On the second day of my Portland trip I was invited to join a practice session with a competitive Dragon Boat racing team. They only had 19 of the full 20 rowers available that morning and let me take the empty seat. It helped that I knew someone on the team. The team is called […]

For a couple of years now Liam has wanted to go to Yellowstone for a summer trip, but his sister did not. That is not to say that we did not have some great trips to Chicago and New York that I think both kids would say were fun, but this year with Ann out

Ann stopped by today and while the discussion was mostly about university-type things, she did end up on a tangent that touched me. It was a story that I want to share as it shows that the Good Samaritan is alive and well—at least in Canada. She and an ex-boyfriend, (I’m not really clear on

Liam was on a mission trip to Haiti earlier this week. The flight took him and 32-some others down to Ft. Lauderdale.  Then there was a delay… It was just something that happens when you’re flying right? The kicker is that when they finally took off and were 2000 feet off the ground of the

Today me and my mom and my step-dad celebrated Mother’s Day with a picnic and a hike. The weather was amazing and unexpected. It was the sort of day where my mom took off her raincoat about a half of a mile in. While the weather report said otherwise, it did not rain at all

Late night prepping for a Mother’s Day picnic (rain or shine) and bike ride (shine only—otherwise maybe Scrabble or whatever she wants to do). With a packed weekend, it was cook now or it wouldn’t be much of a picnic… The picnic / doing something outside (bike riding, hiking, kayaking, etc.) is something of a

These are the latest additions to my porch, (there are two of them). For a few years my porch was the domain of a couple of robins, (except that they camped out on top of the porch light which must have been really annoying as it is attached to a motion detector and lights up

This is as nearly as close to empty as I have ever gotten. Note that the tank holds 21 gallons meaning I had a little over a half gallon left. (I showed this picture to my daughter and she fixated on the price until I directed her to the gallon line and explained why I

I woke up and checked my watch. It was 4:15 which was 15 minutes before my alarm was set to sound. Sighing I rolled over and shut my eyes hoping to squeeze as much sleep as I could out of the available time before facing either a full day of travel or one of sight-seeing.