It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

The Power Plant Siting Act annual hearing, a la Minn. Stat. 216I.15, is the time to let the Public Utilities Commission know what works and what does not work in the Commission’s siting of power plants, transmission, wind, solar, and even pipelines!

Here’s the problem — all they have to do per the statute is “advise the public of the permits issued by the commission in the past year.” What happens after that, well, it goes to the PUC but that’s about it. It is a good time to vent, and get on the record all the horrible things that have happened over the year, and the historical trends, such as elimination of the Advisory Task Force.

Here’s the decades old law providing for Advisory Task Forces:

And this session, after the Public Utilities Commission and their OAH ALJs were denying, denying, denying after so many Advisory Task Force Petitions over so many years — simply repealed, eliminated:

It’s GONE! And eliminating the reference of Task Forces as an aspect of public participation:

Ja, we “Public Participants” get the PUC’s message loud and clear:

Public participation via the Public Utilities Commission? Remember the Report of the Office of the Legislative Auditor?

Public Utilities Commission’s Public Participation Processes – OLA-Report

Fat lot of good that did. Instead of improving public participation, we hear the Commission Chair saying, “What can we do to make this faster for you?” and “What can we do to speed this permitting up?” and that whole “streamlining” effort, which is really STEAMROLLING. Fast tracking permitting, denial of interventions, failure to have project proponents witnesses at hearings for questioning…

PUC Strategic Plan

Here are the reports from the last 20 years — often they hold it on my birthday, but not this year. You can see that year after year, it’s the same issues:

2000 Summary of Proceedings

2000 Report EQB

2001 Summary of Proceedings

2001 Report EQB

2002 Summary of Proceedings

2002 Report to EQB

2003 Summary of Proceedings

2003 Report to EQB

2004 Summary of Proceedings

2004 Report to EQB

2005 Report to PUC

2006 Report to PUC – Docket 06-1733

2007 Report to PUC – Docket 07-1579

2008 Report to PUC – Docket 08-1426

2009 Report to PUC – Docket 09-1351

2010 Report to PUC – Docket 10-222

2011 Report to PUC – Docket 11-324

2012 Report to PUC – Docket 12-360

2013 Report to PUC – Docket 13-965

2014 Summary Report– Docket 14-887

2015 Summary Report – Docket 15-785

2016 Summary Report – Docket 16-18

2017 Summary Report – Docket 17-18

2018 Summary Report – Docket 18-18

2019 Summary Report_Docket 19-18

Summary Report – Docket 20-18

2021 Summary Report – Docket 21-18

2022-Summary-Report_Docket 22-18

And last year’s Report from the 2023 hearing, held on December 20, 2023:

There’s a trend… And here we go, on Tuesday, another year of banging heads against the wall.

It’s no work of art, but in the scenario this proceeding is in, with Prairie Island Indian Community and City of Red Wing deep in it with or working on agreements with Xcel Energy, there’s not much we can do, little impact, as they’re the players, and also, AAAAACK, I just didn’t have time.

The DEIS did grossly misrepresent the history and status of Xcel’s Utility Personal Property Tax payments to local governments, so I did include the City of Red Wing comment in the IRP (below page 13, Attachment A).

The main purpose of this is to push for reworking of the “low-dose” radiation exposure modeling using Aaron Datesman’s cutting edge Three Mile Island “shot noise” work to correct for the GIGO current modeling and more accurately characterize the risk.

Sooooooo, anyway, here’s what I filed:

We said goodbye to our Sadie yesterday, and I’m loading all my photos of her for Alan, and, well, 3 hours remaining to fill up the thumb drive. So I’m going through them… sigh… 14 years is a long time together.

That’s our Little Sadie above, her first winter with us, December 2010, near her birthday. You can see the greyhound in her, but the shih tzu not so much:

I met her at Dog Days of Stockholm, August 14, 2010, when I’d volunteered at the shelter to take a dog down and show her off. I was initially offered a little poof-dog, and no way. I traded that one for Sadie. She did her magic with me, riding down to Stockholm with her chin on my shoulder the whole way — such a sweetie. Much later, I learned that she was after the crumbs on my shirt… oh well. I did show her off, talked her up, but no luck. I’d learned a little of her story, she’d been found as a stray in March, 2010, and had been in the shelter since. Only nine months old and 6 months of that in the shelter during her most crucial developmental time. She needed a home STAT, and I couldn’t resist, even though she was not a German Shepherd.

Sadie came home with me for the weekend to test her out with Kady, and it went OK, though she was overwhelmed I think (horrible photo, old camera). And she was so small, particularly compared to our sheps, but she as still a baby, and became knows as our “medium pup.”

We agreed she was a good fit and Alan signed on the bottom line, wrote a check, and she was ours. Little did we know what life with a nine month old puppy was like.

THIS was the essence of Sadie — here she is “playing tennis” with Kady:

Kady was not too impressed, note the eye roll:

Sadie was always on the move until around 3 years old. She chewed everything in sight, including 2 pairs of Alan’s Rayban glasses, a phone, hair brushes, shoes, a library book, and the little bitch counter-surfed a holiday dessert to the floor, a GINGER CHEEZECAKE! Ate almost all of it, and did not get sick. That theft was serious…

And she chewed on and unrolled hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, no matter how they were loaded:

All the sheps were older when we adoped them. Kady was probably 7, and she and Sadie basically got along, but Sadie was for sure a bit too much for her. I don’t think there were any bloody spats, but for sure a few snarls and snarks. Then we adopted Summer, our “hospice” dog, who at 12 was rescued from a Gary, IN shelter. We drove to Wisconsin and loaded her up, this time, it was Sadie who was not too impressed and she may have wanted us to take Summer back. That tongue says it all:

And yet Sadie was very afraid of Steiner, they were never close:

After Summer and Kady died in 2014, we got the pop up camper, and Sadie LOVED camping. Though she could have jumped right through the rear screen, she was content inside, learned to be less reactive, and understood that all those dogs being walked on the site loop belonged there:

The easiest way to get her joyfully bouncing around was to ask her “Do you want to go CAMPING?!?!”

That first year, we went out west to the Black Hills and Hell Creek State Park on the Ft. Peck reservoir, and back through Ft. Stevens State Park in North Dakota and Scenic State Park in northern Minnesota.

In 2017, we went on a long trip along the UP and whew, did it rain:, but as long as she was headed somewhere in the van, she was happy:

Sadie enjoyed camp-hosting in the hybrid “office” at Myre-Big Island, despite the heavy rain:

We spent a lot of time at Myre-Big Island through the years when I was representing Association of Freeborn County Landowners, which I think she found rather boring:

We also picnicked often at Frontenac, staring at Wisconsin’s West Bank:

Spring 2022 we went out west, to Devil’s Tower and Craters of the Moon and places in between:

This spring, before camp hosting, I went to New Mexico, and she was as utterly freaked out by the 60 mph winds as I was. Here in the calm before the storm:

We bailed and caught our breath in hotel in Wichita!

Sadie, Alan, and I camp-hosted through the entire month May this year, yes all month, and she enjoyed being outdoors so much, and of course, she was also so happy to be snoozing in the tent. Here she is supervising clean-up after an intense storm that took out our screen tent, one of many storms that month:

Though we were camp-hosting at Frontenac, she spent some of that time back and forth to Red Wing with Alan.

Did I mention that Sadie loved our new kitties? Oh, right, that’s probably because she didn’t, really. Election day 2016, neighbors across the street posted cats to give away, and I grabbed the cat carrier and grabbed two cats, Maggie and Thor. They each fit in my hand, that small. They were in a cage or a week to adjust, and then freedom. Turned out that the torty female loved Sadie, and was her emotional support animal when it was storming. Thor and Sadie had little to do with each other until the last month or so, when I think Thor sensed Sadie was fading, and he spent a lot of time snuggled with her.

Similarly, when Kady was fading with doggy dementia, though she and Sadie were not close, Sadie comforted Kady, as if she knew.

When Alan was hospitalized with leukemia, she missed him as much as he missed her, so I organized a picnic outside the door, and they both were so happy to see each other. This is my all time favorite photo of her — just look at her smile:

Some time after that, she started going downhill. Her driver-rear knee went out, it was twisting as she walked, and she had trouble on the stairs. She also started peeing randomly, without any notice, no bark, nothing. At that point, she had started on pee pills, and her dosage was increased, but we were often up sometime between 2-4 a.m. to take her out. She still enjoyed going for rides, picnics, and we didn’t camp much due to leukemia, just once in July 2023. She mostly laid around then, which was perfect because Alan was still in the middle of treatment.

Then in June, we went around the south side of Lake Superior to Ontario. She was pretty much stuffed into a packed car, and went along for the ride. She spent most of the time in the tent, snoozing.

The last few months, maybe 6 months, both knees were giving out, her Meloxicam dose was increased, but that’s just blocking pain, there was nothing we could really do. She was coughing now and then and panting all the time, congestive heart failure. She’d also slowed down eating, so we were bribing her with special treats, real lamb hearts, and I even baked her a turkey last week. Then, this last week, she pretty much stopped eating and was emitting with no notice, out of control and really gross, and just laying around, no spark at all. Alan noted later that he thought she’d looked at him eye to eye and told him “I’m done.”

We both spent all day yesterday sitting with her as we waited for word from the vet, and then time to go in — what a long, painful wait that was. Now we’re left with memories of her, and so many photos to remind us of those 14 years we were all together. 3.3gb — so many photos that I had to let it run all night! And after that another 4 hours copying photos of her from all the travel files. AAACK! Fond memories for those two days of consolidating. Here they are, waiting, with Thor comforting our grrrrrrl:

We’re missing our doggy. Fourteen years and one week she was with us, and every time we do anything at all, we’re looking for her. All these photos are comforting, remembering what a good long time we did have with her, that she went everywhere with us, almost, except airplanes and trains. She was a high mileage grrrrrrrl, with us for 14 years and one week. Sadie was the best grrrrrrrrrrrl.

Today, the STrib reports another high-speed option between Metro and Rochester:

A 700-mph tunnel between Twin Cities and Rochester? Group wants $2M from Met Council for ‘hyperloop’ study.

Haven’t they learned anything from Zip Rail?

Zip Rail’s dying gasp…

Apparently not here. And the federal Department of Transportation has issued guidance!

HYPERLOOP STANDARDS DESK REVIEW
Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology (NETT) Council

Back in 2020:

San Francisco To L.A. In 35 Minutes? Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Moves Closer To Reality

Closer to reality? Not quite… Though Musk’s hyperloop did not go far, it just so happened to go belly up at the end of 2023!

The hyperloop is dead for real this time

So now, those workers are looking to move on???

A couple of sentences here caught my attention, and I’m wondering…

Hyperloop One to Shut Down After Failing to Reinvent Transit

DP World, the Dubai-based conglomerate, has backed Hyperloop One since 2016 and owns a majority stake. The startup’s remaining intellectual property will be transferred to DP World, a person familiar with the situation said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-21/hyperloop-one-to-shut-down-after-raising-millions-to-reinvent-transit

Is DP World involved in this reincarnation of the failed Musk Hyperloop?

Just NO! Do we need to go through this again?

Acute Promyleocytic Leukemia sucks, but as sucky things go, this hasn’t been so bad.

Today we had another confab with the Leukemia “fellow,” Dr. Premji, this one in person down in Rochester. She’s very cool, and we’re impressed. Alan’s been getting the best of care imaginable. He’s in the final “cycle” which will be winding up near month’s end. WHAT A RELIEF!!!

We got a look at what’s next, after finishing this EIGHT MONTH LONG round of daily treatment. It’s on a rotating basis back and forth between one cycle with 2 weeks of IV arsenic (arsenic on weekdays) and oral ATRA everyday and then 2 weeks of arsenic only (on weekdays); and the other cycle of 2 weeks of oral ATRA only and then 2 weeks off both. Eight alternating cycles, beginning in July after his June 23rd discharge, and at long last, the last infusion is February 27. TWENTY FIVE DAYS TO GO!

After treatment ends, Dr. Premji said it would be a few months until Alan’s immune system builds up after this extreme treatment, so probably June, but with COVID running rampant again, it’s a good time to be masking and isolating.

Platelets always go down a bit during an arsenic cycle, so no worries, they’ll bounce back! And what an improvement after that initial level of NINE (9) on admission. That rather freaked the doctors out! He’s been in remission since some time in that first blue spike “induction” phase ended, technically in remission on discharge June 23. Outpatient, it’s the “consolidation” phase (no idea why it’s called that), and it’s soon completed.

We’re still waiting on this month’s PML/RARa, should be back in a few days, but here’s verification of the good news, the nasty cells are down to ZERO and have been since early on:

After our March visit, he’ll be scheduled for a visit every 3 months. She said he’s been doing exceptionally well, far better than most, with almost no side effects, mindful that this is not chemo. It’s “treatment,” and always the APL treatment side effects of this are less, not at all debilitating or even uncomfortable, just some weird stuff, occasional headaches, skin falling off!!! We’ve only had one real bump in the road, pneumonia in October, with quick recovery. WHEW!

And after getting back from Rochester, another arsenic infusion today in Red Wing… Can’t wait until we’re done with these Rochester treks, and constant appointments here too, though now at least we know where we’re going in the Rochester tunnels, elevators, and we have quite a few “get out of jail free” cards for the parking lot. Red Wing always takes a long time to get the infusions going, but at least he can get them done here, that helps a lot.

Alan said he’d like another picnic at the Gonda building entrance…

He had to see his doggy, and Mayo wouldn’t let Sadie in, so when weather was good, we had an Indian feast at the door — veggie korma and palak paneer, pakora with lots of coriander chutney, and garlic naan of course. Frankly, that month-plus in the hospital was a rough time I’d rather not relive!

Yup, I’m counting the days until this is OVER! Last arsenic dose, arsenic and ATRA treatment ENDS on February 27th. Another bone marrow biopsy a week later, and meet for our “exit interview” after that.

TWENTY FIVE DAYS TO GO!!!