Boy, you guys had a lot to say about outdoor rinks (ODRs).  I think Kyle and I received close to 30 messages after my story last week with recommendations for the ideal date for rink flooding.  As you might expect, those messages hoisted Kyle right up onto his high horse – so much so that on Thursday evening, he walked me out to the grass in the middle of our empty shell of a rink, gestured to the entirety of the landscape, and announced to the universe,

“I’m flooding on Sunday.”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

Weeelllll…if you live in eastern North Dakota, you know that we had a snowstorm on Friday and Saturday.  Not a wee snowstorm, either; a close-the-Interstate-and-hold-onto-yer-rooftops situation.  I awoke Saturday morning to find Kyle standing at the bedroom window, staring out into the abyss.  We were hours away from our planned departure for a hockey tournament in Fargo.

“This is no good,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I wonder if the roads…”

“I’ll have to push my flood back to Monday,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.  “Okay.”

If you don’t have the good fortune to be or be adjacent to a rink aficionado – I recently caught Kyle throwing out numbers with a fellow ODR-er and I first thought they were comparing body part sizes until I realized they were discussing the degree of differential in the tilt of their backyards – I should tell you that snow is the enemy of an unflooded rink.  It isn’t exactly best buddies with a frozen rink, either, but there’s nothing that can throw a literal wrinkle into a surface like smooshy, meltable, inconsistent snow.

“Can’t you just pack it down and roll the poly [P.S., the base of the rink] out over top?”  I asked Kyle one particularly snowy year.

“I can if I want to spend all winter dealing with uneven ice,” Kyle replied.

“And you…don’t?”  I asked, thinking of all the hours Kyle had spent outside filling in the aforementioned unevenness, a beer and a buddy reflected in the glow of the spotlights.

“No,” he said.

“Oh, okay,” I said.

Neither snow nor rain for the Department of Transportation can keep a hockey parent from a tournament, and so we made it to Fargo after an extended drive through the countryside.  After the game, I stood on my tip-toes to give Kyle a kiss.

“Mmm mm mmmm mmmm,” he murmured into my lips.

“What?”  I said, stepping back.

“Tony is going to flood his rink on Monday and I’m going to do the same,” he said.

“Oh, okay,” I said.

“So, we’ll need to do something about the snow on Sunday,” he said.

“What do you want to do, suck it up with a vacuum?”  I asked, but Kyle didn’t answer.

We got back home later than expected on Sunday due to, you know, WEATHER, and so our future rink remained covered in a pristine blanket of snow.  That night, Kyle snuggled up to me in bed.

“I’m gonna snowblow it,” he whispered in my ear.

“What?”  I said, the way a wife of seventeen years would.

“The rink,” he whispered.  “I’m gonna snowblow it.”

“Oh,” I said, closing my eyes.  “Okay.”

Snowblow it, he did.  He actually had to snowblow a path to the back in order to get the snowblower on the rink, so if you’re ever sitting around your house thinking, “Hmm, I wonder if there is a local fella who knows about getting snow off of the grass,” Kyle is your guy.  He also realized post-snowblow that his poly was shorter than his rink (Kyle hodge-podges his rink together every year with whatever boards he finds; this year, he added a couple boards here and there that he found in DUMPSTERS at nearby construction sites – meaning sometimes his poly doesn’t fit because his boards are whatever size they are at any given moment), and so he had to renovate, which was just a whole thing.

The snowblowing was, obviously, only the beginning.  Next will come The Laying of the Poly, The Stapling of the Poly, The Complaining About the Poly, The Asking of The Other Dads How Many Mils Their Poly Is, The Deciding That the Size Poly He Has is The Best Size, The Readjusting of the Boards and Poly – and then, DUN-DUN-DUN, the flooding.

And in between?  You know, parenting and life and whatever, but really only as it relates to the rink.  For example, Twelve was supposed to go out and assist with the boards renovation and didn’t, and so Kyle Dad Lectured him on what you should do when someone asks for help, and also how he is doing all of that work so that Kyle Twelve can have a rink for when his friends come over to play.

“Oh, okay,” Twelve said when Kyle was finished, tossing his knee hockey stick into the basement and pulling on his boots.

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The photo above is of Twelve in his new suit. He loves and it wears it everywhere. If you see an empty suit walking around Grand Forks, it’s because Twelve has worn it so many times that it has become sentient and has gone out for a stroll.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about a Grand Forks pajama drive and Miss North Dakota.  Check it out, and please send me your nice stories and people for future episodes!  (Valley News Live)

Fargo’s Wencil Dusek visited the Fargo Public Library every day for years, and when he passed away at age 93 he left his home-away-from home $100,000 for future programming. (Fargo Forum)

It’s lining to be a great week for some stargazing – especially Wednesday night. (KFYR TV)

FUN FACT: Macaulay Culkin‘s mother is from Dickinson. (Hot 97.5 FM)

Choo choo!  It’s time for the CPKC Holiday Train, which will be stopping in Hankinson, Enderlin, Carrington, Harvey, Minot, and Kenmare this weekend. (Valley News Live)

Happy Hanukkah!  (PS, Wednesday is the 7th night) (Grand Forks Herald)

I don’t usually highlight businesses on here, but it’s pretty exciting to have a movie theater operating in Devils Lake again!  Also, I think this is my millionth exclamation point in this week’s news, so my apologies to all of the periods out there. (Grand Forks Herald)

Have some money marked for donations burning a hole in your pocket?  Check out the Caring Catalog. (North Dakota Today)

Also as a reminder, Kyle and his friends, Corey and Kelly, have a podcast called North Dakota After Dark where they talk about youth hockey in North Dakota.  The latest episode is up and features a guy named The Original Burnsie, who owns a hockey card shop.  Check it out. (North Dakota After Dark)

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