It’s not easy to put together a big holiday meal, or to make time for friends during the holidays. Our earlier attempt to do so was canceled when people were just too busy. Today we tried again, and it went off swimmingly. Everyone brought or cooked something, most of it organic and all of it…

I’ve uploaded my last outing to both Everytrail and ActiveTrails to do a little feature comparison. You can follow the links and play with each yourself. I come out leaning towards ActiveTrails, which has a nice simple interface and does things like printing with grace. Everytrail has a few more features for editing content, and…

The cast at Dad & Sarah’s this year includes Grandma Zita, Tanti Bertie, Jezze, Sarah’s son Adrian and his dog Jasmine. The usual fare was preceded, at Adrian’s request, by an appetizer of giant prawns and scallops that made a delectable meal in itself. No one had the wisdom to stop there, of course, and…

Is it possible to capture the perfect gradient of an Indian Summer twilight? For each color caught, how many are missed? Where is the touch of warm November air on the skin? How do the dry leaves smell as they begin their atonement with the earth?

I occasionally research risk statistics for outdoor activities. What I haven’t looked into nearly as much is why our individual and collective reaction to risks is so disproportionate to the statistics. Tonight I found some interesting thoughts on the subject from a security blogger. While statistics about risk are interesting, they are a relatively new…

We have joked that we’ll just pull our fifth wheel behind our subaru if we need to in a pinch. Ok, maybe not.

The pickup for last batch of locally grown organic veggies in our community shared agriculture program is on the farm north of town. We meet Marcus & Esther to go check it out. It’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed the source of a significant portion of my diet. It becomes instantly obvious to me…

This is a self-published book that tells the story of Marjorie Harrison, a missionary and somewhat distant relative of mine. A major part of her story is her internment in China during World War II. I knew that this began at the missionary school at Chefoo on the northeast coast of China, but I never…

Actually, I hope not. But if you’re already here, the picture was taken on a 1700 mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1996. You can see the whole trip in less than a minute in the flipbook. That’s about as interesting as I get. For those who already know this, the reason for…

We’ve been living our 33-foot fifth wheel for well over a year now, and I can only think of one thing I truly missed. This week our generous friend Alan came to my rescue with a built-to-spec desk that holds all that our previous desk did, and one more thing: my keyboard. I didn’t realize…