According to Yahoo News, North Dakota is one of the best places in the United States to live.  Yes, you won’t get a lot of 5 star celebrity sightings, and it’s 8 hours to the nearest pro sports venue.  But the state is in great economic shape, land is cheap, food is plentiful, the women are beautiful, the men are strong, and it’s a sportsman’s paradise.

Growing up, for the most part, in North Dakota was idyllic.  My home town, counting all of the farm families that sent their kids to school in town and used the grain elevator, had a total population of less than 2000 souls.  Everyone grew up together and raised their kids together.  Kids would leave the house at sunset, play outside all day, have lunch and maybe dinner at whichever relative’s house we ended up at, and be home before sundown for a bath and no-one batted an eye.  My 1st grade class was about 20 children, and those kids graduated together 12 years later.  Of that class, there were exactly 3 little girls that would have been in my dating pool if my family had stuck around.  I was closely related to all of the others.  In the spring and summer, we went fishing several times a week.  In the fall, school would let out for a week or two to let the kids help out with the harvest and go hunting with their dads.  In the winter there was sledding and ice fishing.

After a few moves to different places in North Dakota, we followed my step-dad to wander the Mountain West until we eventually settled in the Bay Area, which is about as different from rural North Dakota as you can get.  I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to find a way back.   However, I’ve found the love of my life, and she is definitely not moving to North Dakota if there’s any way we can stay in Louisville.  She’s a wonderful lady, and she’s worth waiting to go home.  Eventually, retirement will come, and I plan on buying myself a nice stretch of prairie where I can lay in the tall grass or the deep snow and watch the clouds race each other across the sky for the rest of my life.  Of course, I’ll be drinking some of the Bluegrass’s finest corn squeezings when I do.  Hey, you can take the Norwegian out of Kentucky, but you’re not gonna get the Kentucky out of the Norwegian.

American air forces are being pulled from attack missions in Libya.  While the air armada that has been taking part in the curb stomping of Qaddafi’s air, artillery, and armor assets will be on standby, other U.S. assets will continue to provide support to NATO forces who will continue that mission.

For once, and I should mark this day on the calendar, I agree with the President’s actions.

My opinion on this should be pretty clear to anyone:  We don’t have a dog in the Libyan fight.  The President has been taking Qaddafi’s press releases at face value, and says that the air campaign prevented a bloodbath in Benghazi.  Since he can’t prove the negative, I’ll have to take his word on that one.  But if I agree, for the sake of the argument, that we needed to get involved in an internal Libyan conflict, then I agree with President Obama that we should be providing support to NATO and that’s it.

There is no plus to the United States in this war.  If Qaddafi wins, he hates us.  If the ‘rebels’ win, they will hate us.   France, Italy, and the rest of Europe will gain after the war when the crude starts flowing northward, but we haven’t used Libyan oil for decades.

So today I agree with President Obama.  Keep our men and women out of harm’s way and let the Europeans shed blood, theirs or that of Libyan soldiers, for their oil.   Heck, maybe he’ll even get the Arab countries to contribute more planes than can be counted on two hands.

March 31st is the opening day of Major League Baseball.  It’s been a tradition for the past 100 years for the president to throw out the first ball in each season.  In commemoration of our Fearless Leader’s efforts to do this, I present this:

This evening Irish Woman and I actually got a babysitter and went to a housewarming party for some new neighbors.  Of course, these neighbors are apex predators, live at the Louisville Zoo, and have claws that look like they could flay a porcupine in one swipe.

Tonight was the opening party for the Glacier Run exhibit at the zoo.  Irish Woman has been working as part of the fundraising board at the zoo for years to help pay for it all.  This was a nice way for her to show me what all of the late nights, weekends, and trips to the store for supplies have bought.

This new exhibit is the replacement exhibit for the zoo’s old tiger, polar bear, and seal exhibits.  After tearing down the 1960’s era swimming pool exhibits, new habitats that more closely resemble actual terrain were constructed.  The big phase of the exhibit, the bear enclosures, is almost complete, and will be open to the public on April 26.

The zoo lucked out and was able to get a polar bear to replace the one they shipped out several years ago.  The new bear seems to be getting used to her new digs, and is being trained to let the keepers hand feed her so that she can be checked out every day.

In addition to the polar bear, last year a couple members of the zoo staff made a round trip to Montana and retrieved a mother bear and her two cubs that were going to be euthanized as nuisance bears.  The cubs are between six and eight months old now and are between 200 and 300 pounds by the look of them.  They are much more curious than their mother, who for the most part just laid down in the corner and glowered at passersby.  Then again, she is a truly wild bear who has been brought into captivity.  Her one interaction with me was to puff herself up and make a rush at the plexiglass window.   In related news, I now know exactly how fast a grizzly bear can move 20 feet.  I also know that in the event that a bear in the wild wants to run me down and use me as a pinata, I am hosed, armed or not.

This cub was much more gregarious than his mother, and spent the 20 minutes or so I watched him slowly demolishing a fish-cicle.

One of the cubs is a male, and I overheard one of the supervisors at the zoo saying that they hope to use him as a stud to other zoos.  Since he was born in the wild, his DNA isn’t present in any of the breeding programs, so as long as he’s healthy, he should be very useful in that respect.  The zoo expects to be able to keep the cubs until they are 3 to 5 years old, at which point they will probably be transferred to another zoo.

The bear habitat is modeled after an Alaskan mining town, and the bears have areas on both sides of the main street, as well as an overhead walkway that allows them to be moved from one place to another easily.  There is a large pool for them to swim in, with a HUGE window that will allow visitors to watch how graceful a polar bear can be in the water.  There is also a classroom that will be used to teach visitors and school groups about the bears and other arctic wildlife.  There are rumors of overnight campouts for kids at the bear enclosure.

Next to the bear area is the seal and sea lion exhibit.  The polar bear can actually see the seals swimming around, which to me is like putting me next to an all you can eat pizza buffet and not letting me partake, but the deep and wide dry moat between them should keep seals from becoming snacks.  There is a nice, shady seating area to watch the seals from, as well as another large window so that you can watch them swim underwater.

We are really looking forward to taking Boo and the other kids to see this new exhibit.  We’re lucky that Irish Woman’s work at the zoo lets us see some things behind the scenes, but just taking the kids and wandering around the zoo is one of my favorite things to do in Louisville.  I think this new exhibit is going to be one of our favorites.

This one’s been floating around in my head since someone mentioned in #GBC the other night.

I’ll always look at not seeing Queen in concert as one of the lost opportunities of my young life. 

H/T to Radley Balko for this one!

We all have those phrases that we don’t want to hear:

“Sweetheart, we need to talk”
“Dad, where’s the fire extinguisher and first aid kit?”
“Can you remember the last time I took birth control?”

This afternoon, I heard a new one:

Ring Ring
DaddyBear:  “Hello?”
Girlie Bear:  “Dad?  It’s raining in the basement.”
DaddyBear: “Wait, what?”

Not “OMFG DAD!  THE BASEMENT IS FLOODING!!!!eleven!!!!”.  but “It’s raining in the basement.”  No emotion, smooth as silk.  Might as well be telling me that she’d finished her homework and was going outside to ride her bike.

Apparently the main drain line out of the bathroom somehow became occluded with debris of some sort, and the overflow from bathroom fixtures was running through the floor and into the thankfully unfinished side of the basement directly below.

This accelerated my drive home.  Luckily, the prodigious application of plunger, drain snake, cussing, and drain cleaner corrected the issue.  Follow-up application of hot bleach water appear to have kept the zombie apocalypse from originating in my home.

I’m proud of her in that she knew not to panic and to call me rather than try to tear apart the plumbing with a wrench.  But that phrase will definitely go into my list of things I never want to hear again.

Wayward Cobra Catcher – The successful applicant will be placed in a building believed to contain a missing African cobra and charged with the task of re-capturing the serpent and returning it to its enclosure.

Question – Who does the zoo director or head herpetologist send in to catch the cobra?   Does he or she risk injury to a valuable experienced crew member, or do you just line up four or five red-shirted interns and have them take turns at cobra wrangling?

Question The Second – Assuming that the interns are used, what incentive do you give college students to put on the “snake proof” suit and head in?  Do you buy pizza and soda for the post-snake party?  Maybe promise to donate a keg to their end of semester party?  Or do you think “If you survive, I’ll make sure to give you a glowing personnel review” would work?

Dear Does,

It appears that some mass hysteria has struck your ranks.  In the 5 miles between the highway and my home, three of your number attempted to end their lives by impacting themselves on the front bumper and/or fenders of my minivan.  I also saw large groups of you standing in the fields next to the road, all of which seemed to stare longingly at the cars that were passing them.

Whatever is troubling you, it’s not worth dying for.  Life is good.  Spring has sprung, the grass is green and sweet, and the trees are budding.  Soon, there will be a new herd of fawns to take care of, and the trees will be full of fruit before you know it.  Just get through this rough period and you will be fine.

If you still feel this way in November, please feel free to line up in front of my friends and me, and we will ensure that your death goes to a good cause.  Namely, to fill our freezers and jerky dryers.

In the meantime, if you need someone to talk to, or a shoulder to cry on, my dog Shadow spends his afternoon in the yard that backs up to the field with the apple tree and blackberry bushes.  He is a good listener, and is known for giving wonderful hugs.

Yours sincerely,

DaddyBear