The next step in our deck project was to pour a concrete pad for the bottom of the stairs. We’d been putting it off because it seemed intimidating. Not only do we not have much experience with concrete, but getting the math right was challenging. It wouldn’t do much good if the stairs don’t land on the pad.
We finally tackled it last week. We think we got it right, though there is as much art to the process as science.
The pad location. You can see where the stairs will originate above Sarah.
Deep enough for a gravel bed.
Overnight rain gummed up the works a bit.
Leveling the gravel.
The form is in place and leveled. Starting to lay the rebar.
Local badass cutting the cross bars to size.
Rebar is ready. Time to mix and pour.
Spreading concrete.
Finishing and edging was more challenging than expected.
Victory!
Wetting it down to help the curing process.
Final pad.
Once we build the staircase and see how the pad handles rain, we will adjust the edging as needed.
This was the biggest hurdle for finishing the deck. The project is back on track.
Since this blog’s birth in 2009, we’ve never gone longer than a month without posting until now. This spring has been particularly heavy. A combination of external events (ICE activity), family health scares, and unexpected challenges at school pulled my attention away from this online family scrapbook.
The good news, however, is that the health scares are behind us, ICE has mostly departed (with plenty of caveats), and the school year has ended.
I’ve got some additional posts coming soon. (I may backdate some posts so they fit into the sequence properly, but this is my first actual post since February.)
Despite wind chills well below -30 degrees, Piper and I enjoyed a lovely walk this morning. Feels like a metaphor for Minnesota right now… we are undeterred by ICE.
I took a screenshot of this image from the New York Times this morning. It’s hardly the worst of President Trump’s offenses, but it crystalized for me how humiliating it is to have such a petty buffoon sitting at the resolute desk.
Exchange of messages between Norway and the United States on Sunday.
It’s hard for me to believe that someone wrote this copy with a straight face. It seems like a mockery of AI — a dystopian satire of the robot apocalypse. Humanizer? Really???
Screen shot of an email advertisement received from Grammarly on September 8, 2025.
It’s that time again! Maggie enters eighth grade today while Griffin begins his junior year. It’s an orientation day at both grade levels, so there won’t be any real classes until tomorrow. (For the teachers, orientation is far more work than a regular class day, so I’ll definitely earn my meager keep today!)
Last week, we managed to fit a glorious trip to Camp du Nord into our busy summer. This was our fifth visit to their summer program (see prior posts from 2023, 2021, 2019, and 2016), though we also stayed in a cabin there in January 2024.
Camp du Nord is at the tip of the turquoise arrow, about 15 miles from the Canadian border.
We stayed in one of the original cabins, built in the 1930s, called Sans Souci. It was a tiny one-room cottage perched on some rocks on the shore of Burntside Lake. The cabin itself had a single full-size bed. Next to the cabin (but oddly out of frame in all of our photos) is a spacious platform tent with two twin beds.
How did a family of five manage this? Well, Griffin was only with us for the first night. On Monday we drove him and his gear over to Camp Widjiwagan, just a few miles east, where he’s embarking on a three week canoe trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. We missed his lively presence for the rest of the week.
The week included a traditional “polar plunge” into the lake first thing in the morning with dozens of other families. (It’s something of a ritual to start the day… and quite refreshing, especially in the absence of showers. Note that despite the name, the water isn’t especially cold. We have all successfully survived real polar plunges into this same lake through holes in the ice in the winter.)
Maggie and Oliver joined their age groups for activities in the mornings. Sarah and I relaxed, read books, played cards, and walked in the beautiful northern woods. In the afternoons and evenings we went swimming, did art activities, enjoyed the beautiful wood-fired sauna, and played games. The week wrapped up with hilarious skits on the stage by the lakeshore.
On our final night, we experienced a phenomenal thunderstorm. There’s nothing quite like being in a tiny cabin on the short of a lake while mother nature howls in fury overhead. (Come to think of it, Griffin was probably in a pitched tent during the storm… I look forward to hearing his take!) We learned on Saturday that the storms were even worse west of us with tornadoes in North Dakota and 100+ mph wind gusts in Bemidji (about 100 miles from us).
In the pictures below, Maggie is usually wearing her purple hat.
Andrew awoke early on Wednesday morning and took this panoramic video from the rock below our cabin at 4:30 a.m. This was two days before the solstice. You can hear those “early birds” getting their day started.
Today was the last day with students at my middle school. Five teachers and spouses went out for an evening on the town, culminating in an outstanding Chinese feast at Shuang Cheng in NE Minneapolis (owned by the parent of a former student and serves the best Ma Pao Tofu I’ve had since leaving Oakland).
It was a bittersweet occasion because Shannon is retiring and Matt is taking a sabbatical next year. The middle school won’t be the same without them.
The Hands Off! demonstration in Saint Paul was very well attended. Despite the outrage at the Trump regime, the crowd was friendly and in good spirits, including many creative signs.
My favorite moment was on the sidelines when an impromptu band started playing to drown out a fanatic preacher with a bullhorn yelling about how we were all bound for hell. (I don’t even think you can see or hear the preacher in this video, but he’s off to the left under the scaffolding.)
On February 1, I posted about a video game that Griffin and his friend, James, submitted to the National Science Foundation’s Game Maker Awards competition. According to the official timeline, judging should have finished on March 14 and the winners would be announced on April 2.
NSF Game Maker Awards timeline
Imagine Griffin’s surprise when he received this email on March 30:
Dear NSF Game Maker contestant,
Thank you for participating in the NSF Game Maker Awards. We are pausing the judging process until further notice. If an entrant was eligible for the competition at the time of their initial submission but has since aged out of the K-12 category due to delays in the competition timeline, they will remain eligible for judging and prize award. Their entry will be evaluated alongside current K-12 participants, ensuring fairness and continuity. No additional action is required from the entrant to maintain eligibility.
Please check the Game Maker Award website for updates.
Thanks, The NSF Game Maker Awards team
Going to the website didn’t provide any additional information, though the contest pages have this information posted in the header of each page:
Also at the top of each page is a link to “Learn about NSF’s implementation of recent executive orders.”
Although it is not explicitly stated anywhere on the linked page, we assume that the competition was paused in response to these “recent executive orders.”
This is, of course, a minor thing. Griffin and James will be fine. But in our family, it felt like an ominous sign of how quickly the new administration’s priorities can directly affect us.
This may seem trite, but I am reminded of a haunting quote from The Fellowship of the Ring, in reference to the dark lord Sauron:
“His arm has grown long indeed,” said Gimli, “if he can draw snow down from the North to trouble us here three hundred leagues away.”
“His arm has grown long,” said Gandalf.
These are the words that echo through my head today.
