Regular Life

Road, field, and sky through windshield at 4 p.m. CT Tuesday.
Note: That IS NOT a hillside back there behind the tree line.  That’s black sky.
(click any image to enlarge)
It didn’t seem to matter that the western hemisphere’s tallest cross sits just a few miles from here.
Frozen hell blew into town late Tuesday afternoon and [...]

The Little Christmas
We arrived home well after dark on Christmas Eve and were not looking forward to baking cookies to leave for Santa, even though they were just the cut-off kind. What to our wondering eyes did appear? Why, a Rubbermaid TakeAlong container full of homemade goodies from our new neighbors. Score!
Despite that delightful find, [...]

Road trip.
What was the first thing that popped into your head when you read those two words up there? Excited anticipation? Abject fear? Convenience store restrooms to rival the loo in Trainspotting?
What if you are driving eight hours to see a rock band comprised (mostly) of 50-something men attempting to recapture something they last shared [...]

Click to see the bean grow.
Downtown Chicago, chock full of skyscrapers and cooled by the winds coming off Lake Michigan, has won a place in my heart. More significantly, it has helped thaw my attitude toward urban areas in general. I wasn’t sure at first what did it, but looking back now, I’m fairly certain.
But [...]

Lincoln and Douglas have a campaign spat.
(click to enlarge and sharpen)
Some people on a business trip do their work by day, eat dinner, and then go sit in their hotel room.
I’m not that kind of people. Well, except for tonight, as I sit here writing this, listening to wind-blown rain hitting the window. I alternately [...]

Click to raise your voice with me, or to enlarge and sharpen the picture.
Because Wordless Wednesday really isn’t held on Wednesday, I’m protesting. It’s more a Tuesday afternoon and evening activity, with just a few stragglers posting anywhere near or beyond midnight. Wednesday proper? A rarity. Yes, I know the Internet is international, but most [...]

NOTE: Part 6 of “Off Planet” is available to all those reading it (and to those who are not).
 
The people in the above photos are not virgins.
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My wife went to a museum’s Star Wars exhibit with me, and all I got her were some stinkin’ flowers. If you’re looking [...]

Golden Gate Bridge in Fog
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Our final night, we drove to San Francisco.
I had never been into the city from the Oakland side. The drive over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge conjured up memories of its 1989 collapse, and more recently the Minnesota bridge collapse on I-35. It is a [...]

My last view of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains’ Caples Lake.
(click to enlarge and sharpen)
Had I stayed in Thursday night after work, I would have missed two memorable firsts. I hate to admit that I’m starting to understand why so many people live in California. During a break in the action at the customer’s site that day, [...]

No day-by-day account of my trip this time. I know that tears most of you up, but trust me when I say that 5 p.m. - midnight rarely was enough for a whole post on this trip, even for a mover and shaper like me. Or is that mover and shaker?
(As I type this, my [...]