Over my weekend stay near Minot, I hunted down a few geocaches in the area. One of them was at the Scandinavian Heritage Park, on Broadway. Being half Norwegian, I especially enjoyed this park. I wanted to share a few snapshots from the park:

A giant Dala Horse, located in the park.

This is a statue of Hans Christian Andersen, the author of "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Mermaid." He's a native son of Denmark, earning him his place in this park.

A replica of the Gol Stave church, which was originally constructed in the 1200s in Norway. The impressive carvings and construction are enough to make me want to visit Norway and learn more about my heritage.

I woke early on Thursday so that I could attend Mass, and I was greeted by the beautiful sunrise pictured above. It was the perfect way to start the day, and the rising sun put me in good spirits.

Like many of my neighbors and friends, I took to the road on this Thanksgiving weekend. I was invited to a few different homes for the big T-day. I opted for several relaxing days at Grandma's house.

It was just her and I, and she was recovering from a recent surgery. In hopes of keeping her out of the kitchen while she recovered, a friend of hers invited the two of us to a potluck gettogether at the Calvary Alliance Church in Minot. The church group was very welcoming, and their food was absolutely delicious.

This plan was a good one, aside from one problem. No turkey leftovers. This was unacceptable for my beloved Grandma. So on Friday morning she was running back and forth in the kitchen (against the best advice of her doctor) preparing the traditional turkey meal.

She's doing fine, and her meal was even better than the potluck dinner on Thursday. Dinner is always better at Grandma's house.

The last year has been a crazy one. Getting out of town for a little while to enjoy Thanksgiving let me reflect, as many people do this time of year, on everything good and valuable in my life.

I'm so very grateful for my health and the health of all of my family members. For the opportunity I have to work and serve the community. And for the friendship of those close to me. I really do have it good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S.: Stay out of the malls!

It is now mid-November here in the north. Fields are harvested, trees are barren, and the prairie grasses are brown. If history is any guide, we should have snow on the ground very soon. It should be cold. My bike should be parked, gathering dust and waiting for spring.

But today was an amazing seventy degrees. A record for this date, actually. It was entirely too nice be trapped in my dull cubicle. So I took advantage of some "comp time" and skipped out. Why? So I could ride.

I straddled the Suzuki and cruised north, from Bismarck toward Washburn. I chose highway 1804 because of its view of the river, the hills, the curves, and the lack of traffic.

No sensible engineer would have constructed highway 1804 and its sister highway 1806, across the river to the west. The highways were built to showcase the beautiful, historic vistas of the Missouri river. The highways were built as close to the river as was possible. The result is an enjoyable and scenic ride.

My ride was absolutely perfect. I couldn't help but smile, remembering what it was like to be under the immense blue sky. I passed the site of a former Native American village, Double Ditch. I cruised up to a boat landing and relaxed for a few moments on the dock. In Washburn, I stopped for a snack and watched the deer hunters fueling up their vehicles for the upcoming weekend's hunt.

On my way south, along 1806, I saw ranchers fixing fences. Cattle roamed the pastures. Hay bales, dramatically lit by the low sun, dotted the landscape off to the horizon.

Tomorrow's forecast: Rain and forty degrees. Even so, North Dakota is not bad at all.

What a great day.

My conscience bugged me a little bit every time I opened up Photoshop 7, which I never paid for. Ditto for Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, Microsoft Excel, and Powerpoint. My computer was overflowing with pirated software and music.

Tonight, I cleaned house. My trash is filled with old CDRs. And I now own all of my music and software.

I will miss Photoshop. But my digital camera came with Photoshop Elements, a stripped down version of the full product. So I installed it. It seems to have most of the tools I used. And if it's missing something, I can use the excellent (and free) Gnu Image Manipulation Program, GIMP. Give it a try. You can download it from http://gimp.org.

I own Microsoft Word. But Excel, Powerpoint, Access, were not legally mine. So I've sent them to the bit bucket - replaced with OpenOffice, a very nice (and completely free) Office Suite. If you think MS Office is too expensive, check out OpenOffice at http://openoffice.org.

All those MP3s and movies? Gone. I've been buying my content via iTunes. There is also great (and free) music available on the Internet at places like http://garageband.com. And now iTunes has introduced me to podcasts, which are another excellent source of endless free content. And it's all legal.

My precious Macromedia products, however, are a different story. I'm all set with HomeSite, which I actually purchased a few years back. But HomeSite just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Dreamweaver was my friend and Flash was my buddy, as long as they didn't cost me anything. So tonight I'm pondering the purchase of the latest Macromedia Suite. But it's $1,000. And the open source community has yet to produce anything remotely like these products, so no freebies here.

Is it really worth $1000 for me? I don't think so, but I really like those applications.

It is amazing how much quality, free software is available out on the Internet these days. Thanks to the open source (free) software community, my decision to go piracy-free is much easier.

I'm legal. Yeah!