Memorial Day Weekend

A week ago I realized that I was coming up to a long weekend because of Memorial day. My first idea was to head to Duluth for the weekend but all the campgrounds were booked up so I went to plan B. So I figured out what it would take to head out west and have some fun. The first stop was the Teddy Roosevelt Park.

Friday came and after taking care of some duties at work, I got the rest of my stuff together and go on the road. I wanted to reach the park before the  information center closed. I basically couldn't stop on the way because of that which was a little rough, even for me. But I got it done.  Found out the best places to see in the park and then went exploring.

I'll keep some of the stories to myself, because I like it that way, but that evening was worth the drive. Then in classic fashion I crashed in my car for the night. I had to break it in for that some time and this was as good a time as any, and better then most. I woke up at dawn, as planned and headed back into the park. After driving for a while I found a great spot to park and watch the sunrise, or at least what I thought would be the sun rise. It was a bit of an overcast morning so it didn't happen as I excepted. So after taking some time to look at it and take some pictures I hopped back in the car and headed up to the highest point in the area.

On Friday when I was told about it that was where I wanted to watch the rise but as things happened in the morning I didn't think it would actually happen. Lo and behold, right about the time I got all the way up to peak the sun was busting out from behind the clouds. After more wondering and picture taking headed back down to keep roaming through the park. A few hours of that elapsed and I was exhausted so I headed back into Medora to check out some shops and just relax, with the intent of more exploring. But once I came down, I didn't have the energy to go back so instead I decided to go to Bismarck.

Once there, I spent the rest of the day just relaxing at a hotel.

Sunday came and it was time to finish the fun. I waited til the last minute to check out so as to hedge my plan a bit in case part of it went sideways. I proceeded to go up to Garrison for a festival that I'd recently found out about. I'll leave it to you to figure out what the festival was about in the photos to come.

After spending a couple hours there, I retraced my path back to Washburn to do some golfing. I got to the course about 10 minutes after their unlimited play began. Then proceeded to play for about five hours. I've played less golf then I anticipated playing to this point in the season but still managed the best round I've had yet.  Taking 10 strokes off without playing felt pretty good, but I did take the unlimited factor at its word and did some practice while I worked through the course, that's why it took five hours.

All that remained was returning home. It was a rough drive which went much later into the night then I wanted but I wouldn't change how the weekend went at all.

If a pictures worth a thousand words then this will certainly be the longest post I've composed but I don't think it's too much.

Voices from the din

Special priority being given to a select few is nothing new. Politicians, actors and athletes dominate headlines because of the positions that they hold. Sometimes they deserve those positions, sometimes they don't yet have them anyway. With the internet age that we're in, a statement that's made however simple or stupid can be "breaking news."

Twitter has made that all the more prevalent with their trending topics. I think it only makes the folly of the whole thing more noticeable, yet it goes unnoticed or at least ignored. To wit, I just looked on Facebook a few minutes ago and one of the trending topics was a statement by George Clooney saying that Donald Trump won't win the election.

Okay. Cool. That's an opinion. One that's held by millions of American's right now. One that I kind of side with. Not to get too political but I wanted basically every other Republic nominee to make it where Trump has now made it. But it's also just an opinion.

Why does George Clooney's opinion matter so much to people that it becomes a trending topic? He's an actor. Maybe he's even smart but he's ultimately just another guy. His opinion shouldn't matter yet it does. Which doesn't make sense to me. I'll keep going off in a sec.

Mirror Theory

There aren't many people who don't know what a mirror is. For the sake of the ignorant, it's a piece of glass specially made to reflect back what is in front of it. Some of the best times in my life happened when I was just living and didn't have a mirror to look in. It became a lot easier to not even think about presentation. Kind of like the millennia in which people lived.

But that's not what I've been thinking about today and recently, but I'll get to it after.

Haiti. Maybe

Over 6 years, 6 different residences, the birth of all my nieces & nephew I've had a single, seemingly endless goal. Finish my degree from Bethany College. In the time it's taken for some to finish Bachelors and Masters programs I've had to slog for an Associates degree.

There's no question that some of the delays in the process have been my fault. Some, possibly more of the issues have come as a result of the people that I've had to deal with. Over the last 4 years there have been 7 different trips that I've tried to join. One was successful, the rest were not, which is slightly over 14 percent. That's kind of a terrible percentage but means I'm 50% of the way to finishing the remaining requirements. Through it all I've remained diligent and have kept working to try to finish it out.

Since Jan 1 alone there have been three different location teams I've tried to join. The first was Paraguay then some time before the end of the March that opportunity evaporated without a word. So I figured out another option - Honduras. This team is all set to go but because of the timing of my finding out that I had to figure out a substitute and the amount of time that it took for the school to process some forms I didn't think that I would be able to make that work with my job and being able to get a visa and everything else which would be required.

So door #3 then. After, as always.