The Viking's Legacy Ship has been completed for a couple months now.  I promised a while back to write a little something when the whole project was done, so it seemed a trip down to the location was in order to document the finished structure before it's all covered under a few inches of snow.

I'm not sure when or why it happened, but one day it occurred to me that the ship and the bricks reminded me a whole lot of The Police song "Message In A Bottle".  Let me explain...

First of all it is a ship, and ships need water to sail.  It seems fair to say that a "Message In A Bottle" could be loosely equated with an "SOS", or at least one way of delivering an SOS, which also involves water and messages traveling through water.  Therefore, I am going to postulate that the Legacy bricks are essentially the "water" that the Viking's ship is sailing on, so the whole analogy makes pretty good sense, if you think about it.  Let's do a little substitute on the words and see how it all comes together...

As Sting said, "a hundred billion (bricks) are washed upon the shore". That might be a bit of an exaggeration here, as there are only about 14,400 bricks. Even though there aren't a million, it still means if you don't know where "your" brick is, it could take awhile to find it.

Hence, the landmark bricks. What are the landmark bricks?  Those are the largest bricks in the lot and they commemorate an important milestone in Viking's history.  For example...

So, if you know the landmark brick that your brick is by, it helps to find it quicker.

There is another legend in the works to the Legacy Ship.  Some people are referring to it as The Love Boat.  Why? An incident that I know nothing about and won't repeat here, but if you want to read about it, here is a link:

​I also read that there is an alleged marriage proposal amongst the bricks.

I suspect there are a few if not many more "messages" in the bricks.  Perhaps tributes, memorials, legacies, love notes or proposals.  There is certainly a story behind every brick there.

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Until next time, and I do hope it's not so long, I hope you are enjoying the change in seasons and thanks for stopping by.

Eeeek, Adrian Peterson (AP) appears to be caught in a scary Halloween nightmare.

Happy Trick-or-Treating!

Minnesota has been abuzz for a year or two now with a lot of hype surrounding the building and funding of the Minnesota Vikings new football stadium.  It replaced the old Metrodome, a white oval with a puffy top that I like to refer to as a dirty marshmallow.  Replacing it seemed like a good idea on many a level, and especially after that one where the roof collapsed during a winter of particularly heavy snowfall.  We can all be thankful it wasn't during a game or concert.

To make a long story short, the new stadium hosted its open house event a couple of weeks ago.  I got in line with other locals (a virtual line) to sign up for free tickets because I wanted to see what it looked like inside and I also decided to use it as free entertainment for my kids for something to say they did this summer.  I figured we'd be in a group of 20 or so other people during our appointed time slot.  I have to admit being a little surprised when the paper reported that around 140,000 people would be going to the open house.  The warm fuzzy welcoming committee I was expecting was more like large crowd control with beefy security guards at every entrance after passing through metal detector checkpoints.

The stadium itself is complete, but the grounds were still in progress, shall we say.  A few of the items were in place but one of the bigger attractions, the Vikings Legacy Ship, is still under construction as I speak.

A couple times a week I like to speed walk down there on my lunch hour (not really since it is only 30 minutes, hence the speed walking part of it) to check on the progress.  My understanding of it, is that it will be a smoke breathing (or snorting) dragon/viking dragon with a video display for the sail (already in place and working), anchored by the many (14,000) legacy bricks purchased by loyal and adoring Vikings fans.  Some of you may recall a previous post or two on my site about the bricks.

I've been going for several weeks now.  I think they are trying to have it completed by August 28 which is the Vikings first preseason home game.  From today, that leaves about 15 more days.  Have a look at some of the images I have captured during my visits.

Thanks for stopping by and come back again for another update when it is complete.  Hope you are all enjoying the final but fabulous days of summer!

It went about like any other divorce on the books. The painful split of everything right down the middle. This one for him and that one for me. Things you were annoyed by for years could finally go to good riddance, such as, adios to the wagon wheel.  So, naturally I wasn't thinking about who had the shovel in June. I didn't look for it until the snow started falling in November and I needed it.  I also needed to be to work and the bus was going to be leaving in no time at all. That's when I had to improvise fast. I found that if you turn a rake upside down, you can move the snow from a driveway off to the side quick enough to clear a path and get the car heading down the road.

I learned that when you replace the burned out headlight for the car that you don't remove the plastic covering from the front of the headlight, which would be the easiest way to unscrew the lightbulb and put a new one in.  On the contrary, you have to open the hood and do it from the back.  It certainly is more manly to do it that way. A girl now, she would have designed it the other way around. It was easy enough once I figured out the correct entry point.

I found that when you decide the gutters simply have to have gutter screens on, because he decided they didn't need them and tore them all off one day, that you will have to get on the ladder and do it yourself unless you want to pay someone a fortune to do a pretty simple job.  The hard part was working up the courage to get up on the ladder with my corded, not cordless, electric drill and prepare to screw in the gutter guard screens. 30 minutes later and still on the first screw, I learned that the job goes much quicker if the drill is not on reverse.  It also helped when my knees weren't shaking as much.  Chalk it up to experience.

I learned that all the previous moaning and groaning and procrastination about putting salt in the water softener is no big deal at all.  It gets poured into a giant cylinder. Based on previous person's effort, I would have thought it went in a cup at a time.  I almost called the water softener people before I attempted it because I thought they would need to instruct me.  I decided instead to ask my Mom first, who claimed she had done it before, and when we pulled off the lid, I was amazed by the simplicity of the project.  Yes, I too could add salt to the water softener.
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When the bathroom sink started leaking, I was fairly concerned. This was most likely going to require the services of a professional plumber.  Since it had been misbehaving for some time, I decided to lean on the old ex to see if he would repair a job I had asked him to do long ago.  As with most projects, he came in and stopped the damage and that is also where the work stopped.  A month later, still without a sink and imposing on my kids' bathroom, I was tired of the bedtime battles over who got to brush their teeth first.  I decided to take matters into my own hands and go buy a new bathroom vanity.  I picked it out at Ikea, loaded it into my car, carried it in the house, unpacked it and opened the manual. Immediately, I was more than a little intimated by the 26 page instruction book and I almost stopped at page 1 when I saw this cautionary drawing.

It was going to be just me after all and I am a girl to boot.  I don't have anyone to call who can put a pencil behind his ear like that.  Not one to be easily deterred, I decided to see how far I could get.  I spent 3 hours on a Saturday night and while it wasn't installed to the wall, it was assembled.  Now for the installation part of it.  This brings me back to that corded drill. I bought a pack of drill bits, but I think there's one piece that can actually, well it has a screw end like it can screw in different types of screws.  The last time I saw it was when I put the gutter guards on in August.  But now there is a foot of snow outside and I really hope I didn't leave it laying out there in the yard.  I don't think I did but then I stopped by the computer to check something and the next thing I knew I was writing this blog.
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I'll keep looking for that piece for the drill, but in the meantime, I would like to note that it hasn't even been a year and look at all the things this girl has done.  Maybe I don't need a man in my life after all. I don't know, they are pretty nice to have around I guess.  Just don't tell them I know how to do all this stuff. And if they think it's sexy to watch a girl shovel, they can apply elsewhere.

GIFs are a lot of fun to make out of a series of images that you may have taken on your camera depicting some sort of action. If you do it regularly, it's old hat but if not, you may need a refresher course. It is relatively easy to find instructional videos these days on the internet. You will be rolling in no time if you decide to make one and know your way around Photoshop.

Here is a GIF I made of a neon hat trick signage that is at a local hockey rink that we frequent.

It's true, I could have videotaped that and avoided the whole project, but I wanted to do it, so there you have it.  *My website will not let me post a GIF here, so I uploaded these images into a slideshow. If you want to see the GIF, please visit my blog on WordPress. Here is a quick link to it:

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On another and equally important note, it's close to that time of the year to wish my favorite football player a happy birthday. I'm a little early but since I generally post on the weekends, I wanted to make sure it was up before the big day.

It will be awhile before the legacy ship is built, so in the meantime, I hope this virtual brick will be an acceptable "substitute". Hint: It may be different from the sample bricks you see here. Happy Birthday #71!

Until next time, keep warm and enjoy this peaceful time of year.

Here in Minnesota, even the potatoes are in the spirit.  ​

It's supposed to be single digit temperatures for this Sunday's play-off game, with wind chills going below zero.  Will Seattle be able to handle this?  We are hoping the answer to that is no. It's going to be dangerously cold. BRRRR!
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Here's to the Vikings and I hope they win!  Or we'll be having mashed purple and gold potatoes for dinner.  I don't know what color that will make but it's not going to be pretty.

Welcome 2016. I am so happy you are here!

I am always impressed when I see my fellow bloggers racking up “likes” left and right, accumulating them like snowflakes falling in a backyard. It seems like they are easy to come by for some people and excruciatingly difficult for others.

I’ve read perfectly good content that didn’t have a single like and couldn’t tell you why.  Similarly, I’ve seen pictures of weeds that had over one hundred likes and couldn’t explain why.

When I saw a recent post that had over 60 likes I decided to see how many people follow that blog to get a sense of the proportion of followers to likes.

It has taken me a long time to attract the followers I have and I feel rather proud to say I have over 100.  Only a couple are people I actually know in real life, the rest are followers I’ve gained along the way, who were attracted to a post that was good enough that they signed up for more. At least, that’s what my ego thought.

But the relationship was short-lived.  My kids informed me that people follow you just so you follow them back. As soon as you follow them, they stop following you.  Is that really true, I wondered? How shallow of the virtual world to do that.

This topic came up when I was bragging to one of them that a radio station had followed me.  She said yeah, but they won’t follow you for long, they’re just following you long enough for you to follow them back. They followed me too, she said. She was right. The next time I checked, they were no longer following me.  It made their numbers look good.  Such as, they have 1 billion followers but only follow 125.  So that’s how it works!

Back to the “like” ratio, so the person who racked up the cool 61 likes, it turns out after I looked at their blog, has over 12,000 followers.  That explains why my 100 followers equals 0 likes. According to the preceding example, only .005 percent of people who follow your blog like it. At that rate, I won’t be getting a like until I have about 200 followers.

I better start cranking out some better content.  Or start following a whole bunch of people so they follow me back.

Coming right up, a picture of the New Year’s Day champagne I drank while I wrote this blog.  Let’s see if either one of them gets a like.
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And Happy 2016, by the way!