I did a thing. I took on a project…a project called a wine bar.

From now on, when you see me in public or send me fan mail, you can address me as Coach Goodman. I feel like it has a nice ring to it, although it has taken me a few weeks to get used to it. What am I coaching, you might be wondering? Well, track, of course. I’m certain there are only two possible reasons for why I was asked to jump on board the track train. One- my column is called The Morning Run. Clearly, I consider myself a runner, and I did have a couple blue ribbons from my short stint as a sprinter back in high school, however, I can’t prove it now because I threw that box away years ago. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Two- I firmly believe that it’s Ethen Askvig’s goal to find me enough part-time jobs at the school to turn me into a full-time employee. He’s probably making a t-shirt for me right now that says “okay-est substitute” or “least qualified but available to coach.”

Many of you know that we left Fargo and moved our young family to Langdon in 2019, but you might not know why. We came here to open short-term vacation rentals to support tourism near the Pembina Gorge and surrounding area.

Cat’s out of the bag…Hinnenkamp won’t be the editor anymore; she’s moving on. I’m not gonna lie, I have not made her life very easy over the past two-and-a-half years. As most things that we experience, I wouldn’t change a minute of it. Could you imagine the amount of grief that she gets when her columnist makes fun of politicians that pay for ads, business owners that pay for ads, and people she sees every day, she is greeted with, “Did you see what Mitzel said about me”? So, why don’t we talk about some of the stuff I did to her in the past two years to remember this titan. First off, when she first asked me to write for the paper, I warned her, “I’m not the smartest, but I’m a pretty big smart a$$.” She ate it up as she was tasked with creating a new paper in the area to grab the reader’s attention and make them want more. So she took my ‘I don’t give a sh*t’attitude and put me, well, at the bottom of the page. I started by making fun of the people that I knew wouldn’t buy a paper, as they know everything. Once a couple of their friends commented on what I said about them in the paper, they quickly bought a subscription just to see what I would say next. Next, Sarah would let me pretty much talk about anything. I hit religion, politics, and I was planning to talk about gender, but she left too early for that one…stay tuned. I would strategically plant swear words in my column, mostly in a picture, to see if it would make it to print, and she never batted an eye. Sometimes she talked me down from some creative ideas though. At a football game one night, I passed my nemesis, Sara Goodman, and she gave me a tap on my shoulder. Hinnenkamp was there when I went to the police station the next day as I was going to turn her in for assault to make a great story, but she thought it was a tad overkill for a great column. It would’ve been awesome.

As the few remaining snow piles melt away, everyone is chomping at the bit to get outside with summer sports. Baseball, track, trap and skeet shooting sports are knocking out the basics in order to go outside and start competing at a level only we up north here are used to… balls to the wall. A new crop of trap shooters are emerging as that sport has come rolling back into the area over the past couple of years.

Happy April! What do you think so far? Did you have a good Easter? Ours was a little quieter than usual, which happens every few years. The bunny came - that’s the most important.

We had a wonderful Easter weekend - full of celebration, time with family, and holiday traditions. We had a visit from the Easter Bunny, which resulted in an early morning egg hunt in the house and then, miraculously, another Easter Bunny had hidden eggs in the backyard.

Let me just take a minute and give a shout out to Lutheran pastors, especially our own Pastor Jodi Myrvik. I’m only giving a shout out to the Lutherans because I have no idea what other religions do during Lent and Easter, but I know what Lutherans do. Starting with Ash Wednesday, we have Lenten services every Wednesday night until the week of Easter.

The planning for TEDxCavalier is going well and moving fast, as we inch closer to the big day. I wanted to take a moment to bring you a few key updates and some information that may help bring you up to speed on what is happening.