Monday, March 26, 2007

That tatt...

OK, this marks a difference between when Mom is here and when Mom is away. I was dimly aware that Ellie's old pirate tattoo had finally worn off completely, and that Joey had kindly transferred another to her arm. But I didn't take a close look at it.

And in the picture we took down by the river, I was so struck by the fact that all three kids were actually looking at the camera that I didn't notice Ellie's exposed arm until my colleague P. pointed it out on the blog this morning.

My, that's some tatt. It's not exactly clear in that photo what the design of the tattoo is, but you're seeing what you think you're seeing. And the truth is, it's worse close up. It is indeed a sword going into a skull, and upon closer inspection, you can see that snakes are going into the skull's eye sockets as well:

"And Ellie is a member of what gang?" her Grandpa Ken inquired gently.

Hmmm... I think that even for me that crosses a line of what I'd like my four-year-old daughter to be sporting. Hopefully the Montessori folks didn't see that today. I'll see if I can't scrub it off in the morning.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Spring springs!

The one sure sign of spring around here is flooding. The Red River is cresting at about 22 feet today or tomorrow, with anything over 18 feet officially being a flood. We drove over to the river today to see what was going on, and found the park there to be full of water.

Above, you're seeing the Red River gently spilling from its banks, with us in North Dakota and that barn on the right over in Minnesota. There was still a bit of ice on the river, which I think combined with today's warm temperatures to cause that cool foggy effect.

[Note that Ellie has just one sleeve pulled up, apparently to show off the pretty tough tatt she currently sports on her left arm.]

It's funny, though – Fargo is totally blasé about this level of flooding. The Forum published a short article last Tuesday going through the motions, and explaining that nothing was happening. The basin by the river was going to flood, and Elm Street between 14th and 15th avenues was closed, as it always is this time of year.

It looks like the high was around 66 at the airport today, though it felt warmer where we were. One bank we drove past pegged it at 71 degrees. Katie announced that we should eat leftover pasta outside for dinner, which was an excellent idea. She wiped a winter's worth of grime off the patio table and chairs, and we had a very nice meal in shirtsleeves under the big sky. The sun set at about quarter to 8, and as darkness fell we were quickly reminded that we were still in North Dakota in March.

At dinner, we amused ourselves with a word game Katie had learned. The game involved going around the table and building this sentence word by word (and repeating the growing list each time): "I am going to my grandma's beach house with my aunt, balloon, car, dog, elephant, firefly, goat, hamster, ice cream, Jack, kangaroo, lion, Mom, noodle, octopus, pizza, queen, rhinestone, stable, Thomas the Tank Engine, umbrella, violet, water, xylophone, yo-yo, and zebra." (Bonus points if you can figure out who was sitting where at the table.)

We picked up the pace when the temperature started dropping – the final rounds can be very long. I was very proud of Ellie especially – she totally understood the game, participated well, and did an excellent job rattling off even the long list.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Damn Everything But the Circus

Last night the kids and I hit the Shriners' circus at the Fargodome. The kids bore free (!) tickets from a local bank. Only the cotton candy, icy treats, candied almonds, programs (x3) and my ticket cost us anything. (hmmm...)

I knew the evening was going to be a success when Ellie turned to me about five minutes in – when nothing particularly spectacular was happening in any of the three rings – with her face agog and exclaimed, "I cannot believe my eyes!"

We enjoyed ourselves. Was it Ringling Brothers? No. It was definitely circus on a smaller scale. But seeing such a thing as an adult lets you sit back and soak in the time-honored elements any decent (non-Soleil) circus will have within three rings: trapezes, big-cat tamers, clowns, ringmaster, elephants. In some ways, it's a limited – but entertaining – palette circus producers are painting from.

When we headed out to the concourse at intermission in search of restrooms and snacks, we were spied by a courthouse colleague of mine, G., who was, quite conveniently, selling cotton candy on behalf of one of her children's activities (the band?). It was typical of our outings in Fargo. We hardly ever wade into a crowd of people these days without knowing someone.

Shriners have had a bit of a hard week. A big story on Monday in The New York Times detailed how some local chapters can get a little careless with the money they designate for their children's hospitals versus what they spend to stock the bars at their temples. So it was with some interest that I noted the tickets and the program had plastered all over them: "Proceeds benefit Shrine Temple Operations Only."

A tune was going through my head most of the evening: "Damn Everything but the Circus," by The Story. It's a beautiful, haunting song about a young girl who joins up with an outfit I'd always imagined looked like the Shriner show does:
    So step right up
    to the small town big top
    One way out
    of a small town’s
    the big top
Turns out it was also, first, a pretty good e.e. cummings poem:
    Damn everything but the circus!

    ...damn everything that is grim, dull,
    motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
    damn everything that won't get into the
    circle, that won't enjoy, that won't throw
    its heart into the tension, surprise, fear
    and delight of the circus, the round
    world, the full existence...

Friday, March 23, 2007

I Still Love a Parade

The circus is coming to town this weekend (we hope to go tonight; I'll report on it later), and organizers decided to march the troupe down Broadway yesterday, the first time Fargo has seen a circus parade there in 20 years.

It was sunny and near 60 at 6 p.m. when the Shriners began proceeding down the middle of the street in a variety of small vehicles.

For the first time in forever, we debated as we left the car whether we should leave our jackets behind (we didn't; we should have).

Walking over to Broadway, it really seemed like winter is over. Nothing is green – anywhere – but the chill seems to have left the air.

Jen's out of town for the next week; she's been gone since Wednesday, flying that day to D.C., then driving to N.C. Her visit yesterday to Davidson College to guest-lecture on philanthropy issues went very well, and today she's driving to Atlanta. Sunday she'll drive back up to D.C. with her mom, will work on her newspaper's deadline, then return here Thursday morning. Kind of a crazy itinerary, and an awfully long time to be gone. But she's catching some gorgeous weather along the way, and can use the break.

Kapow!

On Tuesday, Joey graduated from being a white belt in tae kwon do to a "yellow stripe" – kind of a halfway point between the white and yellow belts. Most of the skills he was tested on involve memorization of impressively complex "patterns," which are tightly scripted series of movements, each with a range of punches, twists, and kicks. Joey's also learning more Korean than I would have thought (well, the numbers, anyway).

For his big finale, he did get to break a board with a side kick. Here he is preparing:

And, because he kicked through it faster than I'd expected, here he is with the splintered result:

Master Carter, who runs the tae kwon do academy, very graciously signed and dated each of the boards, noting with his Sharpie what kind of kick had conquered it. As he explained to me the next day, he has a big stack of broken boards from his early days in the sport, and he has no idea where any of them are from. He's trying to spare the next generation this trauma.

There's rather less physical contact between students than "The Karate Kid" led me to envision (none, at Joey's level), and Joey seems to be making poor progress toward the goal I have set for him, which is to learn to break people's necks with his mind. Still, the boy is having a good time, and hopes to continue next year back in Maryland.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

New Fargo, Old Fargo...



The above photograph graced the front page of The Forum yesterday. "Ewwwww!" Katie said – she is still gratifyingly grossed out by anything that has anything to do with sex.

"No, no," I said. "They're calling it 'Naked Sushi Night,' but that's just an illustration.... wait."

To my surprise, "Naked Sushi Night," at a local bar tomorrow, will indeed feature sushi eaten from the bodies of (nearly-)naked models. “It’s not going to be a sleazy set-up at all. It will be classy and clean,” the bar manager told the newspaper.

Still, this is a clear break from the sleepy Fargo of yesterday to the mid-sized, adventurous city it's becoming.

My favorite part of the coverage of this is that the newspaper didn't leave Old Fargo behind – toward the end of the story sat a small sidebar: "So what is sushi?"

Another nice detail: The Forum also tells us, "According to a 2005 BBC report, the Chinese government banned the practice of serving sushi on naked women, condemning it as a violation of common decency."

Monday, March 5, 2007

Snow forts...

In response to yesterday's post, our great friend Dan sent me a link to a story about more ambitious snow-fort building plans. I'm not sure I'm going to go out of my way to share that with the kids, since it looked like the possibility of death through structural failure was much higher than with their homegrown fort.

To see a real Fargo snow fort around here, I'd head to the North Dakota State University campus. Katie attends a program there every Monday called "TechGyrls" that teaches young ladies that you don't have to be male to be a nerd.* And boy, do they have one hell of a snow fort there.

Here's one view of it:

Here's another:

The NDSU architecture building, where the TechGrrrrrls meet, is in the background. On the quite possibly flawed assumption that architecture students had built a secure structure, I allowed Katie to slide into holes like this one:

...which led to a small, totally enclosed, room she had to crawl out of.

* Did you know Dr. Seuss may very well have invented the word "nerd"? I just learned that this morning, while preparing to go into Joey's class to read The Lorax for the good doctor's birthday.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Tunneling...

Joey and Katie worked hard this morning, burrowing into the berm of snow the wind swept up near the front of our house. Here's Katie, hard at work:


...and here's Joey, after doing some head-first digging of his own:

"First, we were in the land of never-starting snow," Joey said as he walked in. "Now, we are in the land of never-ending snow."

Friday, March 2, 2007

Snowbound!

Now, this is some snow:

Well, ok, ok, that's from a low perspective out the back sliding-glass door. Here's what it looks like when I'm standing up:

Still. The kids finally got their day off today, because high winds whipped the foot of snow that's fallen over the last three days into a thick blanket of blowing snow everywhere – "near-blizzard conditions," they're calling it.

In fact, we're under a blizzard warning until 9 tonight:
    SNOW SHOWERS WILL COMBINE WITH NORTH WINDS OF 25 TO 35 MPH WITH HIGHER GUSTS THROUGH THE EVENING. THE COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS AND SOME FALLING SNOW WILL PRODUCE NEAR ZERO VISIBILITIES AT TIMES...ESPECIALLY IN OPEN COUNTRY.
What is a blizzard? I'd always thought it was "a hell of a lot of snow." No. According to the source of all truth, the Wikpedia, to be a blizzard, a storm must decrease visibility to a quarter mile, include snow or ice as precipitation, and have wind speeds of at least 35 miles per hour for at least three consecutive hours. You can get a "ground blizzard" if the snow is no longer falling but the wind is still kicking things up.

From our front door, it kind of looked like this today:

...and it's apparently not nearly as impressive in-town as it is outside of town. I dashed out midday to grab some traditional North Dakota snowstorm comfort food (tacos), and the driving was not bad at all. The winds are pretty high, but there are lots of objects breaking up the flow.

Jen is still en route home from D.C. at this hour. She has had trouble at every turn today: Her 7 a.m. flight out of Washington National was delayed until 10:30, and she almost missed that one because her rental car had a dead battery. Then she got to Chicago, and her 3:24 p.m. flight was cancelled outright. They say they'll put her on the 8:15, arriving here at 10:12 tonight, but I'm not holding my breath.

They've closed I-94 from Fargo to Bismarck, and current weather conditions “make it impossible” to say when it'll reopen. I keep meaning to get photos of the gates they have to block off every interstate entrance around here; perhaps when I go to pick Jen up at the airport tonight, I can get a shot.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Still coming down hard this morning...

...but not even a school delay! The kids are shocked. The photo doesn't really do the current snowfall rate justice. Here Joey and Katie are, heading out into it:

A school bus had just passed by, emphasizing that we had not somehow missed a school-delay announcement.

Tomorrow holds out more hope; we finally got our storm warning:
    A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM CST FRIDAY.

    SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES THIS MORNING... WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE AREA THROUGH THE DAY. ADDITIONAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS TODAY WILL RANGE FROM 2 TO 4 INCHES. PERIODS OF HEAVIER SNOW WILL RETURN TO THE AREA TONIGHT WITH SNOW CONTINUING THROUGH FRIDAY AFTERNOON... BEFORE TAPERING OFF BY FRIDAY NIGHT. TOTAL SNOW AMOUNTS OF 10 TO 18 INCHES ARE EXPECTED BY FRIDAY EVENING...WITH LOCALIZED HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE NEAR HEAVIER SNOW BANDS.

    NORTH WINDS WILL INCREASE THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY...AND GUST OVER 25 MPH. THIS WILL CAUSE SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW...WITH NEAR BLIZZARD CONDITIONS POSSIBLE THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY. THIS STORM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR EVEN IMPOSSIBLE FOR AN EXTENDED TIME.
OK, "near-blizzard conditions" should be good for a 2-hour delay, one would think. Jen's supposed to fly back into town around noonish tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.