Saturday, November 25, 2006

BREAKING NEWS!

I don't know why the mainstream media hasn't made a bigger deal about this. Perhaps it's so obvious it doesn't even merit a mention.

But in case you're reading this from beyond our solar system, you should be totally alarmed to learn that while Earth's sun still seems to be providing light, it no longer provides any heat.

Yes, down from a record-breaking 62 degrees the other day, it was 17 degrees today at mid-morning when I went out to do my 4-mile run. Wind chill? Thanks for asking: 4. It was also 17/4 when I returned from the run almost an hour later.

Fortunately, I stocked up on cold-weather running gear just yesterday, and was ready. Here's what it takes to survive:

Head: A full hood and face mask, which did a marvelous job of keeping my lungs from being frostbitten. Atop that, a hat that comes down over the ears. (I didn't wear the jacket's hood while running – my blazing speed would of course tear it right off...)

Shoulders: Four layers (all black, naturally -- we're going to do this in style...): tee shirt, magic Patagonia foam long-sleeved shirt, knit long-sleeved shirt, outer shell.

Knees: Undershorts, long johns, with outer shell above. All black.

Toes: Barefoot, because shoes are for fancy Eastern city folk.

The gloves bear special mention:

They were super-warm, and notice the terrycloth along the thumb? That's to wipe your nose with. How thoughtful!

The only parts of me that were exposed were my eyeballs and the area immediately surrounding them. Those parts of me seemed to do just fine, but if it were much colder, I'd probably want to wear some sort of sunglasses or goggles.

I'm in miserable shape, so I can't say I was really enjoying myself, but as far as temperature goes, I was quite comfortable. As I was running, I was thinking, "OK, I could probably go another 20 degrees colder with this outfit on." When the time comes, I'll let you know if I was right.

The gloves, hat, and hood were the new purchases, and they ran about $25 apiece, for a total of $150 between me and Jen. Eeek! Jen didn't blink an eye when I brought them home, given her near-death running experience two weeks ago.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I Love a Parade!

The annual Fargo-Moorhead Holiday Lights Parade snaked its way across the two cities last night. What's apparently usually an exercise in frozen toes and picking thrown candy out of snowbanks was a totally pleasant experience this year, with the temperature in the high 40s and not a snowflake in sight.

We stood on Broadway about two blocks from the courthouse and watched the world go by. Tootsie Rolls were the currency of the evening for the most part, though the Fargo Marathon was handing out tee shirts (which we did not get) and little foam beer cozies (two of which we nabbed). How cool is that? These guys understand marathoning.

The parade was heavy on the utility equipment; I thought it was particularly appropriate that the electric company's vehicle was lit spectacularly:

You figure that truck's got a hell of an alternator. The city snowplow that went by got big cheers. People know which side their bread is buttered on around here. The plow was a massive beast – I imagine it gets the job done just fine.

The parade featured more local businesses than I expected; here was H&R Block's entry:

Most heartening was the fleet of eight well-lit red Miatas toward the end of the parade, a reminder of the little car we've left behind (a little car that has melted its difficult-to-replace differential while we've been away and faces an uncertain future)...

After the last of the floats went past, we walked up a block for the really fairly impressive fireworks show the city put on atop the US Bank building. The kids sipped hot chocolate we bought from a woman selling it from a folding table on the sidewalk in front of her apartment. Very handy.

The weather has been odd  – this afternoon, it was 60 and sunny here while it was 38 and miserably rainy back in Rockville. But reality looms. We're supposed to get a little snow here late on Thanksgiving night, and we're expecting lows in the teens over the weekend.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

The training has begun!

The Ibuprofen Warriors marathon team, of which I am the captain, has begun its workouts, training for the May 19, 2007, Fargo Marathon. We were all supposed to do 2 miles last weekend, 3 this weekend, and so forth up to about 10 miles, when we alternate long and short runs.

Here's my report to the team on my uneventful workouts and Jen's quite exciting one:

...I have just returned from a glorious 3-mile run on a North Dakota gravel road, accompanied by my trusty GPS and Katie on a bike. It's only about 3 degrees cooler here than it is in Rockville -- a balmy 43 degrees. The run was uneventful, but, man, it's going to be a long road to May. My legs are in reasonably good shape, but my chest has nothing to give.

Last week, I did my 2-mile workout in the basement on the treadmill that one of last year's Fargo clerks, with almost unbelievable kindness, left us on his way out of town. What the workout lacked in scenery changes, it made up for in heat.

Jen's been sick all week, and is putting off her run. Last week, however, she and Katie had quite the adventure. Katie didn't want to bike on the gravel road, so they took off north instead. Unfortunately, they got lost. Unfortunately, when they refound themselves, they were still several miles from home. Unfortunately, Jen had no cell phone or money with her. Unfortunately, it was in the low-20-degree range, and, finally, unfortunately, they had to do the segment into a ferocious headwind. And, by the end, in the dark.

Jen couldn't feel fingers, toes, or jaw by the time she got home. She was starting to think to herself, 'This is what I feared when we first started talking about coming to Fargo. I'll get stuck outside in the cold somehow, totally inadequately prepared, and I will freeze to death.' Ha, ha! What a kidder.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Eating Well Dept.

My colleague J. dropped off a cooler full of frozen venison this afternoon. He and his sons hunt deer in Minnesota in a "high-intensity" area. Usually, hunters get to bag one deer apiece, but in a high-intensity area, where state officials are really trying to get rid of a lot of extra deer, hunters are allowed five deer apiece.

"Absolutely not," said J.'s wife, who is still emptying her freezer from last year. This came up in conversation one day about a month ago at the courthouse, and I offered to take a deer's worth of meat off J.'s hands if he needed the help. His eyes lit up. He and his boys ended up shooting a few extra deer (not 15), and we are the beneficiaries.

J. promised some meat to another friend, and so we ended up with 8 loin chops, 3 tenderloins, and 13 packages of ground meat (venison mixed with some beef, because venison is so lean):

"What kind of meat is this?" Joey asked when it arrived, and looked a little too quickly at the labels. "Lion meat!"

The sausage and jerky is still being worked on; I'll get the final processing bill from J. once it's done.

A few weeks ago, J. also, very kindly, brought two pheasants into work for us. We cooked them up while Jen's parents were here. Mom browned them and cooked them up in a wine sauce. Totally delicious.

I failed to get pictures either of the frozen birds in the courthouse freezer (the thought of which tickled me every time it wandered through my brain), or of the prepared dish. Jen's dad Ken asked if J. had any extra pheasant tail feathers around (to stick in a hat), and J. brought in some fine ones.

The List

This morning, Ellie has been compiling a list of the things she likes and doesn't like about Fargo. Here it is:

Things Ellie Does Not Like About Fargo:

1. No Chick-fil-A.
2. She misses her friends.
3. She forgot her cradle back in Rockville.
4. She forgot to bring some money she had in Rockville.

Things Ellie Does Like About Fargo

1. Having P. (my colleague) here.
2. Having ballet.
3. Having school.

If you don't believe me, you can read it here yourself:

Saturday, November 11, 2006

The Deer Hunters...

I thought about posting a preview to this before we left, something like, "Hey, my colleague P. has invited us along to go deer hunting with her family on Friday!" But I knew I'd get impassioned e-mails, calls, and, perhaps, visits from my kids' outraged grandmothers, any of whom would be more than happy to shake me around by the throat, yelling, "You're thinking of doing what??? with my precious grandchildren, little man?"

So instead I decided to write about the whole thing after we got back safely, which we did last night. For the record, Jen was fully informed of this plan, and approved it. I was particularly proud of Katie on this outing. She wasn't wild about the idea of aiding and abetting the murder of Bambi, so I pitched it this way: "We're here in North Dakota to see and do things we wouldn't see or do in Maryland. This is one of those things." This convinced her, which is one of the reasons she's such a good kid – she's game for just about any new experience.

Deer season lasts about two weeks in North Dakota, and started Friday at noon. It's difficult to express fully how deep-seated deer hunting is around here. Let's put it this way – as we bounced around the countryside yesterday in trucks, a great number of the radio commercials we heard were for taxidermists.

We took off Thursday evening for Edgeley, N.D., home town of P.'s husband T., which is about 130 miles southwest of Fargo, population about 600. T.'s folks raised 11 children in a previous home, and still have beds scattered all over the place. There was plenty of room for us, and for T. & P.'s two sons (J. and E., for the record).

I woke up early the next morning to go scouting with T. This involves driving around the area, drinking coffee, checking out which land is posted "No hunting" and which is available, and finding out where the deer are running. I think it might just be an excuse to get out early and enjoy the countryside, which was fine by me. We saw a few deer flitting around, clearly not aware of how bad their day was about to get. A bunch of pheasant roosters also sprang up alongside us; T. moaned about how he had his deer rifle, not his pheasant shotgun, in the truck with us. We returned to the house, and T. swapped his rifle and me for his shotgun and a newly awake son, and they went out and shot a bird. They sent Joey inside with it (above).

Apparently, no day of hunting in the area is complete without a preparatory shot of "Red Eye," a concoction of 4 parts water to one part grain alcohol, with some cherry juice for color and flavor, and a little burnt sugar added. T.'s father said laughingly that a 4:1 ratio works just fine, but that when you go 3:1 or 2:1, people get messed up in a hurry. I was relieved to find out that those shooting that day don't get any Red Eye – it's for the rest of us.* It was indeed warming.

Deer hunting is also very big in Minnesota, but the sport is completely different. Minnesota has those, whaddya call 'em, trees, and they provide enough cover for hunters to sit in tree stands and pick off deer that wander by, which hardly seems sporting. In North Dakota, because the terrain is much more open, hunters "walk the fields," scaring deer from their resting spots, then taking shots at them as they run away.

The task of those of us without weapons is to walk along with the guys with guns across fields and along tree lines (thin lines of spindly trees that separate one field from the next and combat erosion), helping rouse the deer. The first thing we had to do was orange up, to avoid getting shot:

I went to a store Thursday afternoon to buy Katie's sweatshirt; there was so much bright orange in that section of the store that I thought I was going to burn my retinas.

It was a beautiful day, crisp and clear, and cold, somewhere in the low 20s. Standing around was tolerable; walking the fields was actually quite pleasant – you warm up in a hurry.

Because the terrain is so open, there's no firing blindly into brush; you have a good idea of where everyone is before a shot is taken, and it tends to be taken into an open field.

I told Joey he'd score extra points if he tackled a deer by hand. He was gravely assured by one of the guys hunting he'd be "a legend" if he managed to do that.

The glaciers that wiped North Dakota clean didn't do a perfect job, and here and there in unexpected places there are small dips in the land that hold moisture -- sometimes standing water, sometimes dampness that allows patches of cattails and tall grass to grow:

They're usually good places to find deer. The cattails themselves were dry, and when we walked through them, they exploded into a cloud of tiny seeds that filled the eyes and mouth of the person unfortunate enough to walk behind you.

I'm told this isn't unusual on the first day of the season, but we did not see a whole lot of deer. Most of those we did see, we did not manage to shoot. I told J. he didn't need to miss on purpose to spare my children the sight of a deer being killed. He laughed. A. Little. Bit.

Toward the end of the day, T. did shoot a doe I was told was "nice-sized." Newly dead deer have to be "field dressed," that is, gutted, pretty much where they drop. Field dressing a deer preserves the meat, which otherwise gets spoiled by the deer's organs. It's a ritualized process that leaves a big pile of guts on the ground (not buried, as I thought, but left on the surface to be feasted on by coyotes soon afterward). I shall spare you the details, both verbally and visually (well, except for the strip off to the left).

Katie decided she had had her limit, and declined to watch. Joey, on the other hand, stood to one side and took it all in:

I had no idea Ellie was so bloodthirsty. Katie and Joey were willing to just watch events unfold, but Ellie was a murderous chatterbox all day long. "Why didn't we shoot that deer?" "We really should have shot that deer." And: "When we run out of bullets, is it time for lunch?" When the time came, she was forbidden to leave the truck while the deer was being gutted. I wasn't sure which would happen: Would she be really upset, or would she really upset me by enjoying it?

* Edit: It is now my understanding that this is more of a guideline than a rule.**
** Edit of the Edit: It is now my further understanding that everybody gets one warm-up drink, but that's it.

Monday, November 6, 2006

A Fargo Halloween!

As requested, here are the pictures my father-in-law Ken took of the kids as they prepared to go trick-or-treating. Again, Joey was Anakin Skywalker, Katie was Dorothy (with Indy as Toto), and Ellie was Snow White:

Of course, a picture of three cute kids in their Halloween costumes is not what this blog is about. However, a picture of three cute kids, as dressed to actually go outside in the 20-degree Halloween weather Fargo provided, is:


Apparently, if you want to make an impact with your costume around here, you have to do it from the knees down. Sparkly shoes are a good choice.

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Bennett Fall Festival!

Jen flew out to D.C. Thursday afternoon, abandoning us for a full week. The kids and I decided to go to Bennett Elementary's Fall Festival Friday night.

It was quite a production. The gym was filled with kids dashing from one corner to the next, bursting through the lines of other, better-behaved, kids waiting to get into one of the two moonbounces (princess, or Superman, depending on your preference), or the giant obstacle-course/slide:

Ellie managed to climb up the 20-foot slide very well (left); I don't know why I was concerned.

Elsewhere, door prizes and bags of candy were being handed out (not exactly what kids need on any Nov. 3; perhaps the extra will just get lost in the overwhelming post-Halloween sugar rush). They had all sorts of games and activities – basketball shooting, football tossing, and so forth.

A call had gone out for parents to send in a plastic soda bottle that had been cut open and refilled with some sort of fun stuff for kids. At the festival, kids picked a number from a hat and were given the corresponding bottle. Katie and Ellie were given beautifully elaborate bottles (left), which delighted them (note the dollar bill in Ellie's!).

Joey was even more thrilled by his bottle (right). My guess is the organizers thought they were going to run short, and a local supermarket came through with extra bottles. Terrific. I think that bottle of Dew contains more caffeine than Joey has consumed in his entire life. He was very understanding when I insisted that I had to replace it with a bottle of non-caffeinated soda the next time we went to the grocery store.

Bennett's principal was there, and asked me how Joey and Katie were adjusting to their new school. Very sharp! I had the feeling that had the answer been "not very well," she would have known that already.

Winner: Tale of Triumph!

For the record, the bar exam saga has ended, and it turned out to be, to my great relief, a "tale of triumph against overwhelming odds." Both Meg, my lovely sister, and I received the good word on Friday that we passed.

So now I can forever tell the story of leaving my bar-review course early, packing the house, driving two days to Fargo, unpacking the house, spending the weekend at my judge's clerk reunion, studying for two days, flying to my brother's wedding in Texas, flying back to Maryland, studying for one more day and then taking the bar exam with a smile on my face, rather than a grimace.

The bar's a funny thing; it's like my grandmother's adage about housework – people only notice when you don't do it. It's not that passing the bar is such a terrific achievement; it's more that failing it is such a giant pain.

The Eighth Circuit is sitting in Omaha, Neb., for a week in December. On my way there, I have to fly in to D.C. a few days early to put the finishing touches on my Maryland bar application. On Dec. 7 and 8, I'll be submitting to my character interview with a lawyer in Bethesda (which has to be in person), and taking my daylong ethics class in Baltimore (which has to be in person).

This trip is actually free to me, thanks to an odd but not unwelcome quirk in the federal government's travel rules. The feds will pay for up to the full, unrestricted Sunday-out, Friday-back, fare. From Fargo to Omaha, that's a whopping $904. My Fargo-to-DC-to-Omaha-to-Fargo nonrefundable fare, which includes a Saturday stay, is $440, which does not whop. It's called a "triangle trip."

I could actually have done a "rectangle trip," and flown back to D.C. for Christmas and then back to Fargo around New Years' after the week in Omaha for less than the $904. But on second thought I decided that perhaps it was not such a good idea to have Jen and the kids drive two days from Fargo to D.C. in December and back again in January without me. Not that I'd be a lot of assistance if something dire came up, but I'd feel kinda bad if they froze to death in Wisconsin and I weren't around.