Mission Creep Ever since human beings have gathered together with enough organization to marshal an army, they have succumbed to the temptation of allowing their military objectives to gradually shift and circumstantially over-commit to any manner of unanticipated objectives. But it wasn’t until the 1990’s in Somalia and the Blackhawk Down problems in Mogadishu that some NYT or WAPO journalist came up with a catchy term to explain what was turning into U.S. State Department…
Home Alone Who doesn’t love the original 1990 Macaulay Culkin movie with such greats as Joe Pesci, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara? The idea of a kid left alone and on his own devices over the holidays is a hilarious premise, made all the funnier by the ne’er-do-well assailants slipping, falling and setting themselves on fire as they try to best the kid left Home Alone. Well, I have been left home alone for the…
Dizzy Disney Today Kim takes daughter Carolyn, her husband John, granddaughters Charlotte and Evelyn, as well as sister-in-law Lisa to Disneyland. Carolyn and her family will stay for three days while Kim and Lisa return after one day of Disney overdose. Carolyn and her family are addicted to Disney as much as anyone can be. She and John got engaged at Disney World and they have each spent milestone birthdays there (she at 30 and…
Learning How to Sweat Again Before you get too excited, let me start by saying that I have not reformed and started going to the gym or anything radical like that. What has happened is that the heat dome that has been hanging over the Southwestern states for over a week has extended its fringe over the mountains to our east and crept up our hillside ever so slightly. Let’s be clear, when you look…
RichFlix My son Thomas is a top notch video producer. It is what he does for a living, now on a freelance basis, but previously for Shake Shack and then for an advertising agency. Besides commercial work and promotional videos, he has also been hired to record and storytell for gatherings. He recently spent a week in Cabo San Lucas on the Mexican Baja at a corporate incentive meeting and filmed it with every piece…
Masculinity is a Prison That title was the t-shirt worn at the family gathering in Utah last week by Kim’s 6’6”, 300-pound rugby-playing nephew who literally wears size 16 shoes. His name is Josh and he and his 6’4”, 340-pound, also rugby-playing, brother, Will are either the last gasp of the Gen X crowd or the first entrants into the Millennial cohort, depending on how you slice the generational cake. Both of these guys are…
A Not-So-Happy Meal During our go-home day after a long 2,200-mile roadtrip with my daughter and her family and two granddaughters, all sitting amongst piled-up luggage and miscellaneous souvenirs (including one particularly sweet rusted metal armadillo with a bobble-head that was purchased in an old Route 66 way-station) in a rented dirty white church van that had served us well, Kim started out with a desperate cry for a stop at Starbucks. I had a…
Ghosting Ourselves The last day of our Wild West Tour starts at the Grand Canyon and heads west for 200 miles near Bullhead City to a little town in the Black Mountains called Oatman. Oatman is a small mining town that was only incorporated in 1915 after a small gold find by a couple of lucky prospectors. That means that this little town was not really a part of the original Wild West of the…
Cathedral Hopping When you purchase a high-end tour package or cruise these days, there are almost always pre-trip or post-trip add-ones that represent some logical and generally in-demand extensions to the baseline trip. These add-ons are usually driven by the location of the original trip. For instance, when we went to the Baltics a few years ago for a cruise, we were able to add-on a few days in Iceland, presumably getting a better deal…
So Long, Farewell This morning was our collective get-away moment, so naturally, there was one last opportunity for fun during breakfast at the Lodge at Red River Ranch. Whenever you get a large multi-generational group together for a few days of fun, there are bound to be a range of personal circadian habits on display. The group is made up of early birds and night owls. The night owls tend to be the ones that…