In anticipation of the Jordan Fire Department’s 125th anniversary earlier this month, your local newspaper has been running a sporadic series of Q&A's with Jordan firefighters.

You've read about Kevin Adamek, Jason Allen, Brian Anderson, Jonathan Brandtner, Randy Breegemann, Mike Briese, Nate Briese, Tim Draheim, Jason Guggisberg, Kenny Hayden, David Holzer, Scott Kochlin, Dale Oldenburg, Gregg Pekarna, Scott Petersen, and Jason Skorczewski.

Many of them wrote about the John Travolta movie “Ladder 49” and how realistic it seemed.

I am back in my hometown of Platteville, Wis., today to watch my sister and her future husband graduate from college. That’s all well and good, but what I’m really excited about is a competition my mom outlined for my sisters and I.

We were each (along with our significant others) given $10 and told to go out into Platteville’s citywide garage sale to find the best bargain that we could. The couple with the winning treasure will get some sort of prize (she didn’t say what).

I’m totally going to dominate this competition.

This weekend is too busy already.

Not only do you have the Jordan citywide garage sale, but you’ve also got Jordan High School’s production of “The Hobbit” and the movie theater premier of “Iron Man” – both of which I really want to see. And on the sports side of things, you've got several NBA games and the Jordan Wood Bat tournament.

But I’m missing them all to help my sister and her family move into a new house in Wisconsin and to attend the wedding of a college friend.

As of late, we have had a number of loved ones leave this planet.

When these unexpected things happen we may not be prepared for what we must achieve to celebrate their lives.

Organizing our memories from boxes of photographs can be very healing and stressful at the same time. Often we may know the people and locations in the photographs and what they were doing at the time. From experience I can tell you that it sure helps if the names, dates and locations are noted on the back of the photos.

Well, it finally happened. I’ll be spending Thanksgiving with family, but not my own. This will be my first turkey day with my girlfriend’s clan.

Last night I went and saw “Dan In Real Life.” It’s a total feel-good, warm your heart, chick-flick kind of movie, and it was my idea to see it.

The Otte Football League (my family’s yearly fantasy football league) begins with an Aug. 30 draft, and I can’t wait. I’m hard at work ranking my players and coming up with my own draft board.

Today, I’m going to be embarking on a journey – a journey into madness. Well, a journey that will likely cause me to go mad, anyway. I’m headed for Illinois.

Last weekend, I got to spend some time with my cousin. He’s studying at UW-Stevens Point in an environmental studies program.

All the growth we've experienced in the past few years got me thinking - are we losing that small-town feeling?