Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spring has Sprung

Classes are well underway and so far so good. I am going to be busy with classes this semester, after reading the syllabi for my 2 classes they are going to be jammed packed with work. But it just brings me closer to being done. I have to take a review class this summer to prep for some math classes but after the prep class I will have 3 classes left. I am looking forward to being done. After that I have another decision to make, whether or not I want to continue on or if that will be good enough. I am guessing that after a short break I will continue on but as of today I am not sure. I love “college” and am bummed I waited so long to go back. I would have done things very differently if I could do it all over again, but that is OK. I am glad that I discovered a love of learning in this late in the game. The educational march continues on!

Baseball season starts on Friday. I am looking forward to another fun year. Melissa and I have home opener tickets again this year and we are both looking forward to the Twins first game at home, which is April 8th. Our first season ticket game is April 12th. Once again we have a 20 game package in the same seats we were in last year. I love our seats and we plan on keeping them for the foreseeable future. Hopefully the weather will be decent this year and the Twins will have a great year!
I started tying flies last week. I have wanted to give it a try for a long while. I bought a few books and watched a few “how to “videos on the internet and decided to give it a try. I bought some basic tools and supplies and started with a couple “easy” flies. After a small learning curve mostly with technique and working with something so small, I actually figured it out and tied a few simple nymphs. It is super fun and incredibly relaxing. I also learned how to tie a Brassie and a Wolly Worm. Both turned out well and I am very happy with the outcomes. I am so excited to learn more about the hobby and actually catch some fish with my flies. I am making some plans to possibly fish with a buddy a little this year; I am hoping that it works out!

I saw my first robin this morning and although this pains me to say, I am ready for spring and summer. It has been an awesome winter, but I am ready for some warmer temps. *sigh* my favorite resorts out west are just getting crushed with snow. So that makes it hard, because I would really like to be there skiing powder and enjoying the mountains. But it is all good. I smile when I think of all of the skiers and riders having fun in all of that fresh snow. Ride on fellow snow riders, ride on!

Monday, March 21, 2011

Mud Season is here

So it appears as though winter is just going to go without a fight. It is surprising how fast the snow has disappeared. Grass is showing everywhere and the weather is getting warmer by the day. I am hoping that winter will give us one more blast before retreating to memory for yet another year. Our local ski resort closed yesterday. I was bummed. I feel like I didn’t ski every much this year. I had some awesome ski days this year, it just seems like there wasn’t enough of them. But I would probably feel that no matter how many days on the slopes I had. I guess now we have moved on to what we call mud season. Hopefully it will go fast; I have a few things that I am looking forward to getting going. I think I might be the only person that is sad to see winter go. I love the snow and have enjoyed this winter. I am hoping next year will be as good snow wise as this one has been.

I won a scholarship. That is kind of the big news. I applied for a few scholarships through my school and actually won one of them. It is exciting to me. It isn’t a huge amount of money but it will pay for a class and that is perfectly fine with me. I was really excited to read the email announcing the win. It really made me feel good. It is nice to be recognized for something that you have worked hard on. I am looking forward to using the money when I register for classes next time.

Speaking of school, my classes have once again started. So far so good. I think that I am going to enjoy both of them. They are short, only 8 weeks which means that a lot of reading and paper writing is going to be crammed into them, which is both bad and good. Good that they will be over quicker and bad that there is a lot of worked packed into those 8 weeks. Oh well, I am getting close to being done, I have a few classes left so it is going to be good!

I have begun looking at fly tying as way to enjoy my fly fishing a little more. The idea of catching a fish on something you made is pretty darn cool. Besides that the hobby fascinates me. I have been watching “how-to” videos online and it looks seriously fun. I am looking forward to looking into that a little more.

Life is good as always.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Bucket List

So lately I have become a little more into my “bucket list”, I have a list of 72 things that I would like to do before I die. A few of them I know that I will never do, like walk on the moon, own my own planet or meet an outer space alien, but there are a lot of them that are in reach and even a fair number of them that are done. I created this list 5 years ago officially, but I have been creating it in my head for decades. Anyway I wrote the list down in my secret Moleskine notebook while drinking tea with Melissa at the Tea Garden on Grand Ave in St Paul. I look at the list at least once or twice every few months and see if there is anything on it that I could achieve. I think everyone should have a bucket list. Sadly with the ski conditions at Big Sky this year I was unable to cross two things off the list, they were skiing both Marx and Lenin Bowls on the south face of Lone Mountain. I was pretty bummed that I was not able to cross those 2 goals of the list. Looking forward this year however I have a few things that are going to be taking off the list; at least as off right now it is looking that way.

The first thing is, Melissa and I are going to hear His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama speak at the U of M in May. I am really excited about this. I admire him a lot and am really looking forward to hearing him speak, which could very well be the last time he comes to Minnesota. It promises to be an amazing time. For my practice of Buddhism this is a very big deal for me and I am sure it will be something I will never forget.

I am taking an Orvis fly fishing class in July this summer. This is something that I have always wanted to do and it is finally going to happen. I have been fly fishing on and off for 20 years and I love it, I wish I could (read should) do it more. Whether or not I catch anything it is always relaxing for me to be out on the water trying. The class is going to take place in Edwards Colorado over 2 full days. I am hoping to learn a lot and apply what I learn to our summer trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, which brings me to a couple other things in my bucket list and they are to catch a fish in the following rivers, The Madison, Henry’s Fork and the Snake River. All of which I am going to have the chance to fish this summer while we are on vacation. I am hoping to be successful in each of these rivers.
I also have a couple other things in the hopper for next summer already; there will be more on that later. I am not going to jinx my ideas for huge plans.

Classes start up on Monday, I dropped a class and am back down to doing 2 classes. The thought of 3 eight week classes was starting to get a little daunting. I want to do well in the classes I have left and just thought that might be too much packed into that short amount of time. It will be ok though, I am still on schedule. I might have to do an extra semester but that is OK with me. Like I said I want to do well.

I hate to say it but I think winter is over. Looks like the temperatures are starting to get warmer, and there is no prediction of snow over at least the next 10 days. That means that the snow we do have is going to get really crappy and that sucks for skiing. I might be down for the year. *sigh* Oh well bring on next winter!

Monday, March 7, 2011

Happened for a reason

So I know they say that everything happens for a reason, I still have a lot of problems with that statement. I am still trying to figure out the reason that I was parent-less at the age of 29, but I digress. This weekend, the statement everything happens for a reason came into play and made me a little more of a believer. Since a whole chain of events happened for a reason.

Saturday started like most Saturday’s do at my house, lazily getting out of bed and starting to roam around the house deciding what the day is going to bring. This Saturday was going to be a fun day, Melissa and I were going to run a couple errands and then meet a friend down at the Metrodome for some rollerblading. We were also going to ask that friend to join us at Stella’s afterword for a beer and appetizers. But once again I digress, Melissa and I went out on our errands and during the beginning of our errands I got an email from our friend in which she canceled rollerblading with us because she was not feeling well, Melissa and I were bummed because we like this person and were sad that we weren’t going to see her and we like to rollerblade, but hence this started the things happen for a reason. After we got that email we changed our plan for the day and decided that we were not going to go rollerblading either and that we were going to go and have lunch and then go grocery shopping which we were not going to do before. After grocery shopping we came home and started to unpack the groceries and I made my trip down to the freezer in the basement to put the frozen foods away. I opened the door to the utility area and discovered that something was leaking and leaking badly, there was a lot of water on the cement floor. I panicked and yelled for Melissa to run down and help me move somethings that were sitting in water. After moving some stuff quickly out of the puddles and attempting to figure out what was leaking, was it the sump pump? The water softener? The Aprilaire thing? No of course not it was our 6 year old 50gal water heater. It was leaking slow but steady. Melissa called the number on the side of the water heater and 3 hours and $1100 later we had a new 50gal water heater… Melissa and I cleaned up the mess which luckily wasn’t too bad. We only had to throw a few things out that were water damaged. After we got the area cleaned up and a couple fans set up to dry the concrete we talked about how lucky we were that this didn’t happen a few weeks ago while we were on vacation. 50 gallons of water leaking for 11 days, it would have been A LOT worse!

I bring this story up because of the chain of events that lead us to find the leaking water. If our friend would not have canceled with us, I have no idea when we would have found the leaking water. It may not have been till Sunday and things would have been much worse. I find this chain of events very interesting and it brings into thought the bigger picture of life. Do things really happen for a reason? I wonder, sometimes it certainly seems like that is a big fat YES, but other times it seems like the answer would be a NO. I brought up in the beginning of this blog post about my parents. Both of my parents are deceased, my dad in 1994 and my mom in 2000. I was very close with both my parents and losing them was very hard for me. When my mother died I asked a lot of questions to men that were supposed to have the answers and all I have heard was, everything happens for a reason. What was the reason that my mother lost her life? Well, God has a plan. I claimed bullshit and that their answer was an easy way out of an answer that they could not give me in reality. I lost all faith and began what has become my personal quest for answers to my own beliefs and spirituality. I am still on the quest and all the while I have moved from one belief system to another, I still long for the reason that both my parents are gone. Sorry this post is a little heavy but sometimes I think, I try to link and then I think some more. I wonder about death and what happens, and truthfully I am scared of the thought of dying. I am not ready nor do I think that I ever will be. I am worried about it and it is always in the back of my mind. Morbid? Yes I know it is, but it is very important to me. I don’t claim to be an intelligent philosopher, or have the inside scoop to anything. I have a longing for knowledge about how things work and why things happen. This weekend, made me believe a little more that things do happen for a reason and sometimes it is a good reason.