North Dakota and Southern Manitoba

I’m all about timely blog posts. That’s why I’m finally writing about my time in North Dakota and southern Manitoba as part of my annual-ish hockey road trip…which happened more than a year ago. Better late than never, right? I mean, I wrote about eating in Winnipeg and attending the Pittsburgh Penguins-Jets game last year, so that was somewhat timely!

Besides attending a hockey game in every NHL city, another life goal is to visit all 50 states. So as part of visiting Winnipeg to see a Jets hockey game, we decided that we had to find a reason to go to North Dakota, which is a short drive away. The initial idea of last year’s hockey trip was to attend a Winnipeg Jets game and a University of North Dakota hockey game. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work unless we made the trip in the middle of winter (which we didn't want to do). So instead, we attended a UND football game. I mean, of course you go to a college football game when you’re in North Dakota!

So let's start with the drive from Winnipeg to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Do you know what is between the Winnipeg suburbs and the Manitoba/North Dakota border? Not much though now that I’ve driven in Iceland, the area between Winnipeg and Grand Forks is a metropolis. So highlights of Southern Manitoba:

Hemp Oil Canada! After probably about 25 miles of driving through nothing after leaving the Winnipeg suburbs, we passed the Hemp Oil Canada factory. (Apparently, the company is now known as Fresh Hemp Foods.) There were (and I assume still are) also a series of homes across the highway from the factory. While I didn't think that there were still company towns, Ste. Agathe, Manitoba may just be one. According to WikiPedia, the population of Ste. Agathe in 2021 was 643. Feel like at least half of the population has some sort of affiliation with Hemp Oil Canada,

After another 20 minutes of nothing, we came across Morris, Manitoba (population approximately 2,000), home of the annual Manitoba Stampede which seems to take place in July of each year. Would I like to attend a rodeo in Manitoba someday? Yes. Will it ever happen? Extremely unlikely.

After another half hour of nothing, we reached the US border. When we entered the United States and returned to Canada later in the day, the border control seemed confused by our visit. Why were two guys from Virginia and another from New York crossing the border driving a vehicle with a Manitoba license plate? The concept of a rental car seemed to escape them. 

We finally arrived in Grand Forks, and after a stop at the UND bookstore to buy some souvenirs (meaning T-shirts for my kids), we made it to the Alerus Center for the football game between the University of North Dakota and University of Northern Iowa. It’s a somewhat odd arena/stadium. It’s more of a field house. There are stands on each side with no or limited seating in the end zones. I know you really don't care about a recap of a football game that took place over a year ago, but I have some pictures and videos to share. 

I liked how the teams shook hands before the game. Don’t remember ever seeing that before.

We went to a late lunch / early dinner at a place called Smiling Moose. It was fine. However, a few days after I returned home, I learned that there was a Ground Round only a few miles from the stadium. Ground Round was one of my favorite restaurants growing up in Pittsburgh, and there are only a few remaining. Not going to Ground Round was the only regret of the trip.

Around the corner from Smiling Moose is the Grand Forks curling club. The door was open, so we walked right in. There was one guy there setting up the place for the start of the curling season which was a few weeks away. He was super gracious in letting us walk around. 

On the drive back to the hotel, we stopped at the St. Vital Curling Club, founded in 1933. This Winnipeg curling club has members that won Olympic medals! I think we hoped that we would be able to try curling ourselves, but there were league competitions going on, so we just watched for a few minutes and left.

A few more pictures from Winnipeg. Did you know that Winnie the Bear, later Winnie the Pooh, is named for Winnipeg?

My Favorite Songs of 2025

Full disclosure. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a best and worst of the year post for 2025. I have a selection for both the best and worst song of the year, so I can share that the best is in the post. By the way, I highly recommend the posts by Josh on his favorites of the year (this is his favorite songs post).

Here are my 11 favorite songs of the year in no particular order.

Alex Warren - Ordinary

What a voice. And this song just explodes in the chorus. 

Taylor Swift - Fate of Ophelia

All she does is write hit song after hit song.

Role Model - Sally, When The Wine Runs Out

Will Role Model be a one-hit wonder? If he is, this is a really good hit. Enough that I wrote about him twice now this year.

Sydney Sprague - Flat Circle

I learn of most music these days from listening to the Hits1 station on SiriusXM. I learned of this song from The Tony Kornheiser Show podcast which regularly features music shared by listeners or their family/friends. This is one such song. I love the guitar riff.

Raye - Where Is My Husband

And this song is one that I love for the drums.

Ragga Holm - Liour Vel 

A song I heard several times on Icelandic radio. Still have no idea what it's about or any of the lyrics.

K-Pop Demon Hunters (Huntrix) - Golden

Only the biggest song in the world. We're all going up, up, up.

AJR - The Big Goodbye

I want to see AJR in concert with my kids. Think it would be a great show. And while this probably isn't even in my top 5 AJR songs, I just like it.

Tame Impala - Dracula

The video has a bad word in it so NSFW. I've seen or heard Tame Impala's name for several years but this seems to be the first song that's getting "pop" airplay. It's really good.

Ravyn Lenae - Love Me Not 

Another song that I just like.

5 Seconds of Summer - Not OK

Spoiler. This is my favorite song of the year. If I write a best of 2025 post, I'll explain more then.

2025 Hanukkah Videos

Happy Hanukkah everyone! It's that time of year when I share Hanukkah videos from around the world. With the tradition of pickles at Hanukkah growing each year (at least in my mind), I was curious to see if 2025 Hanukkah videos mentioned pickles or at least showed pickles in the background. Enter the dream collaboration of Monty Pickle and Kosha Dillz!

Monty Pickle has lots of wonderful Hanukkah content. Here's the dreidel song as an opera.

On to videos without talking/singing pickles. The rivalry between Six13 and Maccabeats might be at a level never seen before. They both have K-Pop Demon Hunters themed Hanukkah songs this year. 

Maccabeats include dancing pigs in their video but not a pickle?!? C'mon!

Y Studs enters the chat with a Jonas Brothers medley.

Huge credit to the Miami Boys Choir is keeping donuts on their desks without eating them.

So many a cappella groups! We need other songs and activities.

And for real little kids, there are some cartoons including one by Cocomelon.

Again, no pickles other than Monty Pickle. I challenge artists and educators to include pickles in their 2026 Hanukkah songs and videos.

Kevin Durant With Guys Shorter Than Him

PAWRA's BACK, ALRIGHT! If you don't remember what PAWRA is, and really why would you know this, PAWRA stands for Pittsburgh Athletes with World-Renowned Athletes. Previous posts include Kenny Pickett with Wayne Gretzky, DeAngelo Williams with Christian Pulisic, and Sidney Crosby with Maria Sharapova. Well, we got a good one today. Pictured below is Kevin Durant, currently a member of the Houston Rockets and likely one of the 20-best NBA players of all time with Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Boko Imama of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Rockets visited the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night, and with the Penguins playing the Stars the following evening, it appears that Malkin, Letang, and Imama enjoyed a night out. In case you're wondering, Boko is listed at 6'1", Geno at 6'5", and Kris at 6'0". They look like me if I was pictured with them! No word on if Durant had any idea who he took a picture with. And did the Pens players not want a picture with Anthony Davis or Cooper Flagg?

Photo from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

My Sports Betting Post

I've been thinking about writing some variation of this post for a very long time. It’s long. I’ll include some videos to provide a break.

If you watch or listen to sports on television, radio, online, or in person, you are inundated with advertisements for sports betting. All of the professional sports leagues and some (many?) individual sports teams have partnerships with various gambling companies such as FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM. Even if you are able to ignore the commercials, the announcers give live odds with graphics showing them. ESPN highlights scores and schedules via the scroll on the bottom of the screen but will also show game odds. It's impossible to avoid sports betting. More on this momentarily.

Virginia legalized sports betting in April 2020. Online sportsbooks started accepting wages in early 2021. I downloaded the BetRivers app several months after that. I got some type of sign-up bonus and deposited maybe $50 or $100 of my own. I was down to the last few dollars in my account for the 2022 NCAA men's basketball tournament championship between Kansas and North Carolina. I had some type of bonus bet where I picked Kansas to win the national title before the tournament began and would get a pretty good payout if the Jayhawks won. If I lost, I told myself that I wasn't going to make another deposit, and I would be done with sports betting. Kansas won, so I won.

First break!

I signed up for FanDuel in October 2022 and transitioned away from BetRivers. I started on DraftKings in February 2023, probably thanks to some type of Super Bowl promotion. I don't think that my initial deposit on either site was more than $10. While I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy, in my three years on FanDuel, I believe I have won about $150. I think I'm up around $500 on DraftKings. That sounds pretty good, and winning is definitely better than losing, but I'm starting to think I have a problem.

What concerns me most about the prevalence of sports betting is the impact on kids, primarily for those from the ages of about 12-25. (And yes, I know that people in their 20s aren't really kids.)  Actually, it's not the prevalence of sports betting; it's how easy it is to bet which is concerning. I knew a bookie when I was in college. I made one wager with him on the January 1996 Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl and that was it. I've also made a few bets at sportsbooks when visiting Las Vegas over the years. In both those cases, you had to physically go somewhere to make a bet. Now, all you have to do is download an app and you can make bets on all kinds of things 24/7. Sure, wagers on football (NFL and college), baseball, and basketball are probably the most common in America, but you can wager on anything. Snooker, badminton, tennis matches in Argentina or Indonesia. Any soccer league in the world. There is always the opportunity to make a wager on a live sporting event. And yes, I'm guilty of doing this. 

Here's a video of me in Iceland going between the tectonic plates separating Europe and North America!

Lucy (my cat) often wakes me up around 5:00 AM. After I feed her, I regularly go on my phone to check email, see if anything big is happening in the world, and find out whether I won or lost bets from the previous night. I've also been known to make a wager on some live tennis or soccer matches without knowing anything about the players or teams. I should probably mention that I historically wager about $10-$15 a day. Nearly all of my wagers are $1. Sometimes, I go crazy and make a $2 bet on a game. Relatively low stakes, but I spend way more time on betting sites than I should. I also follow at least a dozen sports betting people on Twitter and check out a few different sports betting shows online. As I wrote above, I've had some success, and winning money is obviously better than losing. However, the issue isn't the money. It's the time. I don't think I want to know how much money I've made per hour spent on the betting sites or reading/following bettors. It must be insignificant. Actually, what’s even worse for me is the FanDuel Faceoff app. You play various cards or strategy games (such as Freecell solitaire and Boggle) against people for money. Even when you when, FanDuel wins. And when you lose, FanDuel wins more. By the way, I'm glad there wasn't a Minesweeper game like this when I was in college. I would still be in debt.

While I try to hide it from them, my kids have seen me on the sports betting apps. The Moose (14) seems to only care about sports. He loves ESPN. I'm pretty sure he's seen the Bad Beats segments they have on Sportscenter. Although I don't watch Pat McAfee, I know that he does, and there's probably some sort of gambling aspect on the show. (At a minimum, ESPN shows odds on the bottom scroll.) The Moose recently asked me how old you need to be to bet on sports. I was leaning towards stopping sports betting before he asked me this, but this sealed it. Do as I say, not as I do doesn't really work. It's time to delete the apps, but it's not that easy. And this is another way that the sports gambling sites get you. Courtesy of some boosts, I have several season-long wagers. I have $10 (to pay out $21.50) on the Steelers making the playoffs. $5 (to pay out $10.45) on Sidney Crosby having more regular season points than Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. $10 (to pay out $27.40) on the Washington Wizards winning over 20.5 games. (As I'm typing this, the Wizards are 3-16. I thought they could win 25% of their games. Looks like I have chosen poorly.) 

With the cash out option gone, it seems like these apps will remain on my phone through the end of the NHL and NBA seasons until these bets are settled.*

The Moose is probably one of thousands if not millions of people asking the same questions. When can I start betting? How much money can I make? When The Moose asked me about sports betting, I tried to explain to him that the reason there are so many betting commercials is because the sports books are making millions of dollars. 

I don't think I shared this story before. I got my Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. For one of my classes, two of my classmates and I did a small research project on gambling among students at our school. I remember very little about this. I'm sure we had some theories or conclusions, but I don't recall what they were. However, at around the same time as we finished a paper, I attended a student affairs conference and went to a session about gambling among college students. The basics of the session was that there was a lot of programming and resources dedicated to combating binge drinking and alcohol abuse. There was nothing about gambling prevention/education and very little research into this. I really could have done a substantial paper/project about gambling among college students with one of my professors, but I was too lazy. I was already overwhelmed trying to balance school and work. I didn't have the time or energy to do a project in my "spare time." All of this is to write that I truly hope there's more research and activities about this now. I can't imagine how many college students are addicted to sports betting and how many are in debt. 

To start, I'm going to delete the FanDuel Faceoff app and unfollow some accounts on Twitter. Then, I need to lead by example and completely stop betting. 

* Though not the point of this post, I'm sure there's a way to delete the apps, download them again in April or May, and cash out, and then delete the apps again.