uncommonly feeble and random thoughts

My Big Green Egg rests in a cabinet built by Custom Built in probably 2010. A half-slab of granite cut into a semicircle, of course with a supporting structure, finished with stucco to survive the elements, and casters. Not that I can actually move it anymore... Side note, when I asked the granite supplier what was going to be done with the cutout for the grill, I got the shrug of "um, ????" So I asked for that piece to get the same edge treatment as the big piece.  You see, I knew the Egg was then-currently living in the nest, which would make a stout support for the granite, and an elements-worthy companion table for the grill. Thus, the table, created because hey, I paid for that part of the slab, right???   But ten years went by, and then five more, and suddenly in 2025 the ensemble needed a refresh. So I bought some stucco for the exterior, some GitRot for the interior, found a bit of lumber, and some paint, and used up a fair portion of late July, half of August, an...

But not on my part... no siree, those days are gone. I even mow the yard sitting down. No, this is the story of the driveway replacement... aging concrete, but also with a three- or four-inch rise in one of the slabs, brought on by a tree root. Oh it also cracked the slab north-to-south entirely We hired a snowplow once, I can't remember why, and the pickup truck bounced when the blade hit the outcrop. A major impediment. And since we didn't quite exhaust our life savings traveling to Italy, we engaged a local concrete business to freshen up the joint. The first step, of course, is to remove the step (and front sidewalk). Here's the view of our front door:   "Able" is the concrete company, not a challenge as in "are you able to leap from the porch to the dirt, or more to the point, from the dirt to the porch?" Backing slowly away from that breathtaking view, we see the front sidewalk, or rather the lack thereof, with Linda's car parked at Bruce and T...

Cathedral of St. Andrew, Amalfi, inner courtyard Nearly a month in the making, this entry reveals the sixteen-day tour we enjoyed in the spring of 2025.  I've adopted (stolen) the Tauk travel company organizational schema to report on the experience. First, it's chronological, and second, I'm so challenged to make sense of the whole excursion that I'd never achieve any clarity of expression on my own.  Not to assume that I now will... Thus, a series of twelve entries have been crafted, each more or less reflecting different stops along the way. Florence, well, I still have work to do on that stunning city. Soon... Please note that I am not an archeologist, anthropologist, art historian... the list is massive. I'm also not a professional photographer. I am, instead, a humble enthusiast. And, for good measure, please note that the primary purpose of these entries is to preserve our memories of this most extraordinary adventure. Many, many thanks to Classic Travel in ...

Just for visual starters... this is the second shot I took on the trip. It's looking out over the balcony of our room, over the Gulf of Naples. We hadn't even unpacked our bags yet. The very first shot was this exact framing, a minute or two earlier, but without the boat, and wake. Photography is sometimes about preparation, but I think more about luck. From the Grand Hotel La Favorita in Sorrento at 2:39 pm. "The Favorite" indeed. My immediate sense was "omg this can't be real".  And yet, here we are. We were met at the airport, at the baggage carousel, by a Tauk guide (naturally) and were whisked from NAP (Naples-Capodichino International Airport) to a waiting, black, Mercedes limo driven by Luigi... cue The Godfather theme music.   La Masseria Farm Tour We arrived in Italy a day before the official tour began, but Tauk is such an extraordinary company, they offered, and we took, a tour of a Sorrento lemon farm.  We met a small bus and somehow surviv...