Please allow me to indulge in this brief moment of sincerity, inspired by Adam’s recent post.

Ten years ago…

-I weighed about 80 pounds more than I do today.

-I was at the most depressed, emotionally screwed up point in my life.

-I had managed to push away most of my closest friends through a series of selfish, self-destructive behaviors.

-I had a terrible work ethic and had little professional ambition beyond working at the music store near my college.

-I could fit all my worldly belongings inside my Chevy Lumina.

-I didn’t read books and my academic curiosity was minimal.

-I was afraid to commit to a relationship with God because I feared he would ask me to give up things that I now realize were silly or futile to begin with.

-I didn’t know how to let my guard down and stop the jokes.

-I spent all my money on music and fast food.

-I had a bloated ego that was in the process of being crushed to smithereens by life’s circumstances.

-I had never changed a diaper or had a baby smile at me in recognition.

-I had a fear of my own deep-seeded emotions which manifested itself in a latent callousness toward women.

Ten years later, I still don’t have everything figured out, but it’s pretty amazing to consider what God was able to do in my world over this last decade.

At one point during in school last year I had a hard time explaining to my students how Michael Jackson could have been such a cool, universally beloved figure in the 80s – they had grown up with the absolutely bizarre behavior and child molestation charges surrounding him, and never got a chance to experience Michael Jackson as The Most Talented Man on the Planet.

As a kid in rural Minnesota, I idolized certain pop cultural figures like he and Kirby Puckett. Turns out both of them had their demons, but there weren’t any bigger in my world when I was young.

Well, now Michael Jackson is dead at age 50. He is survived by his children Blanket, Pickle, and Rainbow Bright.

Hey guys, remember when Leroy ate all the brownies?

Well, guess what? Now Leroy is a father, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Yesterday, little Forrest D. Dehnke was born! Hooray for writhing newborns!

What does the D stand for, you ask? Get ready for this: Danger.

And that, my friends, is not a joke. Rather, it is the single greatest middle name I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.

Congratulations Leroy & Krista!

Bridgette and I went through the toughest few months of our marriage last fall when we suffered a miscarriage in September. In no way am I pretending that this was worse than the terrible pains that so many people experience, but the experience of grieving that loss and coping with the accompanying fears and deferred hopes was a struggle for many weeks. For me as a husband, it was particularly difficult to see my wife, who for so many years has wanted nothing more than to be a mother, suffer so much and not be able to make it all go away for her. Here is a song I wrote during the experience, offering probably a better description of the entire experience than I can work up now. Suffice to say, we were comforted immensely by our close friends and church community at the Rock.

Now, seven months later, I am so, so happy to tell all of you that we’re thirteen weeks pregnant. Lord willing, we’ll have a baby this October. I’d be lying if I said that this pregnancy has been a carefree one thus far. In truth, it’s been filled with a tremendous amount of anxiety and guarded hopes. It’s only been in the last couple weeks, upon hearing our baby’s heartbeat and getting through the critical first trimester that we’ve finally been able to talk about this as if it’s actually happening, as opposed to the big might. It’s not that we haven’t been able to trust God, it’s just that our wound was still fresh enough that it took a little work to let our hearts go there again. Little by little, however, conversations have turned to baby names (Slobodan McWiggles Welle has already been cruelly dismissed), and the logistics of becoming parents. It’s been an exciting few weeks, made even more so by the announcement that Dairy Queen has made Chocolate Truffle the Blizzard of the Month for April.

To all of you who worry that this news somehow bodes ill for the JLP. Fear not – I will remain true to my pledge of old. The John Larroquette Project will never become a horrible baby blog where I share cute stories and cute pictures and say cute things and post once every eleven weeks. I will continue to spend 6 minutes most weekday mornings making this site the bastion of obscure historical trivia and pagan goat-feasts you have come to tolerate. I will delight in animal hoarder stories. I will make fun of joy and kindness and other human emotions that make me uncomfortable.

Well, maybe I’ll blog about our baby sometimes. I’ll just try to keep things even-handed by writing about the awesomeness of corn dogs the next day.

Hot off the VCR, here are a couple videos from Three String Chord’s debut concert last week!

Here’s us doing Save Me, a song of mine from back in the old Welmore Mile days…

And here’s us slip-sliding our way through Peaceful, Easy Feeling by the Eagles. I think we managed quite nicely, at least once our singer got started…

For more live recordings and details on our next show, check out our MySpace page!

Over the past few years, Bridgette and I have been able to invite a few friends to join us at my grandparents’ remote cabin in Chippewa National Forest. (see here, and here, and here, and also here)

Now it looks like those days are going to be no more, thanks to the State of Minnesota’s skyrocketing tax and lease rates.

When the cabin’s lot was originally leased 30 years ago (can’t buy land in a national forest), the lease rate was at $60 a year, and it held at that rate for a long while. Over the past 10 years, the lease rate has increased at double digit rates annually to the point where it now stands at $1,200 a year. In 2010, the lease will be $4,000 annually, and that’s just for the small lot of land.

State taxes have also been increasing rapidly on cabin properties. Last year, the family paid $1,100 in property taxes, and this year the rate topped out at over $2,000.

This means that by next year, the family will be be paying over $5,000 in taxes and fees for a 600 square foot summer occupancy cabin deep in the woods. Trust me, there’s nothing luxurious about this place – it’s basically a hunting shack with three fridges. If we got lucky, we could sell the place for $120k.

So we’re probably going to be selling the place, since the costs of ownership and upkeep have rapidly begun to outpace the benefits of owning a cabin on a dirt-poor Indian reservation.

Our only hope is if I can somehow return to the cabin and find that mythical can of Stroh’s that transformed me in to the rugged man of wilderness vengeance back in 2004:

I can see it now, I would sluggishly sip the stale Stroh’s, and in an instant transmogrify into a simmering, sinewy man-beast capable of chasing down a wolf on foot and slamming it to death against an oak tree. I would sniff at the morning air and detect the weak, fusty scent of Minnesota Senate Democrat and chair of the Senate Tax Committee Larry Pogemiller. Then I would bark to him in hoarse, haggard shouts across Lake Winnebigoshish. Then he might commit suicide or something.

Be forewarned, Larry Pogemiller! It won’t be long before I find the Stroh’s of Legend!