Believe it or not, North Dakota and my childhood home in Utah are both 13 degrees right now.  It’s snowing in Utah, but I spent the day running errands in sunny Bismarck.  Ah!  Contentment!

My top five mentionables (North Dakota on the web) of the day:

1.  A really great comment about North Dakota, by a North Dakotan responding to an article she read.
2. According to a post at the blog Thought Criminal, Weather Modification, Inc. in Fargo is the largest cloud-seeding companies in the world.  I didn’t even know we did that here.
3. Ryan Bakken of the Grand Forks Herald predicts dramatic population growth in North Dakota based on trends for the past couple of years.  Read more here.
4. Plans for a possible new state prison were presented to state Legislators today.  In spite of everything that’s been said about the need for a new prison, I still think remodeling is the way to go.
5. A short but fun article at China Confidential said companies and investors all over the world are beginning to look to North Dakota for oil.

Is there more hype about North Dakota than there used to be?  I think so.  And it’s not all coming from me.