uncommonly feeble and random thoughts

 So much energy, humanity, humility, and humor... Trish was the most reliable, genuine, and hard-working person I ever met, and she is deeply missed. People with cottages have the gift of having a home life, and an away life. The cottage often provides a getaway, an escape from... well, whatever. Often, owners of both leave "the city" and upon arriving "up north" (in Michigan, anyway), they cross the cottage threshold and emit sighs of relief, both literal and figurative.  They can relax. And so it was for Trish, I think. She worked hard at both abodes, for sure. But I believe the lake lifted her spirits, what with the sunsets, sunrises, boat rides, entertaining friends and family, communing with loons and swans and hummingbirds, pursuing fine dining (both home and "out"), and just generally enjoying the great outdoors and its all-embracing laid-back ambience. Thank you for that gift, Erwin "Erv" Bettinghuaus, Ph.D. , who we lost July 7, 2025. Tr...

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 ...