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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If Mother Nature respected my wishes, She would have blanketed southern Minnesota in snow six weeks ago. In fact, I would have been happy with snow six days ago. But we’re still snowless here, so I figured that a solid gravel-road ride could stand in for my three-year streak of skiing on Christmas Day. It [...]

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True to tradition, Julia is making Christmas presents for the rest of us. She started making me a book – How to Be a Good Daddy! – but then abandoned it. This is a shame, given that the first page is GENIUS and because I would love to read the other chapters, especially number 6, [...]

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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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Wednesday, I took the day off to do a long gravel ride, my first substantial bike outing after the Almanzo way back in May. I had initially intended to do an all-day century, but then I decided that my legs probably couldn’t handle a hundred miles of gravel cycling. Luckily, the guys down at my [...]

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At 9:00 a.m. today, I started the Big Woods Run half-marathon, the longest running race I’ve done to date. I trained pretty hard for the race, and that training paid off in a good effort that wound up being a few minutes behind my target. But I had a lot of fun, and certainly feel [...]

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I’ve been training pretty seriously since July for the Big Woods Run half marathon on October 15 – “seriously” meaning that I’ve been getting coaching advice from an Internet friend who’s a pretty fast runner/cyclist/triathlete. The regimen she’s worked out for me has been pretty tough – some two-a-day workouts, long runs that are longer [...]

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Sunday, I went with the girls to their swimming lessons, offered by Making Waves swim school, which apparently specializes in aquatic miracles. A year ago, Julia would literally cry if she got her face wet in the tub. All summer, and now into the fall, she’s happily swimming underwater, jumping into deep water, and generally [...]

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Shannon took this rather nice picture of me in the 15k road race that I ran earlier this month. I’m the one wearing an actual shirt.

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Sunday morning, I ran the 15km road race that’s a perennial part of Northfield’s huge Defeat of Jesse James Days festival. I ran the 5km event a few times a few years ago, and I’ve long wanted to step up to the “big race.” This spring, after finishing the Almanzo cycling race, I figured I [...]

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The first day of school was a non-event for Julia, who was excited about second grade but accustomed to school, and a huge honking deal for Genevieve, who was reluctant to get too excited about KINDERGARTEN! Right up until Monday night, she kept telling us that she didn’t want to go to kindergarten. I expected [...]

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More or less on a whim, I kept track of every single thing I read – online or off; blog post, newspaper article, magazine essay, or book; for work or pleasure or by accident – during August 2011. You can find the complete rundown on my Tumblr blog, My Reading List. Two takeaways: I needed [...]

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