Violated

Today is Thanksgiving. I wish all those who read our blog a very happy Thanksgiving. I hope you are able to be with family or friends. Thanksgiving is the most traveled holiday.

According to the U. S. government Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) website "The Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year’s holiday periods are among the busiest long-distance travel periods of the year. During the 6-day Thanksgiving travel period, the number of long-distance trips (to and from a ­destination 50 miles or more away) increases by 54 percent, and during the Christmas/New Year’s Holiday period the number rises by 23 percent, compared to the average number for the remainder of the year. And although heavy media attention focuses on crowded airports and bus and train stations on the Wednesday before and Sunday after Thanksgiving, when personal vehicle trips are added to the mix the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) reveals that Thanksgiving Day is actually a heavier long-distance travel day than Wednesday."

I flew to LA yesterday, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Brian is housing me and hosting Michelle and Dave, and James and Ashley, and Brian's friend Frank. My two married "children" arrived. It is disappointing not to have Ardmore but he does not like to travel. It is also too bad that our grandchildren could not be here.

The trip from Fargo to LA was wonderful although about an hour longer than usual due to 150 m/p/h head winds. We arrived to rain which was disappointing but by the time we picked up our luggage and walked out of the building the rain had stopped and everything was dry. Welcome to LA!

I would like to ask one question. What kind of problems do you run into when you rent a car? The last car I had had two flat tires during the time I drove it. This was annoying as I had to take it to a nearby rental place and switch cars one time and I called the company the second time and it took about an hour for someone to show up and they couldn't repair the tire, of course, just pump it up so I could take in it in.  This happened the first day I drove it. I wonder if the party who rented it before me had problems and perhaps didn't report it or the company didn't check the tire after they did. I was also charged an extra $10 for having them come and fix their OWN tire. Tell me your car rental issues in my comments!

Yesterday morning I decided to check my checking account to see if any recent checks had come through. There were debits on the account; they just weren't my purchases! Three to be exact for about $205 from my cash card. They were dated yesterday from St. Paul. Now I didn't remember paying $70+ for gas at two places on one day. Has this ever happened to you? I called the bank immediately and it was taken care right.I hope that it was a rude shock to the person who thought they would be able to use that card a few more times and I hope they were caught. How do they get another person's card numbers and forge a card to use?
Although we have had our cards changed by our bank a couple of times due to fraud, our cards were never violated . . .until yesterday.

So what does Thanksgiving mean to me?

1. A loving husband and great children and grandchildren.
2. The gratitude of knowing that at some time a group of people decided they wanted religious freedom. We have that.
3. The wonderful freedom we enjoy. After all, I am visiting our family 2000 miles away and although I did get "the Treatment" due to having the hip and knee replacement, it was a quick and easy trip, and also was for our children. No armed vehicles traveling along our roads, no check points, just a drivers license, and the money to pay for the flight or gas.
4. The ability to purchase almost anything, either online or in a store.
5. The safety of the small town where we live.
6. The abundance of food. We eat way too much!
7. A job that I love and wonderful people to work with
8. Great Friends

I will post some photos online later tonight.

Thanksgiving Holiday

Tomorrow I fly out of Fargo for a Thanksgiving visit with our children in Los Angeles. I am looking forward to getting out the snow and the cold. It is suppose to be 0 F in the morning. My plane will leave Fargo at 8 pm so I have all day to travel. Fargo was suppose to get about 12 inches of snow today. I don't know if it did, travel will be treacherous if the roads are not taken care of. Packing is almost complete so it's just me and the car and the roads to contend with.

Today the Ya Ya had the Relay of Life fund raiser. There was so many things to look at and many baskets to put a ticket in for the drawings. There was a beautiful quilt and Melissa Lee Rudebusch won it. I think it is a queen and very attractive. Which reminds me, if I plan to get Breanne's quilt completed by Christmas I will need to get cracking.

I started a wall hanging for James and Ashley for Christmas. That went very fast and I am almost done. I think I can finish it in one more sitting. I'll see. I would like to make a few little gifts.


Museum staff have been working on an ABC book with the library, well, mostly Britt. The committee has had such great ideas. I am getting very excited to see the completed result. It will include a combination of words beginning with each letter, poetry to go with the art work which will be done by various artists, and a little chipmunk will run from page to page. Very clever work. Britt is so talented, she will do a great job.

The Rabbit

 Yesterday winter arrived with vengeance. The temperature was a mild 32 F at midnight Friday morning, so nice one considered not wearing a heavy jacket because  there was no wind to speak of but by 7 o'clock am that had all changed as the temperature began to drop and the wind started blowing the snow that had arrived on Thursday evening around.  The snow had a little crisp cover from the rain and the roads were icy. It had started to really cool down and by the time I headed home from work at 6 it was about 12 above and ferociously windy.This morning it was just below 0, and thankfully the wind had died down.

It was perfect weather for ham soup. I spent a couple of hours getting that on the stove. We had ordered new tires for my car, so I headed into town to have the tires installed and then on the Quilt S' More to discuss a quilt project. After a little shopping it was time to head home and fix some dinner for hubby. It was then that hubby told me about the rabbit.

We have had rabbits come into our yard for years. We even had a male and female take up residence one summer and have little ones. Today, Ardmore noticed this rabbit trying to dig near one of the shops. From what Ardmore could see later, he had tried to dig three holes. Ardmore was busy and didn't pay much attention to the rabbit but when he came into the house he noticed the rabbit was laying by our fuel tanks about 6 or 7 feet away from where he had been digging. He had apparently died. Was he sick or was from exposure? Could it be that the sudden turn in weather, took the animals by surprise, especially this little rabbit? We have had a very mild fall and no snow and no real cold weather until yesterday. Was there no place this poor rabbit could find to burrow due to the lack of snow? Are there other animals that found themselves in this same situation?

Shelter is such an important commodity. It makes one wonder how the homeless handle weather like this. Do we have enough shelters when it gets this cold? With our economy in such poor condition many people have lost their jobs and homes plus other possessions. Let us all pray for those who are suffering at such a time and remember our local food banks. Donations of food and money is such an important thing all year round, but especially during the holidays. As we gather together with friends and family, it would be a good time to pool a little money and pull out a few can goods and bring them to the food shelf.

Holiday Open House and Potluck Supper

Last night we had our annual Holiday Open House and Potluck Supper. It is always one of my favorite programs and last night was even better as Britt and I and the board members did not have to clean up after the dinner, the Roseau Honor Society did the serving and cleanup. I am very impressed with their commitment and what a great job they did. It was the first time,we really were able to totally enjoy an evening without cleaning up everything. At the end of the evening, several men and women pitched in to put away the tables and chairs and all Britt had to see was completed in the morning was to sweep up and turn in the mics and keys. My hat goes off to those wonderful young women and those individuals who helped us after the meeting.

We had a little different program than usually too. Two of the Star of the North Toastmasters Club members presented speeches, one was on Goals and the other was on George Mallory's climb to the top of Mount Everest. The Highway 11 Ramblers entertained and Phil Sallberg and Barb Roseen sang three duet numbers. They ended with Winter Wonderland. Our MC was Lou Hermansen who did a great job of bringing history into the program with a few questions and, of course, plenty of joking. One can't go wrong when they have a "retired" minister as the MC, especially when it is Pastor Hermansen.

This year, even though we called it a Holiday Open House, we didn't do it as a Christmas open house. Our theme for dinner included place mats, cups and napkins in an autumn theme. It had misted off and on all day and I was concerned about how many people would show up. No need, even though there was a free concert at one of the local churches, we still had over 60 at the program, and they came from across the whole county. I will post some photos tomorrow. Britt took a video of the program so if I can put some of it out and put it into a video, I will.

I have been a little lax at writing and have missed many days of "30 Days of Honesty" so will play a little catch up.

Day 3 ::   Something you have to forgive yourself for:
There is so many things that I have trouble nailing this one down. I guess I will have to leave it up to the Lord to help me remember and forgive and forget the many things I have done that I need to forgive myself for.

Day 4:: Something you have to forgive someone for
Too personal!


Day 5:: Something you hope to do in your life
I have had a full life. Looking back on what I have done to date makes it hard to think of what I hope to do in "this" life. I guess I would like to just climb in my car about the first of May and have enough money to travel the whole United States from east to west, and north to south. As a history buff, I see myself spending days at the Smithsonian, along the Revolutionary and Civil War trails, the Alamo, looking out at New York City from the tallest building there, visiting Central Park and Rockefeller Center. Yes, the list goes on and on.

Day 6:: Something you hope you will never have to do
Die after one of my children or grandchildren.

Day 7:: Someone who has made your life worth living for
My husband, he will laugh if he reads this. I have done many things due to having to be independent when he went to the farm and then living on the farm. I believe all of this and many other things have added measure beyond words to my life.

Day 8:: Someone who made your life like hell, or treated you like shit
This is something that is too personal to share.

Day 9:: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted
I had a young love once that I really would have given everything to be married to but decided that we were not to be and let it drift apart.

Time to quit. More of this at another time.

Catch Up Time

James flew back to the US from Australia via Hong Kong on Friday after two weeks of what he said was a wonderful trip of flight grading. He decided to take the train trip one day and headed to Elizabeth. Said next time he would head the other direction as he found out it wasn't exactly where he would have gone if he had know what it was like.

On the train this guy had two bottles, one of orange juice and one of vodka. He poured the orange juice onto his hands and rubbed it into his hair. Everyone on the train was a bit bewildered. Then the vodka came out and he drank the orange juice and the vodka. I think he poured it out so he could some of his vodka into his orange juice bottle, although James and I  thought he wanted his hair to have some "gel" in it.  Yup, people can be very strange.

All in all, he was felt his flight grading went well and has high expectations on being hired for the six month training. I am sure Ashley was happy to have him home.

Some of the quilting items are coming in. Britt put a few up today. What a talented person she is. It is great to see her able to use the talents the way she does. Instead of a tree, we decided to use one of the quilts with this large tree on it by our door. We talked about putting some gifts under it. I think we need the large doll we have, the Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and some the other things that hang out on the shelves in the bay storage room. We will have to see if we can climb up there and get some of the boxes down.

Brian is holding Makeover Workshops in Roseau on December 10th and 11th. I am going to take the class. Perhaps I will be able to apply my make up as professionally as when he does my makeup.

I am not consistent when I comes to keeping up my blog and discovered that I had not written yesterday on the 30 Days of Honesty so here goes:

Day 2: Something you love about yourself
Humm, this will take some doing. I guess I like the fact that I keep getting ideas for exhibits and that some exhibits just happen to come along that I know will be enjoyable for our visitors. New exhibits that I think people will enjoy include the Museum on Main Street Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit we will open next November, New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music. It is going to be work, lots of work, but it is going to be very good.  I also think people will enjoy the Holiday Quilting exhibit, the Century Farm exhibit, and the upcoming North Dakota Museum of Art exhibit, Marking the Land, a Jim Dow photographic exhibit that will be displayed in February.


That's is enough. I need to go to sleep!

30 Days of Honesty

There are several blogs that I follow whenever I find time to check them out. Tonight one of these had started the "30 Days of Honesty" project. I had to check out the hyperlinks she had to Snarky Pants to discover what it entailed. It was pretty impressive and one of her answers gave me thought so here is my participator area.

Thirty Days of Honesty

 Day 1 ::   Something you hate about yourself

I am a procrastinator. My intentions are always good but I get so wrapped up in what I am doing in the moment that things don't get done early enough sometimes. This past two weeks was a good example of how that can affect what goes on. We have a Holiday Open House on November 14. This has been scheduled for months. About four weeks ago, I began to plan for it. I send off the newspaper announcements about two weeks ago but then we had the New Harmonies workshop in St. Paul. My email would not go out and I had some additional computer problems which meant some of the things I thought were being sent did not get sent in time. Then we came back to Roseau and I worked last Friday like mad trying to catch up. You know how that is, gone four day and it takes twice as long to catch up. I finally got the poster completed but than ran out of time and people to put them up. I  think I may have lucked out today though, as it was Diva Days at the city center and I had put up a huge twenty-three by twenty-eight inch poster in the lobby. Hopefully it had lots of attention and will bring us success. Now I need to send an email reminding everyone of the upcoming event. 

I need to pray that Heavenly Father helps me with this area of my life, if I don't procrastinate in my praying. :<

Family things: 
Brian is coming to Roseau to do Make Over Workshops on December 10th and 11th. I am excited for him as he now is broadening his focus. He gave a workshop in LA today.

James was to fly into LA tonight and will stay with Brian. I believe plans are to go out to dinner. I am jealous.

Michelle gave her final university recital last night. This saddens me as I have not been to one of her recitals. I wonder if her teacher has these taped? I think I will have her find out.

Enough for now.

Election and recovery

First things first, the Republican's are back in power in the House  of Representatives, Minnesota has a unsettled governor election and a  Republican Minnesota House and Senate. The big news is that my brother was re-elected to the Hoyt Lakes City Council.

This has been a very busy week, especially after being gone for four days last week. We have out Holiday Open House on November 14th so there is lots to do with that. We put out our newsletter today and I completed the poster and put it up on a large stand in the lobby. This weekend is the opening weekend of deer hunting season so Diva Days is on Saturday so there  will be a lot of traffic in the lobby coming and going into the city center community rooms. Hopefully is attracts attention

Tomorrow three of us from the museum are going to Sevlin for  a workshop for the consortium. We always have a great time getting together and visiting and training for one thing or another. About twenty of us had a photos and archive workshop in at the Roseau museum two weeks ago. Had a great time and ate well, I'm sure this will be the same.


Here are some photos from the workshop:

Consortium President Dean Vikan and Secretary\Treasurer Tamara Edevold

Cindy Adams - Kittson County Historical Society Director

Lunch in the Roseau City Council room

Tamara discussing the care of large photos

Cindy discussing the proper care of books in the archive.

It was an excellent day to mentor and learn from one another. Tomorrow will be another day of the same sort with the focus on textiles and other collection items.