, including shipping. When I got the book, I vividly remembered the images but not the story. (Basically, good triumphs over evil.)

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The big unknown was whether my now 85-year-old-father would remember reading this book to me some 50 years ago. Lo and behold, he didn't.

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I'm not sure why this book has had such a lingering impact on me, but I think it has a lot to do with a memory of something my Dad did for me -- bonding, if you will. I have to confess I was disappointed he had no recollection of the book, but I guess it's because, to him, it represents just one of many things he was doing for me.

If you'd like to take the five minutes required to read Rootie Kazootie, Baseball Star, I may be posting a link to a .pdf of its 32 pages, but I'm looking into some copyright issues. In the meantime, if you just can't stand the suspense, let me know, and we'll make some arrangements.

Here's Dad with Rootie, 8/22/09.

Chez Nous

It occurred to me (Mike) there are hundreds -- perhaps thousands? -- of folks who religiously follow this blog from far-away places and may be interested in a few shots of where we live. So, here you go!

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The View from the Highland Water Tower

The Highland Water Tower is a landmark in our neck of the woods. Once a year, the Saint Paul water people open it so folks can take the (quasi-) long climb to the top. This year's once-a-year was last Saturday, July 18, so Patty, Kirsten, and I took the trip. The views were nice, and it's great to have an extra connection to an important part of the neighborhood landscape.

Fun at Oceanaire; July 14, 2009

Patty and I just celebrated my birthday with oysters and crabs cakes at Oceanaire in downtown Minneapolis. If you can't read Jonathan Swift's quote in the above photo: "He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster."

Here's a not-great shot of us savoring the moment.

We savored the food, too. I don't want to get mushy, but I feel grateful that, in this ecomony, we were able to go out and do this. (Nice mojitos, too!)

Fargo Half-Marathon; May 9, 2009

We made the 245-mile (400km) trek to Fargo, North Dakota, last weekend to run the Fargo Half-Marathon. (That's 13.1 miles [21.2km] to you non-runners.) Patty's daughter Kirsten joined us, and son Bjorn was on hand to cheerlead. The weather was chilly -- 38°F (3°C) at the start of the race -- but it wasn't raining or snowing, nor was it windy. Very flat course.

In any case, Patty ran it in 2:05:22 -- fourth in her age group. Mike came in at 2:05:18 -- 11th in his age group. Kirsten ran it in 2:15:22 and placed easily in the top half of her age group.

Here are some finish-line photos!

Patty and Mike are running the inaugural Madison (WI) Half-Marathon on August 29. Then it's on to Milwaukee to see the Brewers play the Pirates at Miller Park. We'll also re-visit Mike's childhood stomping grounds. (He lived in Milwaukee -- Whitefish Bay, actually -- until he was eight years old.)

Twins Spring Training

Patty and I just returned from a great excursion to Florida to watch two Twins games at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers. We had a rain delay on the first day but had fantastic weather overall.

One can't beat a cloudless, 85° day with a beer and some baseball. Unfortunately, that's not what we had for the Sunday game. But the rain blew through, and we salvaged a fairly nice day. The Twins won!

Monday was more like it! The beer is a Land Shark Lager, a Jacksonville microbrew. Not bad. (Actually, I've learned subsequently that this beer is linked to Budweiser somehow, so it's off my list, except in cases of extreme duress.) Summit EPA is on tap, as are Yuengling (from America's oldest brewery -- in PA) and Presidente, an extremely timid Dominican Republic beer probably best suited to a really hot day in the Dominican Republic. This photo was taken at the "Drink Rail"; seats one can buy that allow convenient quaffing during the game. Patty and I may get these the next time we're there.

Our trip started from Jacksonville (the closest airport I could get with my frequent flyer points), so we swung through Lake Alfred on the way to Fort Myers. My 55-year-old retired brother Mark has a place there. He was kind enough to put us up for a few days. We put 800 miles on this Bug rental car.

Here's Mark in front of his house. He's proud of it -- and should be.

Patty took this photo of Mark and me at a beautiful park in Lakeland, FL.

Lots of beautiful foliage there, too!


Our trip also included a stop on Marco Island to take my parents to dinner. They seem to be doing well, although my mother still loves to talk about Edina, even though no one else could give a shit about it. But parents will be parents, I guess.

We had some time on the way back to Jacksonville, so we stopped in St. Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited town in the U.S. (It goes back to the 1500s, I think.) It was very pretty and "Euro-Iberian." We had a great lunch there, including some fabulous lobster tacos. We really need to eat more of those!

Overall, I thought this was a great trip. Patty's a bit less of a baseball fan than I am (and had to put up with in-laws), so she may have a lesser opinion of it than I do. In any case, I hope we can go back sometime!