Is it a bird? Is it a plane...no, wait, it was that first one...a bird. Wannaskan Almanac forFebruary 26, 2019

Today marks the 57th day of 2019.  There are 308 days until we receive perfect vision.  (Comment below if you understand that lame attempt at humor).  This is officially the 68th day of winter.  It only feels like the five hundredth day of winter in Ye Olde Wannaska.
The official state bird for Minnesota since 1961 is the loon.  The unofficial state bird is the mosquito.  About twelve thousand loons make their home in Minnesota every summer.  Nobody is really certain how many mosquitoes call Minnesota home every year, but it is likely more than twelve thousand.  The loon is one of several different critical habitat plates that you can purchase for your vehicle.

According to the Minnesota DNR, there are 246 different types of birds that make their home in Minnesota.  Some of them leave in the winter.  These are called snowbirds.  They often spend their winters lounging around in their RV's in Arizona or Florida.
Speaking of lounging around, I used to work for a snowmobile factory up in Northern Minnesota.  I spent a lot of time lounging around, sometimes even when I was on break, and one day my friend and I came up with a plan.  The Minnesota Vikings were for sale back then, and for only a paltry 250 million dollars we could have purchased the team.

We each looked through our pockets.  I had two dollars, but I needed that to purchase mountain dew at break time.  My friend, Scott, had like five dollars, but he didn't want to break that at the time.  So here we were...entrepreneurs with the chance to make a foray into NFL ownership and the only thing standing between us and achieving our dream was money.  This was not the end though.  We put our heads together and came up with a plan.  A popular commercial at the time was for a service called 1-800-LOAN-YES.  They claimed to quickly come up with the money that was needed for people in dire circumstances, which we obviously were.  I placed the call.

The agent on the other end answered politely.  Not wanting to waste time I started with, "I know your time is valuable, so I will get right to the point.  I want 250 million dollars.  I, I mean my partner and I, want to buy the Minnesota Vikings."
There was a long pause.  I thought maybe the phone had quit working.  I made my request again.
The agent answered, "Uh, I don't think we can loan you that much."
We argued for a bit, but it ended up that they weren't going to give us the money.  I gave them the sarcastic comment, "You guys should change your name to 1-800-LOAN-NO."  We checked our pockets again, just to make sure that we didn't have any more money.  We didn't.  Just another dream shot down by a lack of funding.
I guess the moral of all that is one of two things:
1.  It is okay to dream big.  Just don't rely on 1-800-LOAN-YES.
2.  It was really difficult to come up with something to write about today.
Have a wonderful day!