Tales of my life as told by me.
On our way out, in the hallway of the beautifully decorated Traverse City Golf & Country Club clubhouse. The twist on the white elephant gift exchange this year was that you had to make the gift of bring a $20 gift card. I was impressed by the creativity of the group. We ended up with a quilted wall hanging that has a snowman on it and reads, “Think Snow.”
Below is a list of my favorite websites and blogs that I’ve read throughout 2012. I have followed some of them for five years, while others are new. Enjoy!
My go-to websites each day, in addition to ICLE.com and WestLawNext.com, which I use for work, are Google Reader where I aggregate all of the many blogs I read into a chronological stream of posts and PopURLs.com. I would like to shift my attention to more local news outlets such as the Record Eagle. It’s important to be a well informed citizen.
At Lakeside Charlie’s in Cadillac, Michigan
This year, I am making a point to keep the lower half of the driveway very clear by shoveling any snowfall and sanding and salting. I have boxes of salt and sand placed along the driveway in three spots, to minimize the back-and-forth walking up and down the steep hill. I have also put my old Maxwell House blue plastic coffee canisters to work by using them as scoops. The older model canisters work better because the handle was separated from the body and not just indentations.
As the temperature grows colder, I am having a problem with my sand. Instead of nice granular sand – sand-sand – so to speak, I have large chunks of sand the shape of my boxes. The canisters do nothing to break-up them, and my gloved hands (and puny biceps) can’t punch through them. Thus, I’m left to dump the entire box on the driveway and stomp on it, then disperse some of the sand and rearrange the remaining chunks back in the box.
Short of keeping the sand at garage-temperature, is there a way to prevent it from bricking-up?
The salt is fine, but I try to use less of that than the sand. The other thing about the boxes of sand are that if you’re not careful, they can go shooting off like a self-propelled ground rocket. I was chasing one this morning.
During 2012, Lindsey and I spent at least one night in each of the cities listed below.
It was a good year. A very good year. But I will summarize that in another post, later, when I’ve had more time to think about what we we’ve been up to the past 366 days. This was a leap year, after all.
I spent much of the weekend in the office watching a multi-hour webinar on Planning for the Taxable Estate. Around watching, and as an excuse to get up and stretch my legs, I thoroughly cleaned up the books and files around my office. The furniture stayed put.
I’ve always liked to use the end of the year to organize various parts of my life – both physical and digital. And as we near 1/1/2013, it’s time again to put away the 2012 stuff and make room for the new. Especially with our baby son coming oh-so-soon, I am guessing that I will have to be more efficient than ever at keeping my stuff in order because his stuff will soon displace my stuff in the hierarchy of which stuff I most care about!
The week ahead is going to continue to be busy, as we have three Christmas parties to attend – MFDA, RJFH, and CRB. It will be fun, and I am looking forward to a healthy dose of Christmas cheer to go with the fresh blanket of snow covering the white Christmas lights lining our fence.
The snow also marks the true start of winter, and my 6am-obligation to keep the steep and curving parts of the driveway safe for passing. It’s not all bad, as it’s forced near-daily exercise.
Have a tremendous week, and don’t be too busy to enjoy a Christmas song from time to time.
We started early with a long walk (14 miles if you ask Lindsey) from the hotel to Eastern Market, and had breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien, which was more expensive than it should have been, but tasty. I had an omelette and Lindsey had an egg scramble. The best part was the dark chocolate spread for the bread.
Then we perused the flea market, outdoor booths, and indoor food offering at the Eastern Market. There was not a single cloud in the sky, and the temperature was approaching the mid-50s. Very comfortable. We met a small Saint Bernard.
We took the metro to Arlington Cemetery, which was a calculated risk because the metro trip the night before made Lindsey a little nauseous. We made it up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier just in time to see the changing of the guard and then a wreath switching ceremony, which involved Boy Scout Troup 187. Those little guys looked so nervous. On the way out, we confirmed that the eternal flame of JFK was still going strong.
It was.
The cabbie that was supposed to take us in to Georgetown saw the traffic on the bridge and said, “It’s better for both of us if you just get out there!” That was a wast of a trip, and Georgetown was way to busy to be enjoyable.
Back to the hotel we headed after a thin-crust pizza at Paolo’s, which was my third choice after we found La Madeline to be closed and Martin’s Tavern to be way too busy. I explored the area around our hotel – J. Crew, H&M, Verizon Center, Ford Theater, Verizon Center, Clyde’s, etc. – while Lindsey napped. Turns out we’re in a great area, and we can shorten our breakfast walk in the days to come.
Post-nap, we switched hotel rooms because there was a ticking/tapping sounds atop our room throughout the night, that sounded as if a woodpecker was sending a Morse code “SOS” to no one.
At 6pm, we walked from the hotel past the White House and to Foggy Bottom where we met Ben (Piehl) for dinner at Bobby’s Burger Palace. I had a good burger and fries, and an excellent dark chocolate milk shake. It’s good to start and end the day with dark chocolate!