The Plan...

OK, here's the plan as it stands: Jen and Joey are flying to Minneapolis in the middle of May, where they'll meet up with Jen's mom, drive to Fargo, and rent us a house for July 1 or thereabouts. Then they all fly home.

We sit tight until July.

I wrap up my bar prep class around Monday, July 10. We leave for Fargo around July 11 or 12, with me driving a moving van and listening to bar-review tapes. Jen, the kids, and the dog caravan in the minivan.

We should get there in time to get there for my judge's clerk reunion that weekend. I study for a week, then we all fly to Austin, TX, for my brother Dan's July 22 wedding. Then Jen and the kids fly back to Fargo, and I fly back to D.C. on Sunday, July 23, with my sister Meg, who is also taking the Maryland bar. We study frantically for 48 hours, take the bar Tuesday and Wednesday July 25 and 26. I then hop in my truck to drive to Fargo, listening to anything but bar-review tapes. I start work in early August.

This is all assuming there is a Fargo to move to. After a winter of severe weather alerts for godawful wind, cold, and snowstorms, Fargo is finally emerging into its spring, which apparently means severe weather alerts for fog (the other day) and flooding (the Red River will peak this coming Tuesday).

Perhaps we shouldn't be so alarmed -- Jen has been following the water's progress in the online edition of the Forum newspaper. "Fargo's just taking this flood thing in stride," she reports. Despite the city's having declared an emergency, so far, the Forum and the city seem pretty relaxed:"We don’t view this as a crisis. We view this as an inconvenience," [Fargo Mayor Bruce] Furness said.

Elm Street, which floods every spring, was closed to traffic this morning and city crews planned to start putting up temporary dikes at two locations on Second Street starting Saturday.

Government for the people

The City of Fargo was kind enough to compile and publish an item I would really have appreciated when I was in high school: a list of all establishments in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area that will sell alcohol to minors. Days Inn Mulligan’s, here I woulda come!

The Ghost of Fargo...

My pal Kate has pointed me to a very cool Web site that traces Fargo's story through photographs and beautiful old postcards. I think Kate has done me the favor in return for having reintroduced hotdish to her life.

The author of the site is James Lileks, author of such books as Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice, The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s.

You would not, apparently, be incorrect if you supposed there was a snarky tone running through the these books.

But Lileks is really quite tender toward Fargo, his hometown:This site is not intended as a historical account of Fargo or downtown - just a recollection of Fargo through the medium of postcards. I should note that the city has grown bigger than I could ever have imagined; that I am proud to have been born and raised there; and that I've spent more of my life in Minneapolis than Fargo, but Fargo is home in a way Minneapolis can never be. I remember it when it was smaller, when it seemed alone, and when it was my entire world. Never so big that I felt afraid, and never so small that there wasn't something new to discover.

As a teenager, I thought Fargo was a prison sentence. Consider this my apology.

A taste of Fargo in Rockville...

Well, we've had our first hotdish, and it was pretty delicious. Joey liked it quite a bit, and his like for it was tempered only slightly by the discovery that cream of mushroom soup was a main ingredient. Katie says she didn't like it so much, but I think she can be convinced into it. And Ellie was amenable as usual.

Since I would like this to remain a Fargo blog, and not morph into a hotdish blog, I'm not going to go into detail every time we do this. But for the record, here's how we cooked this first one:

2 lbs. ground beef, browned.
2 cans cream of mushroom soup.
Lots of green beans (a pound and a half, maybe?), cooked a little.
2 lbs tater tots.
Grated cheese.

Toss the browned ground beef in an 8x13 Pyrex pan, mix in the green beans and the soup. Top with tater tots. Bake at 350 degrees or so for about 20 minutes -- basically follow the directions on the tater tot bag for fixing the tater tots. Then toss cheese on top and broil until it looks right. Boy, that was good. It tasted like a childhood I didn't actually have (Mom made plenty of good casseroles, but not this one, I don't think...).

Some folks toss onions in with the ground beef, but Jen and the kids aren't such big fans of onions, so I skipped that. Some folks just toss in green beans from the can, and that might be good, but the fresh ones were terrific. Some folks also toss cheese in with the meat/soup/veggies mix; I might try that next time.

Katie immediately knew exactly what was going on when she saw the case of cream of mushroom soup (right) arrive from Costco. "No, not more hotdish!" she wailed. Yes, more hotdish.

Ellie's a funny girl. We were driving with her the other day, and she was trying to remember what it was her Nanny had called her a few days before (it was "baby cakes"). Jen and I were not being very helpful, suggesting things like "sweet waffle" and "peanut butter and jelly." Finally, Ellie came up with a guess of her own: "Hotdish!" Not bad -- I may start calling Jen that.

Rivalries...

Something I'm going to have to get a better feel for is the North Dakota/Minnesota rivalry. Right now, I'm just getting small previews of it, like this excerpt from this week's "A Prairie Home Companion," courtesy of my eagle-eared sister Meg:
TR (COWPOKE): That there is a man-telope.

GK: I thought the President came out against hybrids.

TR (COWPOKE): Too late.

GK: Is it fast?

TR (COWPOKE): Runs 30-40 miles an hour but he gets lost pretty easy. (MORE HOOVES, WHINNYING, MALE SFX)

GK: How come in North Dakota?

TR (COWPOKE): Evolution's a way of life in North Dakota. Survival of the fittest. Once you've seen Fargo, you don't believe in Intelligent Design anymore. So we got the Hammerhead carp. Part shark and part carpenter. We use it to build flood walls. We got a buffalo hybrid called the"Guy-son" — we're training it to play football.

GK: Interesting. You can read the full transcript here, or listen to the RealAudio file of just that bit of it here.

Now, there's a possibility that this reflects instead a more specific Grand Forks/Fargo rivalry, since this week's "Prairie Home Companion" was produced there. Definitely requires further study.

Changed priorities...

Here's an example of the kind of news item I used to pay no attention to, but now read out loud over the kitchen table to Jen:TIPS FROM THE NORTH

Based on his experience as head of General Motors' cold weather test center in Kapuskasing, Ontario, John Komar offers winter-driving suggestions that may not be in the owners' manuals.

• To ease the battery's load before starting on very cold days, turn the ignition key only to its accessory setting at first. Then shut off any heater fans, radio, heated seats and other devices that spring to life before cranking the engine.
  
  
• To open a door that has frozen shut, push — don't pull — to compress soft weather seals and break the ice holding it shut. In extreme cases, a hair dryer or a heat gun might be needed.
  
  
• Before parking a car for the night, open the windows and allow warm humid interior air to escape — it prevents frost from building up inside the car overnight.
  
  
• Don't warm up a car by idling the engine. Driving slowly brings the engine to operating temperature more quickly, with less air pollution.