Trip to Little Falls

Outboard Motors at Fishing Museum

We went to Little Falls, Minnesota on July 20-21.

The Perkins in Little Falls was great and they helped me out by supplying a big piece of free birthday cake to help our family celebrate my wife's birthday.

One of our first destinations was the Minnesota Fishing Museum. The museum's director, Mavis, was a wonderful host and I found the collection of old outboard motors interesting.

MN Military Museum

We also toured the Minnesota Military Museum which is located at Camp Ripley. This was a lot of fun and the collection is impressive.

We had dinner at Cabin Fever which had a nice quarter chicken dinner on special.

We enjoyed the view of the Little Falls Dam and accompanying Maple Island Park.

MN Military Museum

We stayed overnight at the Clifwood Motel. If you can get by without a swimming pool and "continental breakfast," it is just about exactly half the price of everywhere else and will have all the basics you expect in a motel.

On Monday morning we went to the Pine Grove Zoo which was just the right size for our two-year-old son. It was a lot of fun.

A Blue Heron fishes at the dam

We had lunch at The Great Wall, which had good food at a decent price—although the staff was not very friendly and completely unconcerned about our two-year-old having water or eating utensils. By asking again and also taking silverware from an empty table, we were accommodated. Like I said, the food and prices were good.

My son watches a yak at the Zoo

Rambo Foods

When you first enter Rambo Foods, don't expect a warm "hello." Don't expect a shopping cart. Don't expect aisles of food waiting for you to choose from... you wuss! At Rambo Foods, you will be given a large knife when you enter the store. All that other crap you brought in will be confiscated and you will be pushed through a bamboo doorway into a jungle where you will stalk, hunt and finally kill your food with only your wits, courage and strength! Oh yeah, you can use that big knife too if you want to. Or, you can use the knife to make a fully functional bow and arrow set. You see at Rambo Foods, we don't think you should get to eat unless you earn it! Why you cowering little wuss! If you can't kill your meat, how do you expect to eat? If you can survive the jungle, the poisonous snakes, the quicksand, the wild animals, the hostile natives, land mines and the enemy combatants, you will be allowed to pay for your food and leave. We take cash, checks, Visa, MasterCard or Discover. But don't expect a "thank you." You miserable weakling...

He Sure Looks Dumb!

Whether you like to wear your pants below your butt crack or whether you ride a motorcycle with ape hangers, somebody will probably think you look dumb...

Colonoscopy: A Look Backward

Once I realized I was due to get a colonoscopy, I decided that it would be best to get it behind me as soon as possible. Three days before the procedure, I had to eat a low fiber diet and I'm telling you, that surely was for the ass! Yes, everyone who says the prep is the shits is correct. I got pretty sick for some reason, during the process of taking large overdoses of three kinds of laxatives. My nose was running and I threw up and let me tell you, I felt like crap. I had also heard stories about having bad results and one person even told me she had to go back and swallow a camera! Apparently after the camera sent images to a fanny pack she had to crap it out or "they" would need to perform surgery to remove it! My first response was "so did they want the camera back after you crapped it out?" The answer was "no;" so I'm assuming it must have been a disposable camera... The actual procedure, when a doctor finally pushes a camera up your butt is really not nearly as bad as the drinking of the "poison" was. You also get to watch your colon on TV! Anyway, after it was all over, I was sure glad that everything had come out all right in the end.

If You Choose to Believe in Heaven

If you choose to believe that there is a heaven, then perhaps you should also choose to believe that there are more ways than only one to get there. If I want to go home from wherever I might be, there are not only multiple roads I could drive, but there are multiple methods as well. If I am not in a hurry I might walk. If I am very far away I may choose to fly. Ultimately I will make it home; barring any unfortunate disasters that are always possible. So too, it is likely that if Heaven is accessible to one religion or doctrine, it is also available to others. Your way may not be my way, but who can say which is better?

Kevin J. Curtis

The African Crotch Beetle

Relationships are built on distribution of power and duties. In my marriage, my wife doesn't like insects, which have always held a certain fascination for me. One of my duties is bug disposal. When insects enter our house (as they sometimes do in the Summer), they are unwelcome. I will often pick them up and put them outside or toss them into the toilet—depending on the type of intruder it is. My wife will either capture it in a pill bottle or with exceedingly hideous specimens (in her scale of discrimination), they are squashed into an unrecognizable mess by a shoe swung with extreme prejudice. Often, a pill bottle will be waiting for me to both identify and then dispose of the occupant inside. Recently I released a captured spider on the front lawn. I was "scolded" by my wife, for not taking it 11 miles away—as apparently a spider released on the front lawn will find its way back into the house in a matter of minutes...

So this leads me to my story of what happened the other evening. My wife had caught a "bug" and had it in a holding facility (i.e. a pill bottle) when I returned home. I identified it as a small beetle and I tossed it into the toilet and continued on with my life. Later, as we were putting our son to bed, my wife asked me what kind of bug had been in the now empty pill bottle. I told her that it was a beetle. She asked what kind of beetle. It was quite small and black and likely a weevil, but I told her it was an African Crotch Beetle. Now my wife is not dumb, but I have the gift of being able to (frequently) come up with the most outrageous answers and keep a straight face—so after momentarily looking horrified, she asked me, "Are you just making that up?" That was when I burst out laughing. I had in fact, amused myself—if not anyone else. By now my wife had finished helping our two-year-old son brush his teeth and it was time to go potty. I heard the toilet flush prematurely, as they had not gone yet. Then my wife said, "Ahhg! You left it in the toilet and didn't flush it." That was when I smiled and said, "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that an African Crotch Beetle lives in our toilet now..."

Fix Spots Inside Camera Lens

Sometime this Spring I noticed a black spot showing up on my digital pictures and videos. I have had my digital camera for over six years and I really like it. I couldn't clean the spot off the outside, so I surmised it was inside. I thought that I would have to replace the camera. Then I looked on the Internet and found how to clean the inside of a camera lens with a vacuum cleaner. I had nothing to lose so I tried it. Only I used full suction power and instead of messing with a roll of plastic I held an empty toilet paper roll over the open lens and crunched the other end around the vacuum wand. I pulled it off and put it on and sucked that stupid speck right out of there! I was pretty surprised it worked but it did and how cool is that?

Ramsey County Fair

With animals and music (and the chance to be in the band), my son had fun at the Ramsey County Fair last Saturday.

Work Kitchen Mess

Day 30...

This is no exaggeration. It has been a month now since these same dirty dishes were dropped here.

Quarters Fall From Sky

Quarters Fall From Sky
UnAssociated Press
July 14, 2014

Large hail and quarters reportedly fell from the sky recently. Several people were also reportedly injured by falling hail and coins; while scavenging for small change during the height of the storm.