People from the Upper Midwest often carry a special burden.  We fancy ourselves relatively unemotional, even stoic, tend to put everything in negative terms ("Could be worse" was high praise where I grew up in Minnesota) and we often discuss things in a more indirect or roundabout way.  In fact, I had a buddy who once suggested his boss was a real "rocket scientist" by saying he must be buying up all the local warehouse space to store the rockets he was building.  Well, just something to keep in mind, I guess?