Monday, May 26, 2008

If Chicago is the "Windy City," then...

...North Dakota is the "Windy State"! We were told before coming that North Dakota tended to be on the windy side. In fact one of the sayings people like to use around here is "If you don't like the weather just wait a few minutes and it will change." And it was pretty windy this winter...but then again I wasn't too interested in being outside for very long in February for the wind to really bother me all that much. That situation has changed now that we're well into spring and I have signed up for a membership at the local golf course. The wind has now become my arch-nemesis (move over Sergio Garcia)! My plan was to golf just about every Monday (my day off) and some Saturdays but three times in the last two weeks it has been way too windy to golf (unless you live in Scotland). We've had wind gusts of 40-50 mph and regular winds of 15-25 mph on those days (as well as a few others recently). I finally got in a round this past Tuesday (apparently eveyone else wanted to also as the course was packed!) and today (the wind was only blowing at 10-20 mph!). I'm sure I'll still get plenty of golf in this summer but I am starting to understand why we were warned about the wind...there's just nothing to stop the wind blowing over the northern plains (no trees, mountains, hills, tall buildings...)

On Sunday afternoon we experienced our first small town high school graduation. It was nice to be able to attend a graduation that you didn't have to have tickets for. Since there were only a dozen kids graduating, the ceremony was very personal (slide show of each student, announcement of parents) as well as short. Then after the ceremony itself, the students lined up outside the school gym in a reception line. I was able to congratulate the kids that I had the opportunity to get to know while coaching the basketball team this winter. It was quite different from what we experienced at our "city" high school and college graduations!

On Saturday we had hoped to visit the Bismarck zoo (even though there are no Giant Pandas) but a storm blew across western North Dakota and so we had to settle for going out to lunch and then going to see the new Indiana Jones movie (I still can't by the kid from "Even Stevens" as a Greaser). The storm followed us home and in fact there was a tornado warning for our county that night, which gave us the excuse to watch some tv downstairs in our basement. The tornado didn't materialize in our area though there were three elsewhere in ND. I guess that goes with the territory.

By God's Grace, Jeff

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