On warm summer afternoons, I’ll at times work from my home office—the patio in our back yard. There’s a quiet of a different sort out there. At my church study, I’m not normally bothered by much sound at all, frankly. The phone rings from time to time. If someone comes…
I’ve shared before that my first real job was at the Ponderosa Steak House in Lombard, Illinois. In the two years I was there, I worked up from dishwasher to “potato boy” to eventually earning the coveted position of cook. My number one task as a cook was to make…
Recently I was…somewhere…and a song came on, the tune sounded vaguely familiar, as if from my ancient past. I paused to listen but couldn’t quite make out the lyrics until the last line, apparently repeated at the end of each stanza. Ah, but I was so much older then; I’m…
On a recent Saturday, the weather finally turned nice enough to go for a walk along the riverfront in nearby Dixon. Wasn’t all that warm—in fact, the breeze was cold—but the sun was out, the sky, blue, and a pretty good day, overall. So, off we went—we, being my wife…
In his book Backpacking with the Saints, Belden C. Lane candidly shares a couple of hiking “fails” in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains when he was a college student. On one occasion, he and his roommate were on a descent that involved a seemingly endless series of switchbacks. So, they thought…
My first real attempt at hiking was, shall we say, a learning experience. I wish I hadn’t waited until my late 30s to learn, but there I was. The youth leader at our church in Shelburne, Vermont, took some of the guys on an overnight backpacking trip to the summit…
Pop singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan scored a hit with the song Ordinary Miracle, which included the following lyrics: It’s not that unusual When everything is beautiful. It’s just another ordinary miracle today. The sky knows when it’s time to snow, Don’t need to teach a seed to grow. It’s just another…
Things were going quite well, I must say, on the indoor project lined up for the day. Needed to tear out a room of carpet—a relatively small bedroom—and replace it with some vinyl plank flooring. Fortunately the carpet wasn’t glued down, so cutting it into strips, rolling it up, same…
As a somewhat casual Minnesota Vikings fan, I should have watched the entire recent NFC Wild Card playoff game between the Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. If I were a die-hard fan, I would have. But, I figured the Saints would get revenge on the game a couple years…
As a Christmas gift this year, my wife, Chris, gave me the book Two Miles an Hour for down-time pleasure reading. Someday I may do a book review on it, but a few of the author’s experiences struck me, particularly since I’ve been thinking about the year ahead with its potential…
