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What’s going on in my life
I posted this vintage Christmas card to Facebook to amuse my friends. The kid’s woeful expression prompted a few comments. Really, though, if you study 19th and early 20th century portraits, photos, and illustrations, unsmiling faces were the rule rather than the exception. People always looked somber. I started to wonder why that was. Well, for one thing, […]
Yesterday Polly and I visited our friend Ed’s garage to do some cosmetic work on the Ducati. Ed, as regular readers know, is not only a friend but my motorcycle maintenance guru. With his help, we put on new clutch & brake levers, bar end mirrors, and front turn signals. The bike’s still a little rough, but there must […]
Post-Thanksgiving, post-anniversary, pre-Christmas. A welcome break, and a chance to catch one’s breath. Mostly thanks to Polly (but I hepped!), our outdoor lights are up. Naturally our neighborhood Griswold decided to one-up everyone by opening a Toyota dealership at his house. Goddamn thing is visible from the highway! About 8:30 PM on the eve of our […]
I was told again and again, but kept forgetting. Before Donna even got out of bed Sunday morning I was in the kitchen starting a big pot of chili. By the time she emerged, it was too late to stop: the beans and meat were in the pot, bubbling away. She shook her head and explained once more that […]
Black Friday is a tawdry commercial invention and I won’t give it the dignity of calling it tradition, no matter how many years it’s been going on. A tradition I endorse, on the other hand, is the Black Friday horror story. Another tradition I endorse is avoiding human contact by shopping online. But in a fit of […]
This morning I went looking for family photos to post to Facebook, it being Thanksgiving and all. The last time we were all together was in March, when we went skiing at Brian Head, Utah. I found a great photo of us with our children, Gregory and Polly, and one with our grandchildren, Taylor and […]
Here’s a photoblog of my recent mini-gypsy tour of the Salton Sea and Death Valley, 12-15 November 2015, with my friends and fellow Goldwingers Ed and Steve. Thursday morning in Tucson was sunny but cold, and I was dressed for it. I wore long johns under my pants and a zip-in thermal liner under the leather jacket. I wore a silk […]
I don’t know when Veterans Day turned into Veterans Week, but it has, so I don’t feel too bad posting a little of my own veteran history one day early. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, a brand new F-15 Eagle pilot in the 32nd […]