Tonight when I got home from work I noticed one of my credit cards was missing. After looking in the likely places, I called the service number to replace it.

When the female person I’d been talking to had canceled it and promised me a new one, she said, “I see that your payment record with us is wonderful, and I wonder if you’d be interested in…” and then she tried to sell me a credit protection plan.

I said no thank you, but my heart was strangely warmed by her praise of my payment record. When you’re me, you have to take your strokes where you can get them.

A few minutes later I found the card, and I called back to see if I could cancel the cancellation.

They don’t let you do that.

I suppose it’s best, all considered. Now I feel like a doofus again, and the universe is back in balance.

Kevin Holtsberry at Collected Miscellany has moved his blog back to its earlier address, and is rather sad that he isn’t getting more traffic as a result. Check it out. It’s an excellent blog, mostly about books.

Via Mirabilis: A site called Library Thing which allows you to list the books you own and make contact with people who enjoy the same books. What a great concept! I’d use it myself if I didn’t hate everyone in the world, except Sissel and you.

Opinion Journal has a list of people who would have done more to earn a Nobel Peace prize than this year’s recipient, such as “Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin’s slide toward authoritarian rule” and “Britain’s Tony Blair, Ireland’s Bertie Ahern and the voters of Northern Ireland, who in March were able to set aside decades of hatred to establish joint Catholic-Protestant rule in Northern Ireland.”

Speaking of Kasparov, he has a new book called, How Life Imitates Chess. Business Week experts the book in which he applies chess principles to politics. He says, “Litvinenko’s murder came on the heels of the Moscow killing of the well-known investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya . . . The killings have turned a spotlight on what the West had assumed was the autocratic but stable Putin regime. Suddenly the foreign media is realizing what we in the Russian opposition have been saying for years—the Kremlin is ever closer to dictatorship than democracy and yet is not stable at all.”

Today was my first day back at work. Since my vacation time was more stressful and strenuous than my job is, I was not any better for the time off. But that’s my own fault. Someday I should take some vacation and just rest.

No, that would be degenerate and un-Haugean (see the link in my previous post).

Nevertheless I shall blog about Høstfest and the Sissel concert. Separate posts, I think. Keep things orderly.

This was the 30th anniversary of the Høstfest (which means Harvest Festival) in Minot. Here you may see the backside of the big “30” in the entryway.

The fellow in the tall hat is Rolf Stang, professional Hans Christian Andersen impersonator. (Also professional Edvard Grieg, Henrik Ibsen and Leif Eriksson impersonator. He only actually resembles one of these characters [Grieg], but he gets away with it, and who am I to criticize?. He’s a friend of the Viking Age Club & Society, so he can impersonate Jenny Lind if he likes, as far as I’m concerned).

Here’s one of the halls, at lunchtime. People are chowing down on rømmegrøt, lefse and Swedish pancakes, but also fried chicken, hamburgers and tacos. Man does not live on traditional Scandinavian fare alone, especially if man is as old as most of the attendees at Høstfest.

Not that there weren’t some young people there. I fell in love (temporarily) several times, with various women young enough to be my daughters. Did not speak to any of them, of course, and didn’t even get any pictures.

The ladies below, in case you’re wondering, are not young enough to be my daughters, but they did have a handsome display of Norwegian rosemaling.

And here’s a nice booth where a violin maker is displaying Hardangerfeler (Hardanger fiddles) for sale. The Hardangerfele is a distinctive Norwegian instrument. It’s double-stringed, with the lower set tuned to produce harmonics. The result is a weird, evocative bagpipe-like sound. My Haugean ancestors believed the Hardangerfele to be an instrument of the devil.

And here’s part of our Viking encampment. The red chest in the middle, as well as the workbench and red shield, is (are) mine.

And yes, I noticed that after all my jokes about people in Norwegian sweaters and cowboy hats, I didn’t come away with a single picture of one of those. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Haugeans never lie.

Bird quotes St. Augustine on watching sad plays, though you could replace the emotion with another one to the same effect. “It was a sign of my desolation that I loved theatrical emotions, and looked for occasions to empathize with fake, impersonated misery.”