Winter has officially arrived with school closings and a full day or more of snow, wind and sleet, initiating a Winter Storm Warning for us and a good part of the state. If you didn’t have your winter gear out yet, I bet you do now.

I’ve seen a few posts lately from folks near or around my age talking about when they were small, and that it was their mom who really made Christmas happen for them. I started thinking about that and can’t get it off my mind.

Here’s to hoping that all of our dear readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I know I sure did. This was actually perhaps one of the best ones yet for me.

By Bob Simmons, CEO, Simmons Multimedia As a runner, when I’m travelling I always try to get in a run wherever it is I’m visiting. It’s a great way to see things in a community and get a feel for an area. While on my recent trip to New Zealand, I ran along a number of paved walkways that hugged the Bay of Plenty shoreline. Anyone who runs will tell you that eventually you will have an encounter with a dog. Over my decades and thousands of miles logged, I have had several runins with man’s best friend, but not on this trip. On this trip my foil would be birds - in particular, the Torea Pango, also known as the Variable Oyster Catcher. These are large black birds with bright orange bills that become very aggressive if you get too close to where they are nesting. I must have gotten too close, because one morning two of these birds screeched and dive bombed at me for about a half mile until they eventually gave up. A guy who passed me on a bike quipped: Aye mate, they think you’re their mother! Well, I was wearing black shorts and an orange Fargo Marathon running shirt, so maybe he was on to something.

So, we are state champions in volleyball and football……now what are we going to do? Basketball is just starting up, so it will take a few weeks to get all excited about that - well, except for the “Open Gym” practice that’s usually on Sundays and Christmas Eve and Day. It’s not a “practice,” right? So as I went through my emails looking for something to do in the meantime, I noticed I had a message from the Department of Education about an expiring application. I thought it was junk mail, but then it all came back to me that Munich asked me a couple of years ago to get my substitute teaching license to help out with a shortage of subs. I figured why not and completed the application. After a few weeks and a pretty lengthy FBI background check that I had to produce court records for, voila, I’m licensed.

I’ve decided that when I grow up, I want to be Marilyn Hagerty. If you don’t know who Marilyn Hagerty is, I will admit that I didn’t either until she became an overnight sensation in March of 2012 when she wrote a review of a new branch of the Olive Garden restaurant that had opened in Grand Forks. Thanks to the internet, her column in the Grand Forks Herald was shared by others who mocked her for writing a positive review of a lowly chain restaurant. As expected, there were snarky comments galore around the country. She was contacted by newspaper reporters from Minneapolis, New York and Fargo, wanting to know what she thought of all the fracas. Her response, taken verbatim from her obituary was this- “I’m working on my Sunday column and I’m going to play bridge this afternoon…so I don’t have time to read all this crap.”

Nope, I didn’t mind washing windows outside on Sunday when it was 49 degrees, sunny and no wind on Nov. 23.

I’m writing my article a little ahead of time this week, as my parents are landing in Fargo tomorrow (Saturday, Nov. 22) and are staying through Thanksgiving.

Continuing with my report to you of my recent travels to New Zealand, let’s focus on the flights to and from the land of the kiwi. First, some back story; years ago, I decided that the only way I would ever agree to fly was to do so in first class. It’s not because I think I’m some highfalutin media mogul who is too important to be seated in coach…no, it’s because I had some bad experiences that nearly put me in therapy.

Hunting season always makes me think of the avid hunters we have in our family. On Greg’s side of the family, it would be his cousins on his dad’s side, the Eaglesons. They have scouted and hunted on our farm for many years despite all of them living several hours away in the big cities of Bismarck, Fargo and Rugby. Typically, when the Eagleson clan gets together to hunt, there are several generations involved. It would not be unusual to see an orange-clad teen trudging through the trees in the snowy footsteps made by his grandpa. When the three brothers - Chad, Sean and Jace - are together, you are guaranteed lots of laughs, lots of stories and a few skinned deer carcasses hanging in the shop by the end of the weekend. In my family, the first person that comes to mind as an avid hunter is my Uncle Russ. Uncle Russ is my dad’s younger brother, and other than being of similar height and stature, they could not be more different. While my dad is an introverted, quiet listener, Uncle Russ is an extroverted, animated storyteller. Uncle Russ’s hunting resume is quite impressive and extensive. If you visit his hunting cabin at Fort Ransom, appropriately named Rooster Ridge, you will see his display of skins of nearly every fur-bearing animal in North America along with a pronghorn antelope, a gemsbok on a pedestal, a double-shoveled Caribou bull, an Arctic grayling fish and a pair of dark, iridescent pheasants lovingly displayed above the kitchen cabinets. Even more extraordinary is his display of animals from his hunting trip to the Limpopo Province of South Africa. This assortment of preserved animal heads and antlers includes a kudu, zebra, gemsbok, waterbuck, blesbuck, impala, duiker, and the shining star and my aunt’s favorite (according to Uncle Russ) - a warthog.