Category: Reminiscing
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Florida’s Wild Weather
Reading Time: 6 minutesAfter Hurricane Ian in September 2022, I didn’t write much about the experience of riding out our first hurricane. I knew people wanted to know we were ok, and I said enough about it on this blog and social media to make sure they knew we were. To be honest, I don’t… Read more
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Swamp Peddlers
Reading Time: 5 minutesA couple of weeks ago our Rotonda West Homeowners Association held a presentation by the Charlotte County historian on the history of Rotonda. I’m always interested in history, especially when I am fairly new to an area. I’d read a book written by Rotonda resident Jack Alexander in 1995 called Rotonda: The… Read more
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Florida to Wisconsin. The Hard Way.
Reading Time: 5 minutesI have a nickname (in the vein of Native American names like Sitting Bull, Wilma Mankiller, or Crazy Horse) in the Grathen family…. Maps Are My Life. Randy’s sister, Kristine, calls me this because I love road maps. I especially like them when we’re traveling by car, which, if you’re a regular… Read more
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Age Has Nothing to Do With It
Reading Time: 4 minutesOne of my favorite memories of all time is when I was babysitting my great-niece, then age 3 or 4, and she asked me if she could play with my phone. She’s 16 now, so this was about 12 years ago, 2012 or so. At the time I still had a flip… Read more
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Goodbye, Xenon
Reading Time: 2 minutesThis week we said goodbye to a good and faithful servant, our 2014 VW Passat TDI (diesel engine) who we named Xenon. She was the second diesel Passat we owned. In 2012 we bought a new one, silver, from the dealer in Springfield, Missouri. Randy was in love with the diesel engine… Read more
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Clean Underwear and Ibuprofen
Reading Time: 4 minutesMy niece, Emilee, is here for a few days from Wisconsin. Her daughter’s 8th birthday was last week, the same day as Randy’s birthday. She told me last night she’s having a roller skating party for her daughter next weekend. My goodness, that brought back memories, of both the skating, and of a… Read more
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Resurrecting Thinking 2 Steps Ahead
Reading Time: 5 minutesThose of you who’ve known me a very (VERY) long time know that for the past 40 years I’ve been talking about a concept I dubbed Thinking 2 Steps Ahead (T2SA). In the early 2000s I even trademarked the phrase and designed workshops that I taught around the area to audiences of… Read more
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Reassembling My Dad
Reading Time: < 1 minuteMy dad died exactly 1 week before Christmas in 2017. I wrote about him in a Father’s Day post a couple of years ago. I miss him a lot. Every year around the anniversary of his permanent departure out of his earthly body, I make a point to reassemble the puzzle… Read more
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More Manitowoc
Reading Time: 2 minutesFor a city that’s never reached a population of even 35,000 people, Manitowoc sure has developed a world-wide reputation. If you missed my post on Tuesday about the Manitowoc Christmas connection, you can read that here. This week, on our way to Missouri, we checked into a hotel. Randy went to fill… Read more
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Shiny, Prickly, Christmas Memories
Reading Time: 5 minutesI’m not gonna lie. This year hasn’t seemed much like the Christmas season to me at all. And that’s just fine with me. Two days after Thanksgiving we went on the cruise to the Panama Canal. Surprisingly, when we started there was no Christmas on the ship at all. No decorations, no… Read more