Writer | Unfocused

It’s been a wet week. Almost five inches of rain so far, and it’s still coming down. I spent Thursday and Friday helping Bear’s Bookstore with their move. She found a new location about half a mile down the road from her current store, and it’s double her current square footage. The old store is half of a house, and it’s cute, but it’s only barely big enough for her needs. The new store is 1,800…

Some highs and lows this week. In Memoriam Received word on Memorial Day that one of my fellow Hardheim MPs had died on that morning, just 28 days after his cancer diagnosis. Chris Burkhardt served 4 years in the Army, primarily at Hardheim, Germany, as a Hawk MP. He also attended DLI learning German. They told him that as an MP with a German certificate from DLI, he’d likely get a cushy…

I caught Monte Mader talking briefly about this song on her YT channel and I only halfway listened to her thoughts, so I didn’t realize what the big deal was. I’ll admit I was a little curious about why someone like Mader was playing such a religious song by Avalon, though. I remember back in my Christian days listening to this song and this band quite a bit. I missed hearing about Michael…

Internet is out, and they don’t know when it’ll be back, so I’m throwing up a quick post from the phone. Athena says hello.

Several pictures this week, and a video, too. Weather A big line of thunderstorms passed through the region Friday night. Diana, Youngest Daughter, and I were on our way to our regular Friday night dinner outing when the hail started. This was the biggest stuff I’ve ever experienced: dime- and quarter-sized, for close to twenty minutes. The road looked snow-covered in places. We checked things…

The house is a little quieter today. A little emptier. It’s just the two of us now. Youngest Son bought a house a few weeks ago, and we knew that meant that Middle Son would be moving out of our place and into the house YS had been living in for the last few years. That happened Saturday. Middle Son’s snack shelf in the pantry MS has moved out before. He shared an apartment with at least…

According to my records, I made my first post in my weekly streak four years ago this month, back on 30 April 2022. It wasn’t anything special. Heck, most of my posts aren’t really all that special. I don’t know that I planned to start the streak that week, at least not in any specific way. I didn’t even talk about it being a streak until two weeks later. I think I was sort of worried about…

The big news in town this week was the EF-1 tornado that hit Tuesday night. It popped up just before 11:00 PM on the south side of town, ran about 14 miles in a northwest line, and broke up about 15 minutes later. The track was actually just a little south of what’s pictured. Lots of damage, but no injuries that I’ve heard of. Diana’s school district cancelled classes for two days due to power…

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post. This week’s prompt: “My Unusual Hobbies/Interests.” I don’t know if it’s all that unusual, but one of my primary hobbies is genealogy research. I think it mostly stems from my interest in stories and my drive to learn lots of things about lots of…

I read a story about how the attorney general in my former home state disagreed with the governor’s ongoing reprieves for condemned inmates, calling it “a mockery of the justice system and of the dead.” I noted in the comments on the Facebook post that since 1975, Ohio has tried to kill 12 innocent men. There’s also been a recent surge in social media posts about how states are adding the death…

Sic Itur Ad Astra “Thus one journeys to the stars.” We watched the Artemis II launch Wednesday afternoon. I’m old enough that I caught the tail end of the Apollo program. I have vague memories of watching the Apollo-Soyuz mission. I remember watching a bunch of the Space Shuttle missions, from Enterprise flight tests to Columbia’s first flight, Discovery’s return to spaceflight, and more than…

Spring is springing here at Wayfarer’s Refuge. We started up the chlorinator on our pool last weekend in preparation for getting back in the water. We’ve had a couple of almost record highs recently, hitting 90° at least once. The pool has been in the low 70s for several days, too. I’m probably getting the lawnmower out this week, too. And for those of you who read my WWBC post this week, I owe…

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post. This week’s prompt: “Audiobooks I’ve enjoyed.” It’s a short list. Image by sindrehsoereide from Pixabay I’ve said before that I don’t necessarily process long sections of spoken audio very well. I can watch a movie or a performer or a speaker just fine,…

To soothe everyone’s concerns, it wasn’t me who died Friday. It was the other Robert Mueller. It’s sort of a joke, but back in 2018 during his work as Special Counsel, I was getting hammered on Twitter because people didn’t understand the difference between “at-ing” someone and hashtagging. They’d mean to type #RobertMueller, but they’d end up getting @bobmueller. Then there was the person who…

Caught a glimpse of a bald eagle Saturday evening on my way home from an errand. He was circling over the Verdigris River not far from the house, likely looking for his dinner. That’s the second one I’ve seen in the wild down here, and it’s just as cool as the last one. There’s something majestic about seeing one of those birds soaring along. I only wish I’d had the chance to get a picture, but I…

The YouTube algorithm strikes again. It fed me a song by Greg in Good Company, a band led by Greg Gilman. They do “rock ‘n’ roll full of heart and soul,” and man, did this song hit me hard. I first heard it as a short of the third verse, and it just nailed me. “Dedication Song” comes from the 2022 album Quiet Days and Quiet Nights. It really summed up many of my views on life as a spiritual…

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post. Paul Nigh’s ‘TeamTimeCar.com’ Back to the Future DeLorean Time Machine What fictional things am I glad aren’t real? Time travel. Wait, what? Yeah, I went there (or is it then?). It’s always been a given that even if you can travel back in time, you…