A Grand Tour of the Midwest
Well, I won't see Tacoma again until the next decade. Mary and I are skipping town and spending the holidays with her family in the Midwest. First stop: St. Louis, for 5 or 6 nights. Followed by a night in Madison, WI (after a long day in the car). Then a few nights on Madeline Island, a small island in Lake Superior and the site of my marriage proposal two years ago! From there we'll wind things up with a night or two in Minneapolis and catch a flight back home early in the new year. It's a long trip Read more…
Hanberg Family Football Game
We rekindled an old tradition that died out 10 or 12 years ago. Our early Christmas celebration with the Hanberg side of the family used to include a 3-on-3 or 4-on-4 touch football game. I use "football" loosely, here. Plays include hidden ball tricks, singing Jingle Bells to distract the opposition, and hiking the ball when the QB says blueberries. Since we've been celebrating this Christmas in Eastern Washington for the last few years, we've generally had too much snow to manage the game. But there's just a light dusting here, so we took advantage and re-started it. If we Read more…
I need to cull the herd a bit before checkout …
But I want them all!
Ha! Trekkies on Vacation
“If you’re a travel journalist, does that mean you’ve come here to write about us?” “Yes, as a matter of fact I’ll be writing about everything that happens on this cruise.” A woman in the front row wrinkles her brow at me. “So that means you’re kind of like the Talosians from ‘The Menagerie,’” she says. “Talosians?” “Yes, the Talosians,” she says. She gazes at me for a beat. “You’ve come to observe our behavior like we were animals in a zoo.” I give the woman a neutral look; I’m not sure what she’s talking about. “Season one, episode 11,” Read more…
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