The Red Flannel: The Red Flannel is born

I doubt very much that anything that I write will be of import, but I haven't anything better to do, so here goes.

I guess I'll start out with the state of things and we'll move on from there.

I live in Warroad, Minnesota (USA in case I get a foreign visitor or two). Warroad is located in the bottom left corner of the little chimney on the top of Minnesota. Lake of the Woods, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world is just at the North edge of town. Warroad is famous for its love of hockey. I hate hockey, so we'll just leave it there and move on.

Warroad is also the home of Marvin Windows. At a population of just over 1700 and the fact that there are close to 2000 employees at the plant, I would guess that they employ about 110% of all of the people in town. It is a good company to work for, the benefits are fair. I work at Marvin along with the other 109.7% of the people in the area.

The border crossing to Manitoba, Canada is a mere six miles from here, and the crossing to Ontario, Canada is just about 40 miles away. Interestingly enough, it is shorter for the Canadians to cross through northwestern Minnesota than it is to remain in Canada and go east. (Lake of the Woods is huge, and instead of a 200 mile trip around the lake to the north it is just better to swing south through the states).

Once upon a time I had a decent job, working with computers, making enough money to be comfortable, and actually enjoyed my life..... That was before the year 2000 and the great tech wreck, 9/11, and the Bush presidency part II.... Bush the sequel really sucks compared to the original, but that seems to be the way with a lot of sequels.

The best part of being up here is that we are isolated to the point where world events have little bearing on our daily lives. The nearest WalMart store is about 90 miles away in Thief River Falls, MN. So many people here worry more about the weather than they do about news that it shocks me to this day. After three years of living here, I am becoming one of them. We haven't had any rain to speak of in about six weeks, and things are drying up out there.

Well, that is the end of the introduction. Next time I'll probably have something a little more interesting or possibly even enlightening to say, but for now, thanks for looking in.

In the interim, here are some pictures that I found to be quite funny....

Those silly Canadians.... Unfortunately, this is a very real problem up here right now since it has been so dry of late.

Someone told me that this was from Australia or New Zealand... They take safety seriously down under I guess.... It is nice to see that they treat people like adults though (note that there may be some language that is inappropriate for minors on here, or was that miners.....)

In this picture it seems that someone needs to work on their priorities.... Or perhaps more people are hurt by the sign than go over the bridge.... doesn't matter much..... My guess is that it is from somewhere in the Commonwealth.