Blowing & Drifting

The pathetic “winter” of 2011-2012 has given me a case of un-seasonal affective disorder. I can hardly overstate how much I look forward to winter – the snow above all, but also the cold, the storms, the crisp blue-sky days… This year, we’ve had almost none of that. With only a few brief exceptions, temperatures [...]

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I’m not sure why, but I pretty much stopped blogging late last year, and only posted one or two things during January. The first of February strikes me as a good moment to get back to blogging, which I (usually) enjoy a lot. To get things rolling again, I thought I’d post something that I [...]

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Today I read an incredible essay by Meghan Daum in The Believer – “Haterade.” Equal parts autobiography and social commentary, the article analyzes hater culture on the internet – horrible comment boards on news websites or blogs, vitriolic email criticisms to authors, and so forth. Maybe I’m naive, but I was shocked by some of [...]

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Late last year, I was flabbergasted to discover that one of the cool little shoes-and-clothes shops in our fair city was carrying kromer hats, which are the the de facto official cap of the Upper Peninsula. I had many a kromer when I was growing up, all purchased from the company in Ironwood that’s been [...]

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All right, friends. This blog has been awfully quiet for a while now, but I’m going to break the silence with another post on Shannon’s book. As you know if you’ve recently read this blog or her own blog, you know that her book – The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual – was published last month. [...]

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I am ridiculously lucky to be able to take a lot of time off this holiday season, including all of the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Before Christmas, Shannon and I decided to make the most of this time by doing fun stuff with the girls each day. Early this afternoon, we headed over [...]

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Exactly one year ago – on December 23, 2010 – I skied for 45 minutes in the Carleton Arb. According to last winter’s training log, I’d skied a total of 12:27:48 by then, beginning on November 14. So far this winter, I’ve skied one hour, a couple weeks ago, just after we received our only [...]

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Over our lives together, Shannon and I have enjoyed some everyday accomplishments – buying houses, having kids – and some less-ordinary ones – earning doctorates. Yesterday was a day for a very un-ordinary accomplishment: the publication of Shannon’s first book. This is the culmination of a lifelong dream and a lot of hard work. It’s [...]

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Here is a partial list of make-believe “games” that my daughters play, and what explanation of each that I can offer: Kitchen (cooking and serving food in the play kitchen) House (being a family) Old Fashioned (being the Ingalls family, or another pioneer family) Rich (being a rich family) Poor (being a poor family) Mrs. [...]

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Tonight the girls entertained themselves while I cleaned up the kitchen with the “Naughty or Nice” game at santaclaus.net. They laughed for literally a half hour straight, putting everyone they could think of into the game: themselves, their friends, classmates, fictional characters. And on and on. Santa’s a pretty soft touch; he hardly ever gives anyone [...]

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Friday afternoon, as we headed downtown to do some window shopping, we admired the beautifully-decorated evergreen outside our neighbor Mary’s place. We mused about how it would be nice to have a nicely decorated tree outside our house too. Before I could even get to thinking much about how to make that happen, we’d run [...]

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Vivi woves lerdplay. She and I are the only people in the house who don’t think toying with words is pun-ishment. Her specialty, though, is coining and using nonsense words, the latest and perhaps greatest of which is “baba,” as in Baba? Beebee baba. This muffin is so baba! Daddy! I’m baba to see you! [...]

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Friday afternoon, I rode home through the Arb, which wasn’t unpleasant:

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Yesterday, Shannon passed a pretty cool milestone for her book, and wrote it up in her usual, wonderful way. As her biggest fan, I say, “Congratulations!” and ask, “Is it time to crack that bottle of Champagne yet?” Wondrous Life Yesterday I saw my book, The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual: How to Have a Wondrous [...]

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With the opening of Carleton’s new Weitz Center for Creativity, the College gained several great new spaces for the display of art and other visual materials. The crown jewel is the Perlman Teaching Museum, which is right inside the front door of the Weitz Center and which has two excellent inaugural shows running right now. [...]

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