Slight Detour: Saturday Slight

The morning walk with Bridie was a bit blizzardy this morning.

Still, it was lovely seeing the ever-evolving snowy scenes in our beautiful woods.

Bill had told me yesterday about a squirrel's nest which he saw yesterday not far from the woodpecker tree.

Determined to take a picture, I looked and looked but did not find, so will ask for directions on a later trip.

Like yesterday, I did ford some standing water in the dips along the way, and this morning a little trickle seeped into one boot.

This is March, and we're seeing more winter than we've seen most days during this season.

I think it's becoming a March thing to save some winter for us so we don't get too arrogant in thinking we've beaten or escaped the bad stuff.

Last early March, Bill, my friend Chris and I set off on a road trip for Southern Idaho on a very snowy day.

We weren't too concerned because we were headed south. It turned out, though, that the winter weather in Idaho Falls was much worse than that in Sandpoint.

Our two days spent catching up with a mutual friend, who'd driven up from Colorado, were mostly spent inside the rental house except for a couple of outings where extreme care was needed to walk from the house to the cars.

The place had been iced in, and not watching one's every step could have proved costly. We were very careful.

We drove through snow going and snow coming back, and it was March.

I remember the blizzard of March 13 a few years ago on the day which I coined the second worst day of my life. I've mentioned, in past posts, the drifting snow and the geyser from a pipe that had burst out in the far pasture behind an imposing snow bank.

It just seems to keep happening that winter likes March more and more each year, so I guess some day we'll become believers and cast away all hope that spring is just around the corner cuz, after all, IT'S MARCH.

Such madness, and I'm not even talking basketball.

In this morning's post, I'll mention basketball but I'll also mention gratefulness for friends and Bill in a less than stellar week brought on by my own stupidity.

My explanation will be succinct. Don't pick at your face.

I am grateful for my friends' support through their humor, understanding and advice with no lectures.

I'm grateful to Bill for going the extra mile to Wal-Mart and helping me through my week of hiding from the public, except for a few "patch" moments.

My take on this week besides the extreme gratefulness: I won't do that again!

I'm also grateful, in this world so encumbered by ugly behavior of people who should know better, to see and read about people who still do and say the right things.

I've included a couple of examples on this morning's post. Please let these people's voices rise up and remind us of the abundant goodness and perspectives that are so overshadowed in our world.

So, here's Take One, which I read this morning on Twitter.

Take Two is a poignant video seen at the bottom.

Hope these two perspectives help your day as much as they have inspired mine.

Happy Saturday.

💚💜💓🏀🏀🏀🏀💜💓💛💜

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

Dear Caitlin Clark,

This week, I was lucky enough to see you play in person. I brought my 5-year-old daughter to Williams Arena in Minneapolis, where I live now with my wife and two girls. You dominated as usual and were playing at a different level than anyone else on the court. The shots you were making reminded me of when I would play NBA video games with a cheat code.

To be honest, we really don't have much in common. I'm a first-generation Sri Lankan immigrant, and my parents didn't really know much about American sports, so I found my own path. I remember watching a VHS tape with a documentary I found of Michael Jordan and was amazed by him. I watched "Space Jam" and joined my middle school basketball team. I was terrible. On my best day, on full stretch, I'm a whopping 5 feet 4 inches. Basketball never was and never will be my jam.

In late middle school I discovered tennis. I was good, not great, but I harnessed the energy of MJ and learned how to outwork and outhustle my opponents and ended up playing in high school and college. I learned a lot of life lessons from sports along the way and I told myself I would teach my kids how to play sports early so they wouldn't be playing catch up like me.

For better or worse, this imaginary future kid I was teaching was always a boy

Fast-forward a few years, and I now am the proud dad to two girls. For the first few years of their short little lives, my work prevented me from spending as much time as I wanted with them. I've been intentional about building my relationship to these two absolute gems of humans — but at first, it was hard to connect. I played dress-up and dolls and let them paint my fingernails — all of which they loved, but mommy was always better at it. We started regular daddy daughter dates to help foster our relationship.

My youngest daughter was an easy egg to crack. We both love cinnamon rolls and have regular daddy daughter dates exploring various cinnamon roll shops around the Twin Cities. My eldest daughter has been more complex. It took a while, but I found my cheat code.

Caitlin Clark.

Our daddy daughter dates occur whenever you play. We sit back, relax, and watch you dominate. I see the same transformation in her as I did in myself when I first learned of the grit and tenacity that was "like Mike." Together, I've watched my daughter's confidence soar as we have learned about how practice helps you get better, how to be a good teammate, and how sometimes we win and sometimes we lose, but we always try to our best.

Before you came along, I was stuck in a rut in my own fatherhood, because I had only ever imagined raising a boy. I don't believe this shortsighted childhood perspective was borne of bigotry or pro-patriarchy sentiments. Rather, like many Americans, my fault was that the lens in which I viewed the future was biased by my own personal experience. While I was getting my fingernails painted and playing with dolls, it was hard for me to impart the "be like Mike' lessons that shaped my own childhood.

This week, I spent an outrageous amount of money to see you in person with my 5-year-old daughter. You were electric as usual and we jumped and danced and cheered. At one point, my daughter leaned over to me and said, "She hits that shot in the game because she works on it a lot in practice, right daddy!" It was worth every penny. You even graciously stuck around and signed our jersey at the end of the game. I said, "Thank you! You are amazing!" I wanted to say so much more, but there were hundreds of other little girls with their moms and dads waiting to see you.

Allow me to try one more time now that the throngs of adoring fans are gone:

Dear Caitlin Clark,

If you read this, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for being an electrifying, transcendent athlete who is actively changing the world of sport. But mostly, thank you for helping me be a better dad.

Asitha Jayawardena

Dr. Asitha Jayawardena is a pediatric ENT surgeon at Childrens Minnesota.

Another BIG GAME Day for the ZAGS.

In fact, it's a "VIG" aka Very Important Game.

Gonzaga's Bulldogs visit the St. Mary's Gaels in Moraga tonight in hopes of gaining some redemption for the loss the Gaels handed the ZAGS at home earlier in the season.

Let's go ZAGS and finish the season with a win.

7 p.m.

ESPN