mxskeeter wrote:

That is so cool FG. Kids are such innocent things but wise in many ways. Many dogs are also wise, just ask Amelia.

Now that Whinny and Amelia are besties, Amelia had a new great idea yesterday.

“Whinny and I could go for walks.”

Hmmm. >90 pound ex-racing greyhound with a squirrel addiction tethered firmly to an ultralight preschooler and going for a walk on slippery sidewalks with lots of snow on the ground.

Yeah, what could go wrong really?

Beast wrote:

I don’t mean to high jack this thread, but last summer we took our 1 1/2 year all lab in for training to be a therapy dog so she could be certified to go into nursing homes, this fall a school contacted us and asked if my wife would be interested in bring her in and have kids that struggle with reading read to our dog, it was a huge success!!! she now being expanded to a couple more grades. on a side note, the school has a kid going through some trauma with his parents going through a nasty divorce. ( bad enough where they have had the cops come to the school) he has really bonded with our dog, hopefully she can help him get through this.

That is really nice that you went through the effort to do this, Beast. Great work.

Well nothing to see last night. Same old same old from the 1 goal wonder kids.

Another PK fail with yet ANOTHER goal surrendered less than 20 seconds into the kill. Could the PK suck any worse?

Hartman. Useless. Absolutely useless.

Faber was the only thing good about last night. He was on the bench yelling at the guys the whole night trying to make something happen.

And finally the cute no look passing us driving me crazy.

Ug

fishthumper wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ripjiggen wrote:</div>
Not much different than a wheel house. Better chance of ripping around in a sled after work and weekends then hauling a big shack a few times a year.

I agree. Never fully understood the whole wheel house thing either. Then again I really don’t care how people spend their money. If they can afford either and it brings them pleasure, I say go for it.

To me it’s now part of a Complaining America culture. We complain about the cost of EVERYTHING. Except what we spend our money on! Everything we spend on is justifiable because we have to have it.
Everything else is crazy high.

Karl Hungus wrote:

Told my wife about this thread and she pointed out just this morning on Good Morning America, a story: “gas prices continue to drop”. I didn’t even stop to listen…the media is insufferable

The average RETAIL price of unleaded gas, in the US as a whole is $3.13. That represents a YTD low.

There are so many fingers in the pie of any commodity price that it is impossible to isolate the source of price movements either up or down. A grain trader I know likens it to a haystack size pile of pick-up sticks. You move one and all your know is that the others will move too. Predictions of when, how much, or which direction are largely speculation.

CaptainMusky wrote:

The pricing of the machines was not nearly as out of line as they are now however.

This gets brought up a lot. I’d be interested to know, what do you think an American made trail snowmobile in the 600 class should cost?

This comes up all the time at rest stops on the trail, bars etc. A guy complains about the cost, but he’s riding an 850 turbo with adjustable on the fly air suspension, heated grips/seat/running boards, a 10 inch Garmin mapping screen with satellite communications, and remote start.

And Merrill gets caught flat footed and loses his guy.

Does Hartman practice missing the net by 18 inches exactly? It’s amazing he can do it on all sides. Just awesome.

basseyes wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>TheFamousGrouse wrote:</div>
What an embellishment by Bob. Frickin sales job.

What a joke of a call.

How the #### did that contact seconds before the shot not allow Bob to play his position? Nobody was within 10!feet of hom when the shot came.

What an embellishment by Bob. Frickin sales job.

So an interesting thing happened this past Sunday. The neighbors came over for drinks and they brought their youngest daughter who is 5.

Amelia is deathly afraid of dogs owing to a hard collision with a relative’s black lab that knocked the wind out of her when she was 3. So she sat on her mum’s lap and Winnie stayed in her bed. After a lot of convincing from her parents, Amelia agreed to try to pet Winnie, so she and very, very cautiously made their way over to Winnie. It took a lot of convincing.

Winnie read the situation well and didn’t move as Amelia finally started to pet her head. But then Amelia got excited and a little overconfident and, forgetting her fear, she stood up suddenly. And Whinny followed suit and stood up as well.

Well, a 5 year old and a greyhound are the same height so they met eye to eye and everyone froze, expecting a scream and all hell to break loose.

But it didn’t. Amelia looked at Whinny and stroked her head and they locked eyes. I was the closest to them and Amelia said the strangest thing then.

Without breaking eye contact with Whinny, Amelia whispered, “She’s wise.”

I was kind of stunned. It was said with an almost a prescient knowledge. Not the kind of thing I’d ever heard from a 5 year old.

They stayed there almost nose to nose with eyes locked and finally I recovered enough to say to Amelia, “How do you know that she’s wise?”

And she whispered again. “Her eyes. She sees everything. She’s wise.”

The adults, we just stood there. It took the air out of the room. So Amelia and Winnie are friends now, but what a thing that was. I don’t know if she knew what she was saying, but at the same time I think she meant it. It was strange.

glenn57 wrote:

hey Grouse…..just curious…..the wrap on Winnies one foot/ankle…..is that a fashion statement to mean something????

She dug in too hard in turn 1 at the dog park and caught her ankle on something. Minor cut. Seems fine, she doesn’t limp so she should be fine.

Guys the best part of this is I can let loose with the really bad dog jokes. True story.

Mrs Grouse said to me this morning, “Have you seen the dog bowl?”

And I said, “Holy cow, I didn’t even know she could. What’s her average?”

That one got a laugh-groan even from Mrs. Grouse.

Textron announced today that there will be a “production pause” for off road vehicles. This doesn’t sound good.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/textron-weighs-options-off-road-153344558.html

I have read that Polaris has a scheduled shutdown already in effect for their engine plant, but it will be interesting to see what happens when production starts again.

These are big Minnesota employers and a great part of our outdoors history here, so I hope recovery is going to come soon.

Bartman wrote:

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading this thread. Winnie sounds like a real sweetheart. How old is Winnie?? In human years.

She just turned 6 last week. It seems like a common retirement age for your professional greyhound is 4-5 years old.

Winnie attracts a lot of attention on walks. Kids find a dog wearing a coat to be extremely funny. And you have to endure a lot of “Shouldn’t you feed her more?” comments. Her weight is really deceptive because of her height, length and massive muscles. She’s over 90 pounds. I would never personally guess that she weighs that much.

This is Winnie on Squirrel Watch.

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Rangers are a complete dumpster fire. Drury as GM seems to want to make sure everyone knows that the blame resides with a group of senior players like Trouba and Kreider. The players seem to have taken Drury’s trade-baiting of Kreider as the last straw. It’s now become a keep him (Drury) and we never win scenario.

It’s gotten so bad that sources inside the Rangers front office are telling ever reporter that the problem is NOT Peter Laviolette and there will not be another HC change.

So that leaves either a total selloff of every player Drury has labeled a troublemaker–and that list seems long and deep–or ownership hitting the eject button on Drury.

You plucked those fans out of a curb-side free pile just so you could post them here, didn’t you?

JoeMX1825 wrote:

…but the invention of the shot off the side/back of the goalie helmet probably started with Kirill (if you know of others earlier i’d love to know who) I can’t think of any earlier than him…

I can remember youth hockey coaches in the 1970s and 80s telling me to “buzz the ear” of the goaltender, especially on the blocker side when he went down. I’m sure it goes back way further than that, it is very difficult to stop shot that’s blocker side and at ear level.

We even had training aids that attached to the front of the goal, and more than one of them I can recall featured a target hole on either side of the goalie’s head.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Does the NHL Department of Player safety do anything about the trend of players purposely shooting off the side/back of the goalies helmet?

No, and why should they? It’s not against the rules.

Some consider it bad form to shoot high. Bullshit I say. NHL goalies have 200 cubic feet of high tech padding and can’t be touched anywhere on the ice. Shoot for the head I say.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I’m not saying outlaw the shot attempt, but you gotta think they make goalie helmet manufacturers increase the padding/protection of that rear head support plate right?

Once upon a time, goaltenders wore full helmets like everyone else. It’s only through seeking every possible competitive advantage to go with the mile wide pads and 12 square foot blockers that today’s goaltender arrived at the current mask design. They can change any time.

Well that kind of takes the fun out of trying out my new heated boxer shorts.

nord wrote:

If the drones are looking for intelligence, they won’t find any in this country.

The really scary thing about all this “drone” hysteria is the possibility of some ass wagon deciding he’s going to grab his gun and “do what the chicken-bleep government won’t”. Pictures and videos of these “drones” include some that are obviously manned aircraft and yet they’re still being proffered as evidence of something mysterious going on. In one video this weekend, the “drone” can be seen to have a helicopter rotors and registration N number is partially visible on the tail. Add to that the fact that every teenage kid with an Amazon drone is now out there flying it over the development Karen’s house every night to have a little fun and we’ve got ourselves a full-on War of the Worlds.

Randy Wieland wrote:

I don’t think any store can sink to the incompetence of Walmart.

In fairness, this is a fundamental part of the shopping experience at Walmart. It’s the excitement of seeing what they can screw up next.

A year or so ago I bought a couple of the big jugs of motor oil. I got them home went to change oil and discovered that they all contained used motor oil. Somebody actually managed to return them without the customer service clerk bothering to look and see if the seal had been broken. So they got returned and put back on the shelves.

But nothing will diminish my enthusiasm for walmart. It’s so delightfully… Cheap.. Also can I just say the people watching is second to none.

As a final thought, the mobility scooters at Walmart are a wonder of engineering. The ability of a vehicle that small to bear that much weight is surely the 8th wonder of the world.

tswoboda wrote:

So if you want to be like VGK, who are you picking to be out?

So you’re saying it might look suspicious if Hartman and JoJo were both injured in an unfortunate knee on knee collision in practice?

Ripjiggen wrote:

Trade deadline might be tough with not being able to acrue any cap space with these injuries and not having a first round pick next year.

It’s at times like this I ask myself what would Vegas do? LTIR loophole time.

Now THAT’S what we were missing with Zuc out. Wow.

Matt Moen wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>jwellsy wrote:</div>
Maybe the West Coast drones will rise up against the East Coast drones and put them in their place.

Like Biggie versus Tupac. Westside for life.

You guys can joke if you want but there’s a real loser here. What about the poor Iranian/Chinese/Belgian/wherever intelligence peons who have to pour over thousands of hours of drone footage from these flyovers of Shittsville, New Jersey?

I mean have you guys ever even been to this area of New Jersey? I used to have to go to a company facility out there. I’ve never seen so many sewage treatment plants per mile. It’s like every time someone on the East Coast flushes the toilet, bubbles are seen somewhere in New Jersey.

I’m not sure what kind of intelligence these foreign governments or aliens are gathering, but if they want to find out the secret dietary and toilet paper utilization habits of America, they have struck a brown intelligence gold mine in Jersey. They must be stopped.

Holy crap. Fluery commits highway robbery on Konechne.

John Rasmussen wrote:

So work has me spending one night next week in the south end of Eau Claire. Might just stay at the hotel and eat and have some beers, but if I feel adventurous where would you suggest for a good burger or steak. TIA

Guys, he’s not really looking for recommendations.

This is a shameless stealth gloat post. Mr. Highroller gets a prime time, all expenses paid trip to sunny South Eau Claire and he just wants to make sure all of us peons who never get to go glam like him know it.

Just wait until you see all the shots of Jon’s Eau de Wild Weekend hit his Instagram. Cue the party shots. The hot chicks. John rollling up to the VIP entrance shots.

How long do you think he’ll be in town before he utters the infamous words, “Don’t you know who I am?”

CaptainMusky wrote:

He is a dang good skater! I knew they said he was a good skater, but he is a good skater regardless of size and especially considering how big he is. He was in front and blocked the Gophers goalie’s view almost deflected the point shot on one PP goal. Almost snuck a rebound in on another shot, but that was barely saved between the wickets. He seemed to be playing in all situations and was out a lot in OT.

It seemed to me Stramel’s “decline” at Wisconsin after the coaching change was just too fast.

Now with the days of the portal I’m starting to wonder if the portal isn’t also a convenient place for coaches to push athletes that aren’t exactly to their liking? Instead of trying to work with a player or to rectify as what they see as a recruiting mistake of the last coach, just make the guy ride the pine and make it obvious that the only option is to hit the portal and get out of town.

Sorry but a player like Stramel doesn’t just tip over like he did in Wisconsin. All the focus was on what Stramel was doing wrong and nobody was talking about what was wrong with Hastings that he wasn’t able to do anything other than benching a player like Stramel. I mean the kid manages to make himself a round one draft pick and suddenly Hastings doesn’t have the time of day for him?

Hastings is looking like he might be heading for the “portal” himself.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Charlie Stramel playing against the Gophers tonight and tomorrow… He’s their 1C

He’s got more points this season already than he had all of last season at WI. And he just scored the how-you-like-me-now tying goal and had an assist on the game-winner last weekend against WI.

BTW, I haven’t seen anybody with any real knowledge forecast Stramel as a top line guy in the pros. Realistic forecast is he’s a power guy that will be focused on dirty area offense on a middle line.

But even with that known going in, how long will it take for the calls of “another draft bust” to start when he joins the team? You know, just like when guys like Rossi, Boldy, and Ek were all called out for being busts.

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

Whats the deal with the pension?

To be honest, she’s been pretty closed-lipped about the details and we don’t want to pry into her personal finances. It just seems rude to talk about money when we’ve only known her 3 weeks.

But seriously, I guess this is a New Zealand animal welfare thing where the costs of rehoming and caring for retired racers is paid for by contributions to a pension scheme. Her plane ticket was paid for (and she must have flown business class, because holy sh!t that wasn’t cheap. Also paid were her USDA vet checks and required vaccines. Any care for pre-existng injuries from her racing career are also paid for through this, so for example we have to give her eye drops for an eye condition and those are paid for for the rest of her life. So yeah, it’s pretty weird but I’m glad they make such an effort to take care of these animals.

Meanwhile, at Grouse Manor, all I can say is this dog puts the “tired” in retired greyhound. Mrs. Grouse is on calls all morning, so Winnie and I went out on walkies and then so to bed for her. She’s been snoozing away in her doggie cup.

It’s interesting, she has no interest in the comings and goings of the the household. As a highly-trained professional athlete, she needs her 20 hours of sleep a day, and by gum she’s going to get it. My dad stopped by and Winnie didn’t even crack an eyelid to see who came in. He walked right up to her doggie cup and gave her a pat and she just snoozed through the whole thing. It’s like she works the night shift in a coal mine or something.

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sipple31 wrote:

The problem that I’m going to have is that the vast majority of the demographic where I live can’t afford the more expensive houses in the area. The pool of potential buyers for a $500K+ house in this area is extremely slim. We’re talking small town Wisconsin.

This can be a big problem, especially in rural areas. My parents had a similar situation, they had far and away the best and most expensive house in a small northeastern Minnesota town. They managed to sell the house after only a few weeks on the market because there just happened to be a buyer that had been waiting years for this type of property to come up for sale and there just hadn’t been anything like their house on the market.

But fast forward four years and the guy that bought my parents house had to sell due to a job transfer. The thing sat on the market for over two years and finally he ended up taking a huge bath on it. There just was not a buyer at anything near the price he paid for it.

If you’re at the top end of the market already Then I would have to ask would you get any return out of a shed?

Matt Moen wrote:

But, my $.02 about the idea of “investment” when building something you want. We just did a massive renovation and feedback from everyone was “you’ll never get the money back.”

Well, I don’t give a crap about the money. We will be in this house another 10 years and I get immense use and enjoyment out of what we did on the renovation. That’s value in my book. My point being, there is a lot of value out side of the dollars and cents.

I agree and I often wonder where this idea of a house as an investment even comes from?

Houses are expenses, NOT investments. You get people that say they bought a house for X and sold it for Y, therefore X-Y = profit of Z. Bullsh!t.

If people really kept track of EVERY expense related to owning a home and deducted that number from their alleged “profit” (purchase price – sale price), then there isn’t one person in a million who actually makes money on a home. The biggest one people forget to account for is the hundreds of thousands of dollars the average home buyer will pay in interest. So much for that profit then, eh?

Mrs. Grouse and I have always looked at our house as an expense and it’s just a matter of what we want to spend on it. It’s never been about “making” money because we both agree that’s a false concept.

sipple31 wrote:

Is a shed a good investment when we may sell in a few years? Obviously it does increase the overall value of the property… but to what extent? Could a person expect to get 50% of the build price back in value? More? Less?

No, like Bucky wrote, any investment where you lose 20, 30, or 50%+ over a few years is a terrible investment IMO.

I built my dream garage a few years ago and it was well over $100k, which shocks a lot of people for a 3 car garage with office loft but that’s what things cost these days. My wife’s friend is a real estate agent and she said that the new garage added about 40-50k to our market value and that you never really recover the full value of these add-on structures.

Hard question to ask, but here it goes: Do you have a realistic idea of what your dream build would actually cost in today’s market? Is that anywhere close to attainable for you either now or in the near future?

I think knowing whether a future move is even feasible is a key part of the decision here.