My Dad has always been a bit of a loner. He was adopted into a small family with one non-biological sibling. They were not close. His brother and adopted parents died decades ago. So he became an orphan, again. When I was a teenager, we lost my brother to leukemia. We were very close. It […]
Life
The Great Reset
Sometimes a course correction is needed. I’ve gotten better at identifying these situations more quickly and coming up with solutions. Recently, I wrote about this on my old school blog. Call it the Great Resignation or Reshuffle or what have you. But I needed a career reset. This week I started a new job. I […]
Letting the Days Go By
In the past, I’ve written about how challenging Minnesotan winters can be. And that was without the added obstacle of a pandemic, when it was still safe to gather indoors with friends and family. Now that we’re into our third pandemic winter, I know I took past indoor winter hangouts for granted. Or just anti-social […]
Welcome to the Heat Dome
My son and I are a blend of homebodies / travelers. We enjoy travel. The pandemic has put a hold on that, of course. After gratefully receiving our vaccinations, our top priority was visiting family in the Pacific Northwest. Historically, Seattle had only reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit three times before. Remarkably, in one heatwave, highs […]
Spectrum of Risk
I have posted about being Minnesotan. And the need to seek out activities over our long winters to avoid cabin fever. Or to get out on hot summer days, when our homes don’t have central air conditioning. I experienced an added dimension to this as the single parent of a child with autism. Early on […]
Prime Number Pandemic Pride Birthday
One of my favorite pastimes is travel. Generally, I enjoy a balance of visiting friends and family elsewhere while also exploring new-to-me locations. At the start of this year I took a solo trip to Portugal (amazing) for the first time. But also planned another Pacific Northwest adventure for my son and I. We set […]
Oh Salty Sea
Much of the focus of my photo blog has been on travel. Something I’ve always felt passionately about. Given we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re barely leaving our home. It’s surreal how quickly things can change. We are in better shape than many, though our two person household has lost two of […]
Such Great Heights
Father of Waters Though we live in Minnesota, somehow my son and I saw the end of the Mississippi River – in Louisiana – before we made it to the headwaters in our own state. I’ve since rectified this. Life has become seriously overscheduled. Not uncommonly so but we hadn’t made it up North in […]
Here We Goat Again
Happy Vernal Equinox! We celebrated Spring a little early. Technically it was St. Patrick’s Day but that doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. We were just excited to hang out on a friend’s goat farm and use his sauna. That was a fantastic way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon. It will be even […]
Feeling Minnesota
Minnesota apologists will claim this is just a normal winter, like the kind we had when we were kids. But no. This extreme weather has all been occurring in a more condensed window. As a friend put it, “it’s like we get all of winter’s greatest hits in one week.†Extreme cold, ice storms, two […]