Honorary Degree

Will the honors ever stop?!? A few weeks ago I received an honorary masters degree from the prestigious Kellogg business school.

So really, this is Linda's MBA school. They invited all the spouses or partners, to join the students for a weekend. During one of the events they gave each of us partners these Masters of Understanding degrees in recognition of the support we give. Very thoughtful. But hell, as far as I'm concerned I've got a MU from one of the best business schools in the country and I'm going to put it on my resume! (not really)

If you should need some understanding I'm available for consultation.

Japanese Language Proficiency Test: RESULTS

I passed! やった！

I'm really really amazed. As I wrote in my previous post, I didn't think I had a very good chance at passing this test. 50/50 at best. But I ended up doing exactly what was needed to pass. As suspected the listening part was my worst of the 3 at 50%. But the writing/vocab was totally shocking - 93%!! The grammer part was also good enough at around 80%. Overall I got a 70% and needed only 60% to pass. I'm very proud of this test because it's so official. This is the Japanese governments indication of skill. Now for the humbling part, this is by far the easiest of the 4 tests. It's kindergarten. The next step, level 3, is not just a little harder but is probably more like 2-3 times more difficult.

The scan is of the test results but I also got a very nice certificate, suitable for framing.

Hockey Quiz

When I was a kid we would alternate choosing people for a pickup hockey game. I rarely went early in those drafts. So which one of these 2 teammates would you take first for your team? There is no illusion here, Finley is 6'7" and Bina is almost a foot shorter at 5'8" as well as being around 70 pounds lighter. Both are defenceman where size counts yet 'little' Robbie Bina has been a dominant player for the Sioux this year and has so far racked up 25 points to Finley's 7. So, who would you pick now? Not so easy. Of course I've got to go with any guy from Grand Forks named Robbie. Duh.

On Saturday, March 3rd, 4 of us went to St Cloud, MN to watch our UND Sioux beat St Cloud in the last game of the year. The smallish arena afforded me a good chance to get some closeup photos of the action. I have them on my Flickr account.

Best Wife Ever?

Thursday and Friday we got a good old fashion Minnesota snow storm. It was great! I think at home we got about 18 inches of snow in two waves. Just enough in each case to force us to blow out the driveway twice. But that's ok because the snowblower is one of the funnest things about winter - if not the funnest! I've been a little disappointed in the last few year with the lack of blowable snow. Here is a shot of Linda getting in on the fun.