Lucky loves cruises and Lexan loves boats, so clearly our major vacation this year had to be a cruise. ( I'm a maximizer )

I felt like we got to Maine and were basically winging our vacation, even though I spent about a day planning the trip (half a day booking lodgings and another half day researching the national parks) and I've been to the same area with my family before. I even failed to acquire a guide book of any sort and my aunts who take their families to ( Read more... )

• Good, quality time with my father's family over the weekend. It's been >5 years since I saw all of them in one room and I'm glad we had a big party for my cousin-who-is-in-terrible-health's 70th birthday. I found new depths in several of them and I WILL see more of some of them.
  
• A great workout with my sister, where I heard about what's up with her ( Read more... )

Andrea Lankford's Ranger Confidential was a monthly $2 Kindle book at some point and I'm surprised I picked it up, because I rarely read memoirs, let alone outdoors memoirs. She was a ranger in Yosemite, and several other NPS locations, and tells her stories and those of her friends. She claims that NPS staff get shot at more than even BATF or the ( Read more... )

I feel bad about how the weekend went, bc so many people were so helpful, it must be my fault it went wrong. Fri night, we drove to the Daks, stopping at Poughkeepsie EMS where a hurried, but helpful, then concerned employee showed us the only map they had of Mt. Marcy and sold us a poncho bc I forgot my rain shell in Manhattan (I think). We ( Read more... )

After all this time, you'd think I'd be getting used to having not only a partner, but a family, but no. Fri evening, a friend texted that he'd be unexpectedly be in town, would I like to have dinner. I had nothing on my calendar, so of course, except we had to figure out whether the child was coming to dinner, which involved negotiating with his ( Read more... )

For me to join the easiest (but still not easy) guided trip up Rainier is what it must be like for a Division III athlete to play in a Texas high school football game. ( experience counts )

Despite my siblings taking the cars and a mild chance of rain, Jon and I finally made it on our planned Memorial Day trip. ( boring logistics, food, Wimpy-Gilman and Preppy's Crack )

I think it's sort of funny how Black Friday has become its own special holiday. I'm surprised at how muted it's been this year: is it just me? On Friday we ended up going to the main shopping district in my hometown. Parking was slightly more difficult than a typical weekend, but Saks wasn't particularly crowded. I tried on a few dresses; the one I ( Read more... )

I'm having trouble writing about my trip to Geneva bc I feel bad about being so negative. On the other hand, one of the top 5 things that happened on the trip was my niece pooping herself and trying to eat it, involving her mother plaintively calling my brother to help. It was kinda awesome, really ( Read more... )