Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune picked up on the phenom Jesse Crain this week. Apparently, people in camp are amazed at his stuff. You heard it here first, remember. (See below.)

My guess right now is that the Twins are going to struggle less than they did last year. I was amazed that they came out with 90 wins for how much time they spent wallowing around. Bad starting pitching. No offense.

I posted a new column to the left. I am using a new computer and generally using some new computer routines, which leaves me in sort of a disoriented daze--the result is that the column posting has some funny spacings in it that I can't seem to change. We'll work on it.

Last week I wrote a column about my new cat, Nemo. Since then I have gotten several responses from cat owners--simply telling stories about their own cat. A nice letter came in the mail from an elderly woman who has a new cat--somebody had dumped a kitten in the cistern, and they rescued it. She figured since she was well over eighty that she shouldn't take on a cat only to have it orphaned when she passed away, but her young grandson assured her that he would take care of it "when you're dead." So they named the cat Moses.

I am exploring my new computer. It plays CDs. Very nice. I just put in a Vivaldi violin concerto. Vivaldi's most famous work is the Four Seasons. However, all of his work is distinctive.

The mark of a composer's genius, I think, is if you can hear a new piece and say, "Ah, Vivaldi," without knowing beforehand. Mozart and Bach do that for me. They left the fingerprints of their singular genius over every note they wrote.

One of the perils of running a business in the countryside is that big trucks get lost trying to find the place. Yesterday, a semi full of trees was due, and the driver called from somewhere--he couldn't really tell where--to say he was lost.

So we sent out a search party of one, me. Luckily, there was fresh snow. I went two miles east and saw the tracks of a semi turning around and heading another direction. I went that way, and eventually saw a big truck sitting still on a gravel road west of Rindal.

A sparsely populated township in northwestern Minnesota has decided to grant marriage licenses to gay and lesspian couples--or pretty much whoever, according to a press release issued by Mervin Olson, town clerk.

"We feel strongly that this will help bring us increased tourist dollars," Olson said. "There's really nothing here to see but for the town hall. We look forward to thousands of gay and lesspian couples lining the road between Sundal Church and the Town Hall."

Last night, I went to my caucus. This year, they just had the caucuses at the same time as the county convention. I attended my caucus--I was the only one from my township there--and then left before the county convention began so as to avoid all the rigamaroll.

Snow today. Sticky stuff. Slippery roads. Slush. Then it freezes and becomes crunchy. March is the crunchy month. Lots of fog in the evenings. I also suspect there are more broken hips in March than any other month. I know I have nearly fallen hard several times in the past few days on frozen puddles.

I finally broke down and bought a computer with a larger screen. I am tired of looking at the tiny laptop. Wow, is this nice. Of course, now I have to get used to all kinds of new things. And, I have to "customize my computer environment," which means finding all my favorite webpages and linking to them again. I always forget a few, and my life seems no worse for it.

Kent Erdahl, son of Larry and Elaine Erdahl of Fertile, is writing for the Minnesota Daily, the University of Minnesota's student newspaper. The Daily is one of the finest student papers in the nation. Kent is covering several sports. Today's article by Kent is an interesting feature on the long-time women's swim coach at the U of M.