1. Five Days / Four Nights Returning solo to Texas from Michigan was a five day affair. I had the teardrop behind me. I knew that I didn’t want to drive over 60 and so planned to avoid Interstates entirely. (Don’t look at me like that! The Fair and Industrious Trudy is completely onboard with […]
Yearly Archives: 2024
Leftovers
Tue, 30 Jul 2024, 11:55 AM (-06:00)
1. New York Leftovers I crossed the St. Lawrence River from Canada to New York windows wide open. The temperature dropped, bringing joy to driving the Thousand Islands Bridge solo despite the lack of anyone to describe the beauty of the amazing world passing below — a world of clear water, of sunlight bouncing off […]
Not Shabby at All
Wed, 24 Jul 2024, 07:06 PM (-06:00)
The squirrels are chowing down on the White Pine cones. There’s one over there eating one as you might eat a cob of corn. Eating one and then hopping over to the base of a different tree to inspect the fallen cones for a follow-on course. And he just found one right there half the […]
Hillary
Tue, 23 Jul 2024, 06:17 PM (-06:00)
1. Breakfast at the Hotel The guest room in my dad’s condo in Ottawa was always, shall we say, a bit cramped. The desk and the bookshelves that lined two walls and the old-school four-drawer file cabinets took up about a third of the space. The fold-out sofa bed took up another third. That left […]
Mom and Dad
Tue, 23 Jul 2024, 10:53 AM (-06:00)
My mom loved wild tiger lilies. She collected seeds from along the road and propagated them on the hill. While I was in Canada, they started blooming. Hi Mom! My dad loved donuts. He lived just around the corner from a Tim Horton’s. On the way back from Canada… Well don’t judge me, please. Hi […]
No One Would Ever Publically Admit
Sat, 20 Jul 2024, 09:48 AM (-06:00)
Let’s just say that I’m glad I wasn’t flying yesterday, or crossing a land border, for that matter. Or managing production CloudStrike software. All that hoo-hah makes me think about four things… 1. Config files Software systems often come in two parts: (a) the code that does the heavy lifting, and (b) config files with […]
Swimming Across the Lake
Mon, 15 Jul 2024, 06:03 PM (-06:00)
1. Rules Based Order Old hands — those whose memories of this place go back before their memories of this place, those who recall the cacophony of frogs before the chorus fell silent, those who remember when the southern end of the lake was still wild, before lakeside swimming pools and fertilized lawns replaced the […]