This time of year, we're always on a roller coaster ride of weather with a mixture of winter and spring often rolled into one week. The past several days was no exception, with temperatures in the early week reaching highs in the 50s, 60s, and even 70s but this morning greeting us South Dakotans with temperatures in the teens.

But for the warmer days, they're perfect days to pull the motorcycle out of the garage, dust it off, and go for a ride. Every time I get on a motorcycle (or bicycle) this time of year, I'm just grateful that summer is approaching and have the opportunity to once again enjoy the open road.

When I entered college just after graduating high school in 1986, there was a new band from my neck of the woods that just spoke to me. The band was call The Rainmakers and they were from Missouri.

It wasn't just the Rainmaker's music that caught my attention but also the lyrics themselves. Many of the band's songs from their early days referenced locations and attitude that you can only understood fully if you were from Kansas or Missouri. And the "big city" they referenced most in their songs was my hometown of Kansas City. I was such an early fan that I remember this band wasn't always introduced as the Rainmakers but also as the band "formerly called Steve, Bob, and Rich".

Being a former meteorologist, I have a number of coffee cups related to weather themes. Today's mug comes to us via the 2000 biographical disaster drama film, The Perfect Storm. The film presents the story of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing vessel that was lost at sea with all hands after being caught in the Perfect Storm of 1991.

The film stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, John Hawkes, William Fichtner, Michael Ironside, John C. Reilly, Diane Lane, Karen Allen and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The film was released by Warner Bros. and grossed $328 million worldwide.

I'm a big believer that it is the small positive things we do in our day that have the biggest impact on our own well being.  From here through the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, I've decided to just blog about the small things I'm doing to escape from the anxiety producing headlines in our news. Today, after my day of teleworking, I'm finishing up what I started over the weekend. I'm listening to the second half my Star Wars LP, Sides 3 and 4.

Surprisingly, I recently sought out and purchased a vinyl record turntable. This is a surprise to me because I've spent the last three decades moving from the opposite direction as my music collection evolved from vinyl and cassette tape to compact discs and then finally to digital music stored as MP3 files on my computer and mobile devices. In this century, I don't even know if you can call it collecting music because I now subscribe monthly to an endless library of artists and songs through various music streaming services.

I'm a mid-aged man living in the future where vinyl records are in our past; so I thought. Yet, here I am. I'm looking at turntables and relearning all over again the importance of a preamps and amplifiers when connecting the turntable to a set of speakers. What happened?

My wife and son are struggling with my recent obsession for turntables and vinyl records. I’m slightly confused of their surprise yet I understand. They never knew me back in the old days.

They didn’t know that optimistic teenager that spent hours listening to LPs and spending additional time recording them on cassette tape for my Sony Walkman. They didn’t know that me in college while living in a Kansas University dorm where every room on 6th Floor in Ellsworth Hall had the volume on their stereo set to Level 11.

The Ramones, Beatles, Grateful Dead, Journey, Kansas, Rush, Johnny Cash, Guns n Roses, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Pink Floyd. They knew me back then and that’s good enough for me.

Modified slightly in 2023 for a repost on Medium.

Logan, my 16 year-old son, has pursued his passion to become a pilot this last year. To help pay for that he's been working part-time at local restaurants since he was 14. Today he woke up at 3:30 AM so he could be in Omaha competing with his high school's Show Choir.

I bring this up not because I'm a proud Dad (although I am) but because many of my son's friends are just like him. Hard working and committed to reaching their full potential. This next generation of kids is promising and we're going to be better off with them.

I have served as a federal employee of the United States for close to three decades. I've been a public servant under five different Presidents during this same time period. This year, there has been a lot of talk lately about the oath all federal employees take and where their loyalties must lie. Personally, I don't understand why there is even a debate of what a federal employee signs up for when making this solemn promise. From my point of view, the meaning behind the oath is pretty straight forward and without question.