Say What?

We got 15" of snow out of last Sunday's storm. This winter is reminding me of how I recall the winters from my youth in the mid-'60s. Apparently, we're close to setting a record for total winter snowfall. We may as well at this point but once we've reached it I really hope this stops abruptly. I'm past ready. In the 18+ years I've been in our home, we've never had snowbanks like this at the bottom of our driveway. Tammy and I spent Thursday afternoon at Foci working on the glassblowing fundamentals we've learned. We were greeted by Roxanne at the back step as we arrived and fortunately for her we had a bag of sunflower seeds, suet, and dried corn-on-the-cob. She's a sweet little girl . We'll be back in the studio both Thursday and Friday this coming week. With a family history of chipped and cracked teeth, I suppose I should consider myself fortunate to have gone this long without the need for a crown but my luck has finally run out. I...

I was driving to work last Sunday afternoon to begin my week with a much-welcomed snow-melt underway. A couple of days in the upper 40s during the week made a nice dent in our accumulated snow, so much so that our sump-pumps began running later in the week. But this is Minnesota. We've got a major winter storm bearing down on us with snow totals of 10-16" expected by sometime Monday. Today's drive into work wasn't nearly as nice as last week. Normally I'd have been out on my bike taking advantage of the mild weather but my focus was on glass for the better part of my weekend. Both blown and stained.  Tammy and I had two separate sessions at Foci on Thursday and Friday which helped us a lot in becoming more comfortable about being back in the glassblowing studio again. Steve spent three hours with us on Thursday bringing us back up to speed and helping to rewire in our brains some of the necessary skills of the art. We're so thankful for his interest in seei...

Tammy signed us up for AARP memberships a couple years ago. With our membership, we get their monthly magazine which occasionally has an interesting piece that catches my eye.  I noticed this month's issue sitting on our coffee table earlier in the week with a yellow post-it note marking an article titled Rekindling the Flame , It's true: Sex can get better after the kids move out. The bulk of my reading this week has been on my Kindle so I hadn't taken the time to peruse it but I figured Tammy must've bookmarked it for me to see. Hmmm—I kept meaning to ask her about it. Mom had to go back to Southdale Fairview for another procedure on her pacemaker/defibrillator Tuesday afternoon. The 3rd lead that attaches to the defibrillator portion of her pacemaker had once again come undone and needed to be reattached. While I sat and waited  I occupied my time by reading Dear John (I know, a total chick-flick-book) on my Kindle. What should have been a 45-minute operation l...

It occurred to me that I forgot to mention in my last update a reunion I had a week ago last Monday night with a friend from my Navy days aboard the USS Fresno: Mike Milner. I'd just gotten home from work and was online checking out the day's postings on Facebook when I got an instant message from Mike. (I need to pause here for just a moment to say that I can't think of any other resource that comes anywhere near to doing what Facebook does with respect to helping people reestablish connections from their past) Mike was in town on a layover and was at Barnes and Noble at Mall of America, stuck in town because Homeland Security had yanked him from his flight back to the Philippines just as he was boarding (a whole other story that I won't go into here). It was just after 7:00pm and I told him to hang tight and that I'd be there in less than a half-hour. It had been more than 32 years since I'd last seen Mike. He got his discharge papers while we were in the P...