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I went down to Portland for Mother's Day, and this is the photo my mom took of her three kids: LaVelle, Lonnie, and me from left to right. Looks as though we were having a pretty good time.


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Well, kids, between work and FIAWOL hobbies life has been a bit of a grind lately. Nothing traumatic, mind you, but stressful. So it was with great pleasure that I flew the frenetic coop for Maui on June 13th.


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Had a wonderful weekend in Portland with the family. Lots of great conversation, and if this one sticks with me, it's probably because it was the last one. As things were winding down after Mother's Day dinner, Mom started reminiscing about life with some of the less pleasant factions of the Mennonite church. In particular she talked about the ( Read more... )

My brother and his wife visited this weekend. They drove up on Saturday, and we visited our Yapese friend, Theo, who is in the area because his granddaughter just had a liver transplant at Children's Hospital. We got the low-down on the transplant, which sounded very scary but apparently went very well. We also got a lot of stories about what's ( Read more... )

Because I worked on Christmas Eve, I didn't head to the family gathering in Portland until Christmas morning. I caught the first train from Seattle at 7:30am, and because it was only ten bucks more expensive I rode business class. It was very pleasant, and I drank a couple of Irish coffees because it was a holiday. The guy working in the bistro car ( Read more... )

Three weeks ago I was planning one of my trips to the Olympic Peninsula, where I love to immerse myself in the natural beauty of ocean, beach, rain forest, and mountain. Then on Thursday the 6th, just three days before I was going to head for Astoria on the first leg of that trip, I found myself at work trying to decipher an old database while ( Read more... )

On Saturday my family had a pig roast at my brother's place to celebrate three milestone birthdays: my mom's 80th (which was last year), my brother's 60th, and my younger nephew's 21st. Parties are such a microcosm of life, aren't they? Especially big ones. So many memories are conjured, so many old relationships come into play, and new ones formed ( Read more... )

I took the train to Portland for Mother's Day weekend. My parents got back from winter in California just a couple of weeks ago. It was a pretty low key weekend for the most part. My nephews didn't come up until Sunday, and my great niece was also only with us on Sunday. She's such a cutie pie. Yesterday we were singing "I've Been Working on the ( Read more... )