My parents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2023. They decided that for their anniversary they wanted to take their children and grandchildren on a big vacation. They chose Panama as the destination, and so the 9 of us flew to Panama on Friday, February 16 and returned to the United States on Sunday, February 25. I've already posted a fair ( Read more... )

I didn't really have any plans for major home improvements this year. Sure, we upgraded the internet, but that was more of an attack of opportunity, and it didn't involve capital outlay. Naturally, it's the last day of April and we've already bought ourselves most of a new driveway ( Read more... )

We have come to the end of another travel diary. All that's left is the summary and some errata that didn't fit anywhere else.

En Route to Hilton Head
1. Christmas with M's family
2. New Year's with My family

Hilton Head and Environs
3. Arrival
4. Visiting Jessica & Ned in Charleston, Fort Sumter
5. My parents visit
6. Lawton Stables, Hilton Head ( Read more... )

We went on a 37 day road trip to New Mexico and back in 2022 for my second sabbatical. This surpassed the 32 days I spent in Europe on my first sabbatical as my longest stretch away from work in 20 years at the same employer. Here is the summary of everything I wrote about it.

Preparatory Notes
1. Introduction
2. Planning

Trip Diary
3. The Road ( Read more... )

Yesterday's post about my recent photo-a-day habit was not up for twenty minutes before I remembered that I'd actually done something similar to a photo-a-day activity very early in the pandemic. In fact, it started the day after my last day in the office and continued for 113 straight days ( Read more... )

Way back when I bought my bike, my friend Tony said "the best bike is the one you actually ride." Cameras, it turns out, are similar, in that the best camera is the one you actually have when you want to take a photo. I'd bought a good camera for my European sabbatical in 2015 and it was great, but after that trip I rarely took it with me unless I ( Read more... )

It took me about 16 months, but it's time to do a data dump from the trip M and I took to Washington, DC last summer. As mentioned in the food summary for the trip, we were gone from July 2 through July 7, 2019. The excuse for the trip was seeing the Rolling Stones live in concert. What else did we do with the trip besides eat and see rock & roll? ( Read more... )

We went to Orlando in February, but although I've discussed what we ate there and actually posted some photos, but I never actually did a summary here. Time to correct that.

We were using the work time share I have access to again. I last took advantage on my trip to Colorado in 2018. This was the third time I'd used the house in Orlando ( ( Read more... )

M had long expressed that she wanted to go to Prince Edward Island, or as it is supposedly translated from the local First person's language, "land cradled in the waves". M's desire to visit was driven less by the novel Anne of Green Gables than by the mid-1980s television film, but whatever the reason she wanted to go there, and I certainly had no ( Read more... )

Over the past weekend, my sister and I went to Oklahoma City, which means that she's officially off the hook for not letting us stop there back in 2008 when we drove cross-country. I had floated the idea of a siblings weekend over New Year's when I visited her (and coincidentally when I knocked out Alabama), and from there choosing a state neither ( Read more... )