What a difference a day makes

Cf. Vanishing Memorial Sunday.

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Vanishing Memorial Sunday

As busy as I’ve been, I didn’t figure I was up for organizing a camping trip over Memorial Day weekend. As an alternative, Maris, MacGyver, and I planned to drive down to Starved Rock State Park for the day, to hike, eat, hike, and eat, before driving back home in the evening. At 7 a.m., we [...]

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Going on a bear hunt

I showed up early at Bugaboo’s house for Seder today, which meant we had time to read the books I brought for his 5th birthday.  The one about the Gruffalo was a big hit.  Shark vs. Train was an established favorite. But we had the most fun with the book version of that old camp song classic, [...]

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Harlando conducts an attack

I’m just back from 4 days in Cleveland with friends, where we celebrated a traditional Jewish Christmas with Chinese food, movies and games-games-games.  That’s what I call family values. The movie BH & I snuck away to see in the theater—The King’s Speech—was beautifully done. Colin Firth (who so often seems to play an American’s stereotype of a stuffy upper-class Englishman in American-made movies) was really moving.  See it in the theater before [...]

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7th night

Chris-ma-kuh at Casa de Co-Su

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Thanksgiving-birthday-Chanukah extravaganza

Sis, Bro, and Bugaboo came to my place for a Thanksgiving-Birthday-Chanukah celebration on Friday. At 4.5 years old, Bugaboo recognized a number of the letters on his new Alphabeasties cards and, when I remarked on his large vocabulary, explained that this was ” because I have the biggest brain!”  (Apparently, he deduced this from a pre-school lesson [...]

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Here on the lake where I live, V: Halloween edition

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone . . .  through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of [...]

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4th of July

  For several years now, I’ve enjoyed 4th of July with friends on the beach at Ogden Dunes.  We splash with the kids, eat at Dan’s Party Lodge, and go back to the beach for fireworks, put on by a rich dude who has a house right there with a big porch facing Lake Michigan.  Pyrotechnics reflect on [...]

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Dayenu

I went to 2nd seder in Libertyville last night.  This may not technically qualify as a trip out of town, but it would have felt that way if we hadn’t beat the rush hour traffic. My nearly 4-year-old nephew, Bugaboo, attended as well, discovering this home of old friends for the very first time.  Initially, he felt shy in the [...]

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Skip the gefilte fish: Swallow a trout . . .

Yesterday, I celebrated Rosh Hashanah in the home of my 3-year-old nephew, Bugaboo.  Bugaboo has been a great lover of rhyme, rhythm, and onomatopoeia for about a year, and, upon returning from Alaska, I discovered that he is now able to appreciate a bad pun. I found this out on the first sing-through of a book [...]

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