Nirvana is a wonderful place

It was a weekend to get away from the rat race. And what better place to do so than in one of Minnesota's little havens of heaven? My brother Frank and his wife Peggy live in Lanesboro, a tiny town of 800 people a couple hours south of the Twin Cities. My brother Paul and his wife Pam happened to be at a seminar of sorts in nearby Rochester so it was the perfect time for a mini-family reunion.

But Lanesboro is more than that. Whether it is hanging out at the market in town, going to yard sales (where I bought a book on hunting and the outdoors authored by former president Grover Cleveland, attending a terrific play at the Commonweal Theater or just sitting on the porch, there is a serenity here that is much needed.

I am not sure I could live in a town like Lanesboro full time. But I know my soul feels better every time I visit and I am always reluctant to leave.

I understand a bit better what Kevin Costner talked about in "Fields of Dreams" about heaven in Iowa. We all need this every now and then.

One for the ages

As I write this, Tom Watson, at age 59, is leading the British Open Golf tournament. Tiger Woods, a mere 26 years younger, didn't make the cut.

I heard some ESPN guys yesterday bemoaning this fact because it didn't fit the pattern most people thought would happen.

One of the biggest problems we have in athletics today is many people go into events with a pre-set idea of what will happen. When the predicted result goes askew, they are aghast and ask why. In some ways, ESPN has been the worst thing to ever happen to athletics because it does a lot of predicting and not nearly as much anticipating.

The idea of playing a game (or a sport) is everybody starts at zero and then you see what happens. My mother-in-law, at age 80, was still a very formidable Scrabble player. That may not be the same thing as golf but it is the same concept.

The sooner we go back to simply showing up and playing or watching to see what happens, the better off we will be.

In the meantime, go Tom Watson. Good golf, whether it is played by a talented 33-year old or a crafty 59-year old, is still fun to watch.

Where did we get so much stuff?

There is a young woman down the street who is going on a trip to Tanzania with her church in a month. She put out a flyer saying she was looking to make some money doing whatever tasks somebody needed done. We put her to work today with a massive job - cleaning out the garage.

We don't quite know how this happened but our garage is not a haven for cars. It is a haven for everything else from old records to birdseed to actual tools to empty boxes. There are war zones that are less cluttered.

We are deeply grateful to her for tacking this job. We do this every year -- clean and sweep the garage out and then placing things back nice and neatly. In about two weeks, it returns to looking like a war zone.

My question today is simple: how in the world did we get so much stuff? And are we the only people who go through this routine every year?

Bewitched, bothered, bewildered and befuddled about Bejeweled

There is a game on Facebook called Bejeweled Blitz. In a nutshell, it involves moving characters around so you can get at least three running consecutively in any direction. When you do that, they dissolved and a new list of items go onto the screen.

It is a frustrating and ... very addictive game. I had seen this evil invention on the internet before but had forgotten about it until it was called to my attention recently.

I became a quick convert. The Facebook game is a timed one - you have a minute to get these things in line. If you can morph four or five in line, you get more points. After several tries, I have managed to get up to 65,000 points. This sounds good but two friends of mine are well over 100,000. Either they have smaller, more nimble fingers are simply a helluva smarter than I am. (I choose to believe the first idea.)

What is really maddening about this game is I tend to see combos a second too late. I move a green gob into position for a three spot and then notice that if I had moved it the other way, I would have gotten a four or five spotter. Arrggh.

These games are supposed to bring you relaxation. In a way, I suppose they do. But what happens is you find yourself suddenly being very competitive because a young friend of yours has 116,000 points and you "only" have 65,000. I don't like playing golf for a buck a round and I find myself playing this game by the hour just to improve my score to get ahead of somebody ... for no money. That says something about me. The problem is I don't exactly know if it is a good something.