When your life catches you off-guard

Not to get too inside baseball about how I do this here blog, but on Wednesdays I either post something I wrote years ago or something based on what I’ve written before — hence the “Written in Past Lives” tag.

Unless there’s something specific that I know I want to revisit, I basically just poke through my old stuff to see if there’s something that grabs my attention.

Which brings me to last August.

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Getting out of the ‘vacation monastery’

Because we’re considering going to Switzerland this year, I’m going to take an interest in articles about traveling to the country.

In particular, one section of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s “This Is How You Live on Swiss Time” got my attention, even if the story was a few years old by the time I saw it.

Making up the vacation as you go

Pumpkin bread or banana bread at the local farm store? Why not both?

Drink or ice cream to cool off on a warm day? Why not both?

After all, it’s vacation, so why not both?

Oregon Adventures: Time to go

On our final night in Oregon, Dancehall Days performed a concert basically behind the patio of our hotel room.

If there’s a song you’ve liked in the past 25 years, or any Fleetwood Mac song, they probably played it.

Because reality always insists on breaking up the fantasy, we’re headed back home to Massachusetts. If you missed anything I wrote about the trip, or want to read it again, here you go.

Oregon Adventures: The final stop

We’re at a resort where a golf course is behind our room — although a giant tree doesn’t help the view — and it’s a short walk to the Pacific Ocean.

All in all, it’s not a bad place to end a vacation.

Oregon Adventures: The wonder of Crater Lake

No matter where you’re coming from, it is a long drive to get up the mountain to Crater Lake.

And it is a long drive to get down the mountain from Crater Lake, no matter where you’re headed.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people make the trek every year — even as snow still closes areas of the park in June and small earthquakes are a reminder that the lake itself was created by a collapsing volcano.

Oregon Adventures: Something isn’t quite right

I am occasionally the suspicious type, and a fairly low-grade conspiracy theorist.

And having spent about a day-and-a-half in Bend, Oregon, something is really tripping my wires.

Oregon Adventures: There are no rules

Suzi and I have a thing we do sometimes called “If I were following the rules … .”

Usually, it’s when we’re on vacation or away from work for some reason, and we think of what we’d be doing if we were there.

I started to ponder it as we were walking around the Oregon State campus in Corvallis, thinking three hours ahead and my usual schedule for the day when Suzi chimed in with …

… “You’d be on vacation.”

Random thoughts on a train to New York

The wait, the countdown, the anticipation — all over.

I’m on a train, Kacey Musgraves coming through my headphones, on the way to New York City.

My wife just pointed out the waterfront passing by near the Rhode Island-Connecticut border. It’s pretty nice.

So this is Madison: Sometimes you have to be 6

Today wasn’t a bad day, but it was the last day before we went home from vacation and back to normal life.

And unlike Edinburgh, when we both knew it was time, I was starting to get that “blah” feeling that comes at the end of vacations.

Then we went to the pool.