It was shaping up to be an especially joyous Christmas for us this year. Our daughter would be transitioning to a new position just after the first of the year following a months long deployment. She elected to spend her holiday with us in Maine. A few days after catching a military flight out […]
Author Archives: shakeumup
It is just over a week until Christmas Eve. The presents have all been bought and wrapped. I packed and shipped the gifts for my son and daughter-in-law in Oregon and for our former foreign exchange student and her family in Japan. For my brother and sister and their families in Idaho and our […]
Before we moved to Maine in 2007, our biggest concern was whether we could handle the cold and snowy winter weather that is legendary in New England. In the high desert of Southern California where the temperature only rarely dipped below freezing and snow was an infrequent visitor in winter, it was definitely more of […]
I have been doing stain glass projects for more than 30 years. It all started when I passed a small stain glass studio in a “strip mall” near our condominium in Southern California. There was a sign in the window advertizing a class that was being offered to beginners that I noticed one day […]
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines exotic as “strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual. Madagascar certainly lives up to that definition. We just returned from a two-week vacation in Madagascar. Just getting there involved a 5 hour drive to Boston, a shuttle to Logan Airport, a 7 hour flight to Paris to connect with a […]
“All you can do is the best you can do” was a mantra that I used a lot when my kids were growing up. When they were nervous about a presentation or test at school, an upcoming try-out, game or meet, applying to colleges or for scholarships and lots of other occasions when they felt […]
A few weeks ago I read an opinion piece in USA today in which the author proudly proclaimed that he had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and had only taken one great photograph. In fact he said it was the only one he had taken during the entire trip. His feeling was he […]
