Hey Melissa - cold enough for you?

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:51 am

Minnesota weather can be a lot of different things, but one thing is sure, it is never boring! However, by the end of February I find myself wishing to be somewhere balmy and warm.... I think March and April are the worst months up here, because by March we are thoroughly sick of snow and it just keeps coming, and April is usually just one big slushy, muddy mess and everything is a really ugly brownish-gold color until it rains and things start to green up.

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:42 am

Funny, a friend just sent this to me via email:
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Anyone reading this who is from Minnesota (or is just plain Scandinavian) will get a kick out of it -- and anyone reading this who is not from Minnesota will understand their friend from Minnesota a little better afterwards.

APPLICATION FOR MINNESOTAZENSHIP

Personal Information:

Name ___________son

Sex: _____ Ole _____ Lena

Home Address ________________________________________________

Cabin Address ________________________________________________

Religion: _____ Lutheran ______ Catholic

Income: _____We do OK _____We're Blessed _____ None of your beeswax

Qualifications: (check all that apply)

___ I own a gas powered ice auger.

___ Fargo floods hit a little close to home.

___ I can name a dozen celebrities who've stayed at the Mayo

___ I've been trick or treating in two feet of snow.

___ My grandmother made me eat lutefisk.

___ I liked it!

___ I've been to a block party.

___ My first beer was an Old Milwaukee.

___My snowmobile has more miles on it than my car.

___ Despite what everyone else says I DON'T HAVE AN ACCENT! (For sure, you bet I don't.)

True/ False:

___ I actually listen to telemarketers.

___ "Have a Nice Day" is an ORDER!

___ TV news anchors are celebrities.

___ Part of my tongue is on a flagpole somewhere.

___ It's not a rubber binder! It's a rubber band.

___ They mistake pop for "soda" or "coke" in most other states.

___ Hot Dish is neither a beautiful woman nor an overheated plate.

___ Paw is both a hand and the male parent.

Multiple Choice:

It's time to wear a hat when.

A) The temperature is below 10 degrees.

B) Your mother tells you to!
C) The temperature is -10 and the wind chill is in double digits.

Essay Questions:

1 . What "uff-da" means to me ____________________________________

2. What "oopsy daisy" means to me _____________________________

You know you're from Minnesota when.....

1. Your idea of a traffic jam is 10 cars waiting to pass a tractor.

2. "Vacation" means going to Brainerd for the weekend.

3. You measure distance in hours.

4. You know several people who have hit deer more than once.

5. You often switch from "heat" to "a/c" in the same day.

6. You use a down comforter in the summer.

7. Your grandparents drive 65 mph through 13 feet of snow during a blizzard, without flinching.

8. You see people wearing hunting clothes to social events.

9. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both doors unlocked.

10. You think of the major food groups as venison, walleye, hot dish, and Leinenkugels.

11. You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them.

12. There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at the grocery store at any given time.

13. You design your kids Halloween costume to fit over a snow suit.

14. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

15. You think sexy lingerie is tube socks and flannel PJ's.

16. You know all four seasons; almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.

17. It takes you 3 hours to go to the store for one item even when you're in a rush because you have to stop to talk to everyone in town.

18. You actually understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends from Minnesota.

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So, what does any of this have to do with Rickenbackers? I'm not sure! Just a little insight into my neck of the woods!

So, does anybody want to move to Minnesota?

trick_knee · Post by **trick_knee** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 6:30 am

And I thought us "New Hampshire Yankees" were a little "off", thanks Melissa for the smile!

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 6:59 am

The weather sounds like Vermont to me Melissa, where I lived for three LONG years., They say you have 3 months of summer and 9 months of winter up there.

trick_knee · Post by **trick_knee** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 7:01 am

Bob,
I believe it's 9 months of winta and 3 months of damned poor sleddin'

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 7:03 am

It's all true!

When I was in college we really did have a blizzard on Halloween, and our car was buried in snow over the roof for two days, until the snowplow finally got to our neighborhood and we could shovel it out....

dave4004 · Post by **dave4004** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 10:47 am

Are you talking about the blizzard of 1991? 28 inches in Minneapolis, 36 inches in Duluth, probably more up in Grand Marais. I remember it well, but not fondly!

It's 57, clear and sunny here in the Texas Hill Country. Home sweet home to me.

mortivan · Post by **mortivan** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 1:53 pm

Umm, what does "uff-da" mean to a Minnesotoan?

dave4004 · Post by **dave4004** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:32 pm

Uff da is:

trying to dance the polka to rock and roll music

losing your wad of gum in the chicken yard

having Swedish meat balls at a lutefisk supper

spending two hours cleaning up my room and my mom says 'Uff Da'

walking downtown and then forgetting what you wanted

arriving late at a lutefisk supper and getting served minced ham instead

trying to pour two buckets of manure into one bucket

eating hot soup when you've got a runny nose

getting swished in the face with a cow's wet tail

waking yourself up in church with your own snoring

forgetting your mother-in-law's first name

when two steady girl friends find out about each other

noticing non-Norwegians at a church dinner using lefse for a napkin

eating a delicious sandwich and then discovering the spread is cat food

sneezing so hard your false teeth end up in the bread plate

looking in the mirror and discovering you're not getting better, just older

philco · Post by **philco** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 6:09 pm

No, that's nine months of winter and three months of waiting for summer. I went to school in Oklee, a little town sort of between Thief River Falls and Bemidji. Summer was full of fun things like getting chased through the city park by the town cop for doing a wheelie down main street on my dirt bike. We're talking about across the grass in his patrol car. He chased my friends across the golf course on their dirt bikes, siren and lights, the whole shebang. He liked to stop teenagers and take their beer kegs away from them as well. He got one of MINE one summer night. We had a TEACHER who got kicked out of school for smoking a joint between classes. One of my brother's classmates mixed tea with oregano and smoked it. That's an idea for when I run out of beer and wine. If anybody here decides to try it, get back with me and let me know if it works. I drank some tea and ate some oregano at the same time, but no real effect...effect...effect...effect...effect. Northern Minnesota was full of wacky characters, sort of like that show Northern Exposure, but you don't notice it so much when you live there because you're one of them. I remember Tommy E***s, every girl's nightmare, who used to go up to the girls at dances and say something like. "Hi, my name is Tommy, but the women call me Savage". There was also these Norwegian twins that everybody knew as The Brekke Brothers. They should have had their own sitcom. I knew more people who died SITTING STILL in their cars than from crashes. Carbon monoxide poisoning can be a bummer. I rode a bus 14 miles one way to get to school. The part about the wolves is true. I used to hear them howl on cold winter nights, when sounds really carried through the dense air. Each wolf has a peculiar voice like humans do. I haven't heard a loon since I left Minnesota. Whining snowmobile sounds are also absent in Texas winters. Texans have to settle for the occasional chainsaw massacre sounds (judging by the locals, the movie MUST have been filmed around here). Don't get to meet any moose when I'm out and about, either. Don't go to bars much down here as well. It's not as "normal" as in Minnesota, except in larger cities, which are different. In Minnesota you have a beer with the parish priest in the local bar. In Texas the preacher sees your car at the local bar and gives a "hellfire and brimstone" sermon about it. He goes to at least the next county to buy his liquor, and expects his parishioners to at least show the same respect. It may be different in the hill country. I'm in the armpit of Texas.

Southern Minnesota really is like northern Iowa, wouldn't want to live there, but northern Minnesota is another world. As different as northern and souhern California. Ludmila has informed me that she REALLY would rather live in northern Minnesota than northeast Texas, since it would feel closer to home. Russians are used to pike and perch, birch trees and lakes, snow and ice, mosquitoes and mallards, as much as northern Minnesotans.

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 4:59 am

Dave, it was the Halloween blizzard of 1991; we were living in Duluth at the time, which actually did get more snow than Grand Marais.... You beat me to the "Uff-da's!"

And Phil, I'm still laughing at your story....believe me, Grand Marais has plenty of local characters like the ones you describe (and maybe I'm one of 'em.... they all think I'm a little bit nuts to have so many Rics!)......Uff da! Ya sure, you betcha!

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 5:41 am

Just thought of one for "oopsy-daisy."

"Oopsy-daisy" is what your dentist might say before informing you that he just pulled the wrong tooth.

Your appropriate response would be, "Uff-da."

There's a whole book called "How to Talk Minnesotan," and it is really quite entertaining....

mortivan · Post by **mortivan** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 7:26 am

Heh!

So taking a whole roll of carefully staged pictures of a once-in-a-lifetime event then discovering that your camera didn't load the film properly would be an "uff-da"?

melibreits · Post by **melibreits** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 7:59 am

Ya, you betcha!

philco · Post by **philco** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 8:34 am

Being the new English teacher and having Mr. B*****n the school superintendent walk past when you decide to flick your roach out the second story window is a really BIG uff-da!