Today when we went out to look for fireflies, M caught a bunch of them while I failed to capture any. We went out a little later than on previous outings, and I noted that I was having trouble seeing the fireflies. Birdie immediately said "Is that because you're an old man?" BURN. That marks the first official time that my daughter made fun of my ( Read more... )

Back in 2017, M and I went down to the Metroparks at dusk to watch the fireflies come out en mass. I don't recall that we've done that since, but this summer we haven't had to. The fireflies have arrived earlier this year (probably because all the spring/summer things are three weeks earlier), and they have been all over our yard ( Read more... )

We left Hilton Head on Thursday, February 2 and arrived in Columbus for a long weekend with M's family on the evening of Friday, February 3. There were a lot of miles and adventures between Hilton Head and Columbus.

Our first stop was Congaree National Park in central South Carolina. Congaree was only promoted to National Park status in 2003, and ( Read more... )

Sometime earlier in the trip, on a date unrecorded by me but I think around the 25th or 26th, M and Birdie had gone to Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge and wandered around. The biggest story to come out of that was that Birdie thought (and still thinks) that the word "mockingbird" is absolutely hilarious. For several weeks she would bust ( Read more... )

After 18 nights in Los Alamos, it was time to move on to new adventures.

Sunday, September 18 - Los Alamos to Ruidoso, NM. ~260 miles.
We'd seen my friend Beth back on September 3. After packing the car and heading south, we met her and her two children at the ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden in Albuquerque. This is in a complex with a zoo and an ( Read more... )

Our last week in Los Alamos seemed jam packed with activities compared to our first two weeks.

Monday, September 12

Bandolier National Monument is very close to Los Alamos and White Rock, adjoining Valles Caldera National Preserve. M had been there on her previous visit and wanted to go back, so off we went to the main visitor's center, which is ( Read more... )

Our first week in Los Alamos was pretty relaxed and we spent a lot of time at the pool. With the closing of the pool after Labor Day, we started getting out and about some more.

Tuesday, September 6

From the Los Alamos / Santa Fe area, there are two different ways to get to Taos. You can either take the Low Road, which goes along the bottom of a ( Read more... )

Much like Formal was our spring special event, Retreat was our fall special event. Retreat was basically a fancy name for "the Phi Kaps go camping," or at least outdoors. We'd take a weekend and go somewhere other than Cleveland. I don't remember if this aligned with Fall Break or was just random.

In the Fall 1999 semester, we rented some cabins ( Read more... )

Saturday was extremely nice here in NE Ohio by the standards of any month, let alone March, so M and I took Birdie out to do some hiking. We've done some of this with her before, mostly in the Rocky River Metroparks on trails that the stroller can easily handle. This gave us our first chance to use the hiking backpack that we got from M's sister ( Read more... )

When we originally got told to work from home, we were told four weeks. That would have had us returning to the office on April 13. Then it was pushed back not once, but twice, which would have had us back in the office on May 4, for a total of seven weeks out of the office. From there, we were pushed back again, so that our next day in the office ( Read more... )