Murder Mystery Dinner Theater*

Before I tell you the tale of our Murder Mystery Dinner Theater, I want to finish some other business. First. My last blog post may have given you the idea that we hate winter which is untrue. We loathe it. But we have tried to make the best of it.

What does Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes, have in abundance? Ice, frozen water, not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. So one frigid, frozen night we took a little drive with the heater in our truck on high, to a town not too far away. The town of Detroit Lakes, MN. Every winter they host a winter festival called Polar Fest. The night we went there the temperature was a balmy -10 F. But we went anyways. The big draw is the ice castle that they make with blocks of ice from the lake. It's best to see it at night because they light it up.

They also have an area filled with ice sculptures which we didn't mosey over to because it was -10 below. They also have many winter outdoor activities planned for the 2 week event which we didn't partake in because it was -10 below. As proof that we were actually there.

Also as proof that we got outside and enjoyed some winter, we had some VIP's stay with us one weekend. My brother-in-law, Jeff, is one of the founders of the rock band Flint, "A Spark of Hot Rock".  He brought his snowmobiles for us to ride around on. My sister, Mrs. Jeff Cerise, brought her snowshoes to hike around on. Luckily the weekend weather called for temps 20 degrees above zero. That really makes a difference. After some sledding and hiking I lit a hobo fire in our burning barrel, because our fire pit is buried under 3 feet of snow, and had some cocktails.

l-r, Jeff from Flint, A spark of Hot Rock, Mrs. Cerise next to him, me waving and the ever perky Lisa.

Later on we decided to go to our local favorite brewery. Outstate Brewery. Jeff from Flint, A Spark of Hot Rock and Mrs. Cerise shared a flight while Perky and I had our usuals. We all shared pizzas. Fun was had by all.

Mrs. Cerise and Perky.

So as you can see, we are trying to make the best of it. Now for the gruesome gory details of our Murder Mystery Dinner Theater.

*Some images may not be suitable for children or those with a weak constitution.

Mrs. Cerise and Perky had snowshoed through a lot of our woods that weekend while Jeff from Flint,  A Spark of Hot Rock, snowmobiled around the woods and the lake. So as we all did that we did not notice anything out of the ordinary. After Jeff from Flint, A Spark of Hot Rock, and Mrs. Cerise left, Lisa was out snowshoeing one day. She was following a deer trail up from the lake that goes near our cabin when I got a call from her. She said to come down and look. Something was murdered. As I walked down the deer trail I came upon this gory scene.

 

The area of the kill site was quite large and very bloody so we know that an animal didn't just happen upon a dead carcass. This was a a live deer being taken down by something. Since it was warming up here the tracks all around where very hard to find. So our detective minds went to work on the case. We phoned Jim, the renowned wildlife specialist of SD for his input. We phoned neighbors. We phoned the DNR. All in an attempt to find out what might have caused this massacre. I checked my trail cam and we do have a coyote that lives in the area. I also saw a pack of dogs roam through our property from some farm. As we talked to people and googled things it started to form a clearer picture.

There was the absence of any bones. Everything was gone except about a 1 foot square piece of fur and the contents of what was left in the stomach. So we narrowed it down to what might have killed the deer who we now think might have been the one we call Wonky. She was injured from what we believe to be a car accident. 

This is the last picture we got of Wonky. She always had one ear that went off to the side. So our list of suspects are: a pack of dogs, a pack of coyotes, a Sasquatch, a Predator from the Predator movie. (Jim's thought. I must of talked to him when he was drinking. Oh wait, he's always drinking.)

I only throw that one in because Jim said that because of the lack of tracks. The Predator can easily move through trees. Or maybe a wolf or pack of wolves. 

Now to eliminate the suspects. The dogs we haven't seen in a month or two and if I do see them chasing deer I will take care of them once and for all. One coyote couldn't take down a deer and we do have a pack of them around, but they make such a racket, we would have heard them if they are in the area. There have only been one Sasquatch egg this past fall so I don't think they are in this part of the woods. We have not heard any Predator space ships lately so we ruled him out also. Sadly to Jim's disappointment. That just left the wolf or pack of wolves. 

The DNR said that a single wolf could eat a deer but that seems unlikely. I googled it and google says that a wolf can eat 20 pounds of meat. They will also eat the bones and there were no bones left at all. Just blood and some fur. So we believe there may be a pack of wolves in the area and the DNR guy says that they will stay as long as there is a food source. We have lots of deer. 21 was the most we had in our yard at once.

We had our grandkids visit us this past weekend. As we were walking outside we came across another kill site near the cabin.

Again, lots of blood. There was just a small section of spine and part of a leg not eaten. So that now makes two. The deer that we do see around now are on the alert all of the time so that makes us a little leery as we walk around. We walk around now to see if there are more kills but haven't found any yet. They seem to be about 5-7 days apart. So that is our excitement. It's cool that the wolves are making a comeback. Just like the Eagles. We love seeing them but they are a little too close for comfort, especially with small kids.

Speaking of the grand kids, we had them out here for the weekend. It was too cold to play outside, so they ran of some steam in the barn. We have it heated now and they had fun.

Work on the cabin continues. We got the utility room walls done. Also the bedroom walls and ceiling.

So things are progressing along. Until next time.

February 2022

 

Just another storm in the north today. I think that brings the total to around 8, but who's counting? This one is expected to dump 8-14 inches of snow. Lately we have been spending 1 to 2 days a week moving snow around. Thankfully I have my tractor.

When I started this blog, it started as a travel blog. I promise that that will happen again. We are making plans as we speak to hit the road again to some fun filled undisclosed locations. I know one thing for sure and that is that I will not be here next winter.

Work on the cabin is progressing. Lisa stained all of the wood we needed for our bedroom. 

While she was doing that i put up some tin along the bottom portion. We have a lot of tin and we wanted to use some more of it. Then I started to install the wood on two walls.

We picked a stain that was a warm color and it closely matched the cedar I put up on the back wall.

It came out really nice. Then Lisa stained the wood for the ceiling. Once she was done with that I quickly put it up. God forbid I sit down for a little while and play a video game.

It is nice having a ceiling over our heads again. It will really help when it rains now. Rain hitting that tin roof was loud.

Since I had to take down our ceiling fan that was in the bedroom, I just put up a regular light fixture. That fan we had was pretty annoying. When you turned on the light and the fan was spinning, it made like a strobe light affect. It made me want to boogie.

Now we just have the utility room to finish, hallway ceiling and the living room/kitchen ceiling, along with all of the trim.  Lisa said that I have 1 year to finish the work or until April, whichever comes first.

One thing we do enjoy is watching the critters around the house. We have a lot of deer in our woods and with so much snow on the ground we try to help them out. So we have bought some alfalfa for them to munch on. We spread it out in several areas so that they don't fight over it.

This is looking out our sliding door. We don't put all of the alfalfa out at once. The bales that we don't put out I leave in my trailer. But those crafty deer know where to find them.

They will jump up into my trailer to get to the alfalfa while the others act like it's a buffet.

If there are any Deerologists out there, please explain to me why they poo where they eat? I don't get it. We see the same deer most every day.

Lisa took this picture through the screen. We have named her Wonky because she has that look about her. That one ear is always down like that. We think she was hit by a car because she has a limp and an open sore on her head. So it must have been recently.

I want to try out a section here for the blog. I want to call it "Pop's corner". It's where you can pull up a seat while I re-gale you with knowledge and common sense. Something that I think is lacking in this country.

First thing I would like to share is this. I spent 26 years in the military. 4 years in the Air Force and 22 in the North Dakota Air National Guard. None of which I regret at all. We had a saying that goes like this. "It's not how fast you can do a job, it's how long you can make a job last." I think that is above every government office. Speaking from my own experience it meant this. Enjoy the work when it is slow because when the poo hits the fan, you will work your tush off.

A dadism popped into my head yesterday out of the blue. My father was and is very well respected in our ever growing mid western city. He knew a lot of people and like me he was terrible with names. Maybe I got that from him, who knows? I could walk up with my wife to someone I haven't seen in awhile and say something like this. "Wow.(Pause to try and remember their names). I haven't seen you in ages. This is my wife........AH.....Mrs's Dino Olivieri". Cool under pressure, that's what I am.

I would remember my dad calling people a "dirty dingus McGhee". As a kid, I didn't know if it was a good or bad thing. For some reason that popped into my head. Maybe because at the time someone pulled out in front of us. So still thinking about it today, I had to google it and by most accounts it was not nice. Now as I put this new knowledge into practice, I can say I know a few "dirty dingus McGhee's". I think they know who they are. LOL!

Pop out!

January 2022

 

January 10, 2022, location: SSUVFL

Even the deer don't look happy about it.

This morning it is a minus 18 degrees below zero. 50 degrees below freezing. It is early January, which means we still have a lot of winter left. That brings me to the question I often ask myself this time of year when we used to live here. Why??????

Believe it or not, but it has already been colder than that. I'm talking 20 to 30 below. Then if you factor in the wind chills, we are talking about 40 to 50 below. At these temperatures, exposed skin will freeze in a matter of minutes. We have already gotten more snow than we did last year. The snow piles around the house are many and quite large. Why?????

You may be asking yourselves this. "Do they live in the Arctic?" "Do they not know that there are warmer places?" "Have they forgotten how to drive?" "Have thier brains frozen over?" "Why?"

In 2014, 6 years pre-covid, we sold everything and hit the open road to find warmer winters. It was nice. We always went home for Christmas to spend time with family though. In 2019 we did not go home for the holidays and it was tough on us. Rather it was very tough on Lisa. The reason being is that we have 2 grandkids now.

We sure do love all of the time we get to spend with them and we are glad that we can be here for them when they need us. The kids are in daycare and that seems to be closing all of the time due to Covid. So we are glad we can help out whenever they need us.

Jan. 18th, 2022

We have gotten a reprive in the winter temps the last couple of days. As I am writing this early this morning, it is a blistering 28 degrees above zero outside. We will have to get outside to enjoy it before the wearther slaps us in the face with reality again. Tomorrows temps are going to be -4 degrees for a high! -25 for a low.

What do we do in the winter when it is so cold out you ask? Good question. We don't ice fish or snowmobile. Yet. Each of those activities require a cash investment to enjoy and maybe after we are done working on the cabin, we will have time to persue such activities. Or I should say I will have the time. Lisa won't get out there to do that because when it is cold out there, she becomes less outdoorsey. We have been thinking about the fun we plan on having next summer. So we went out and bought ourselves a pontoon to fish and swim from.

Work on the cabin continues. Lisa installed sliding drawers in her pantry making it much more user friendly.

I have been working on our bedroom walls. We have been using what is left of the wood that we bought for the rest of the house before we go out to buy more. Especially since wood products have skyrocketed. I first put up 1/4 inch plywood to have a base to screw into. Then on the bottom I installed a couple of sheets if tin.

The picture is kind of hard to see due to the brilliant white snow outside. Next I decided to put up the left over cedar we had to use it up.

I just had enough cedar for that wall and to trim the window with it. The color gives it some warmth.

Continueing with the work in the bedroom, Lisa wanted a top to the closet. Lisa's wish is my command.

I expect some day I will have to put door on it at some point. We will have to think on it. After that I was able to finish that wall. Lisa stained some trim for me also so things are getting finished.

Again I wanted to use what we had left over. It came out good. Then we put up some trim on the door and window.

Once that was done we figured out how much wood we will need for the other two walls. We ordered that and picked it up. Now Lisa has a lot of staining to do. We don't have a lot of room to do that inside but next week we will have our barn heated so she can do that out there. It was only logical, sounding like Spock, to heat the barn since we insulated it last year.

So that is it in a nutshell. We just spend our time working and watching the wildlife out side. We feed the birds and squirrls and enjoy thier antics. We also bought alfalfa for the deer. We put out a couple of bales for them and I put the extras in the back of one of my trailers. Well they found those and now we often go outside to see this.

I took that picture from the window and when I stepped outside to get a better shot, 5 deer jumped out of the trailer. They are fun to watch.

That's it for this funfilled installment. Stay warm and virus free.

December 2021

 

As the virus war rages on outside, we are safely ensconced in our super secret undisclosed virus free location. Whew! That description is getting longer and longer. I may have to shorten it to SSUVFL. 

I should add that there is another war going on around us. Mouse-agedon continues. In July I started a mouse battle in our campers. If you have forgotten about it you can read the blog here.Mouse-agedon . So this fall I had noticed some signs of mice around the barn and cabin. At least they are outside, but I am thinking that they may want to move inside at some point. So I started by putting out 2 traps. One out front and one in the back. I would check the traps every morning and sure enough, I would get one or at least see that they stole the peanut butter.

So eventually I started increassing the number of traps around the barn to where I am putting out 6 traps a night now. In the morning I will run my trap line and then report to Lisa the results, which go something like this on any typical day.  6 traps out, 2 dead mice, 3 traps where robbed and 1 sprung.

For a body count since the battle started I am up to 41 mice now. I continue to put out traps until the day that none of the traps has been touched. At that point I will just scale back the operation. Putting my military skills to good use. How so? You ask. Well I have identified the enemy of unknown strength, devised a battle plan and implemented it and brought the war to them. John Wayne would be proud.

Since I got the "All clear" from the Mayo clinic to start work on the cabin again, some project have been asccomplished. 

First on the "Honey do" list was the mantle over the wood stove. It looked too small for the area. So I removed it. Lisa took an old board we had laying around and distressed it some more and stained it. That is what we used for our new mantle.

It looks a lot better and fills that corner.

All decked out for the holidays.

Lisa liked the way that turned out so we got another board that was on the rough side. We cut it and Lisa stained it and now she has a shelf in her kitchen.

We also came up with a plan to finish our window trim. We have vinyl windows that came with the building. Lisa spray foamed around them last year. 

Notice that there are 2 gaps there. I needed to build that up with something. So I decided that a 4X8 sheat of 1/4 inch plywood would be perfect. I cut it into 6 inch strips to use as a filler.

Of course they are cut to size. This is just an example of the process. Then came the 1X8 board to finish the inside. Again cut to the precise size.

Once cut, Lisa stained them all. 

Not bad for a DIYer.

On a more personnal note now. As we grow up, memories of things in our child hood get suppressed at times. I mean a young mind is absorbing so much info on life that things get burried. But eventually somethings will pop up out of the blue and that happened twice last week for me. Lisa and I were driving in town when somoeone pulled out in front of us and randomly I said, "What a dinkh**d". Lisa looked at me with a look of shock on here face and then started laughing which started me laughing.

Once the laughter subsided, she asked where that came from. Thinking about it we remember my mother using that word on us as kids when we were acting up. She would always be calling us kids "dinks" when we were doing stupid things. It's just a funny word when you think about which we did causing more laughter to ensue.

Another word that popped up in our repertoire was when I was regailing Lisa with how much joy Chinese food adds to my life. To which she said that if she eats Chinese again she would throw-up. I said something like this, "I can't help it that you don't like Moo Goo Gui Pan as much as me". Moo Goo Gui Pan? Again bringing much laughter amongst us. Another funny word that made us laugh and it also came from my mother. That was her favorite dish. Speaking of funny Chinese dishes, Jim's favorite dish is Sum yung boi. 

Christmas is approaching fast, so we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and also a Happy New Year.

Stay safe and stay warm! 

November 2021

 

As I sit down to write this, I am bathed in the glow of the "Beaver Moon". Now rest assured that the way I ended the last blog is not the reason that I have written this one. That being said, I go on the record for saying "I did not crap myself". Such a litigious society we live in.

The reason for this blog is that I want to tell everyone (code for 2 or 3 followers) that I had my final Mayo Clinic visit last week. When I saw the doctor, he was pretty happy with the progress. I was moving my finger and the sensitivity which is still there, is getting better. He said that I can start using my hand again as long as I still be careful and not over do it.

So after 13 months of pain and anguish, I can finally say that things are finally getting better. 

This was after the first surgery from December of 2020.

Second sergury from October of 2021.

And the final product from today, November 2021.

Things can again progress on our cabin, plans for the future can be made and life can continue on. I just hope I don't break a hip or anything now. Fingers crossed. 

The holidays are fast approaching so we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and we would like to remind everyone to remove your mask as you eat your turkey. I know it goes against popular belief but trust me, your turkey will taste better.

Stand by for future progress updates.