Monthly Archives: October 2014
When I was growing up, my “extended family” wasn’t very extensive. My immediate family was Mom, Dad, Ken and me. (My sister, Barbara, died before I was born.) Dad was an only child. Mom’s only sibling (Uncle Sanford) also married an only child; they had three children. My maternal grandmother (Grandma Elsie) was widowed, and my paternal grandmother (Grandma Helen) was long-divorced. One of Mom’s cousins (I called her Auntie Inez) visited… Read More
This may be one of the hardest posts I’ll ever write, but also a very satisfying one. Today I was privileged to spend the day in Phoenix, attending a couple of grief workshops, a lunch, and a Remembrance Event for organ and tissue donors. The Arizona Donor Registry puts on this event to recognize and honor the donors since the previous event. I attended two workshops this morning. The first one was for… Read More
Yesterday I posted the origins and development (vastly abbreviated, to be sure!) of my Jeep obsession. Today, Dear Reader, I’ll tell you why I’m building a six-wheel-drive (6×6) Jeep. It started about 15 years ago, when I first worked at Cigna Medical Group in Phoenix. I worked on contract for almost two years, before becoming a full-time employee in 2000. During that contract period, I met and became friends with Gary, another… Read More
Now that I have the “magic gearbox” for my Jeep project, and I’m actively spending money on more parts for it, I figure it’s time to tell everyone how I came to be a Jeep, uh, enthusiast. Yeah, that’s it. Enthusiast. This is a stock photo, from the manufacturer, of the “magic gearbox” . This shows *my* gearbox, attached to the center section of the middle axle. Believe it or not, for a… Read More
As I was filling out my early-voting ballot today, I reviewed all of my accumulated vote-this-way advertising in an attempt to discern where my interests might lie, and for whom I should vote. I also read the voter-information publications from Arizona, Pima County, and a couple of other jurisdictions, as they had not only statements from all the candidates for office, but also information on the various propositions/initiatives, as well as the nonpartisan… Read More
Y’know what happens when you start several projects, and then end up stalled on all of them? You wait. And wait. And wait some more. And then, all of a sudden, the logjams break loose. ON ALL OF THEM. ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Somewhere I heard a saying once: “Time is Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.” Well, IT ISN’T WORKING!!!! Project One: My Jeep. More than… Read More
Blog entry 10/11 for Saturday and Sunday, Sep 27 & 28. I have conclusively proven that helping a daughter move and smushing / stubbing / injuring a big toe have a 100% correlation. I’m still working on the causation part, but it may have to remain an unknown. I don’t particularly want to perform any more experiments to tease out the relationship between them. Last January I was called upon to help… Read More
Blog entry 10/9 for Friday, Sep 26. Our trip down the West Coast finally over, on Ali’s actual birthday she and I used I-8 to get her home to Phoenix, Brian, and their kitties. It was an uneventful trip, thank goodness, and took place on a typically sunny desert fall day. It got so warm at one point that Ali asked for something to hang on her window to block the sun… Read More
Blog entry 10/9 for Thursday, Sep 25. At last! A day when we didn’t have to pack up our stuff and drive all day! We were actually able to sleep in (sort of), because SeaWorld didn’t open until 10 AM, and we knew we weren’t going to have to stay up late if we didn’t want to because SeaWorld closed at 5 PM. In between, of course, we wore ourselves out –… Read More
The Peripatetic Traveler 
Recent Comments