"My Crazy Kids"

Pic: Nikolai after his band performance at Bemidji State University on Saturday, January 26.  By Allan Olson So once again the weekend arrived with no fun in store for me, but at least this weekend I didn’t have any plans for Mother Nature to ruin. Our latest run-in with in the weather saw temperatures dipping way-low on Friday night and, once again, my trusty green machine wouldn’t start on Saturday when I went to take Nikolai to town and drop off the garbage. I did learn the day prior, thanks to the Rick at R&R Repair, that my battery is not the problem, but rather the starter. The replacement part was ordered, but its arrival date and repair appointment are still to be determined. So I started the other vehicle, after hooking the battery charger up to the green machine. The main reason to head into the big “B” town was to drop Nikolai off for his day at Bemidji State University for Honors Band. That was also the reason why I had nothing planned in te...

A Wedding Trip and Cancelled Plans Cut: My wife, the bride (our niece) and me after the official vows were completed and the other photos were taken (I decided we needed a photo with the bride, too!). By Allan Olson It was another busy week, not quite on the same level as the week before, but busy enough. I managed to make a shorter week of it by taking Friday off for a road trip to go to a wedding. My wife and I and my mother-in-law hit the road heading west late Friday morning for the big city of Fargo, ND. It was a chilly day to be on the road, but thankfully the heater was working well in my vehicle, so the only time the bitter cold hit us was when we left the warmth of our transportation.  We met the bride (my niece) with her now husband and family and a few other family members at the Cass County (ND) Courthouse for the very intimate (small but nice) wedding day affair at 3 p.m. The whole thing, including wait time and photos, took less than an hour. F...

Pic: Nikolai, a teammate and two mentors planned and built another field element for the Robotics game so they could test their build with the field elements in the coming weeks to see how it works and what tweaks they need to do. By Allan Olson I didn’t do much in terms of leaving the home area this weekend – actually, I never made it further than Cass Lake. I did that twice, both times on Saturday. I spent Saturday morning getting some work done at home. There were some areas of the house that needed some serious cleaning – that’s the price we pay for having a very busy work and school life. So for that morning the top priority for the kids was no homework – just housework. I must confess that we got a later start than I intended; somehow, I slept in again… but eventually I got the kids moving on cleaning things up, and my wife and I even got a couple of things done. That afternoon, Nikolai and I spent about three hours working on the Robotics field eleme...

My little great nephew and his parents were our house guests on Sunday night. He recently celebrated his first birthday and is slowly taking a liking to his crazy great uncle a little more – depending on his mood, of course, just like any one of this age. By Allan Olson This past weekend was mostly spent cleaning up my computer, getting rid of many of the extra files I’ve accumulated over the last seven years, and on Sunday just hanging out at home. I was on the road Friday evening for another BCLB Bears wrestling meet at Blackduck; unfortunately, the home team lost this tim e by just a few points. I managed to arrive back at home just in time for a very late evening meal of meatloaf. Mmmm… it was amazing. It was nice to be able to sit down and have a meal with the family – that’s something that’s hard to do when school and work schedules get busy. On Saturday morning Nikolai and I were on the road early to attend the 2019 Robotics Game Reveal in Nevis. That...

Pic 1: This happy, cake-faced boy is my great-nephew Greyson after enjoying some of his birthday cake on the occasion of his first birthday. Pic 2: While it wasn’t the geocaching adventure I had hoped for, Alivia and I did sneak out with a friend and found this cache on an island in Mahnomen County. By Allan Olson There has been plenty of time for relaxing this past week. I found time for a little geocaching – just not for any big series of caches due to the foot of snow that was dumped on us. And we did take some time for a little do-it-yourself project in the house. I mentioned last week that our one shower faucet wouldn’t turn on; well, it turns out that apparently it was never really installed correctly in the first place. This project quickly evolved from being an inexpensive quick fix to something more than I wanted to fund at this time. Saturday morning was pretty quiet; I did some reading, some television watching, and then finally that afternoon,...