I apologize for standing you up last night. My service provider, apparently, suffered a major outage in my area. At least that’s their excuse.

I wanted to tell you about Sunday. I’ve done this almost every year pretty much as long as I’ve been blogging. Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis. The first big event of the summer for the Viking Age Club & Society.

As you know (or if you don’t, pay attention!) I finally broke down and got a smart phone last winter. I’m cautiously learning the pleasures associated with that device (though I never plan to tweet. I fail to see the charm of tweeting, or of following tweets).

On Sunday I did my first Food Selfie. I’d bought what they call a Danish Hot Dog (or pølse), and I thought I’d take a photo with my phone and post it to Facebook.

Got lots of responses. Amazing what fascinates people nowadays. Our lives must be very dull.

But amidst all the discussion, in which I defended (for instance) the use of ketchup on hot dogs against the authority of Clint Eastwood himself, I got a response from my distant cousin in Denmark, who had intelligent and enlightening things to say about the Danish hot dog tradition.

It’s all quite silly, but I have to concede it’s fun. And if we can have international fun in these troubled times, why not?

Here’s our “encampment.” Yes sir, the old Vikings camped under awnings just like these, made of hand-wrought aluminum and homespun nylon.

The day was memorable in that I did some combat fighting for the first time in about three years. Fighting seems like a lot of work to me these days, but there was only one other qualified (and ambulatory) fighter present, and the show must go on.

It went OK. Me against a kid young enough to be my grandson. We divided our wins about 50/50 as I remember it (if I’m wrong don’t correct me. I need my illusions). And I came away undamaged. Someone told me I’d feel it in my muscles in a couple days, but (to my surprise) I really don’t ache much. The most pain was in my feet, from walking around in unstructured Viking shoes. And that passed quickly.

Maybe I’ve got a few more miles in me after all.