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Today is Veteran's Day. We celebrate our veterans of the armed forces and thank them for their service. It's intended to be a day for living veterans, as opposed to Memorial Day where we remember those that have passed on. A day for those who served and are still with us. So if you know any veterans, reach out and check in. Naturally I want to look back at why we use November 11th for Veteran's Day. It goes back to World War 1 , as we now call it. At the time this conflict wa

The Lord of the Rings has been a borderline obsession since I first finished it in 8th grade. The timing worked out great too, as the next year was the release of Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the beginning of the movie trilogy. On my blog here I've written about Tolkien's legendarium on a number of occasions. As part of that I've kinda sorta been making my way through the main Lord of the Rings story, with several detours along the way. So far I've cov

After getting a tip I'm now reading The Roman Revolution , by Ronald Syme, a book about Rome's transition from Republic to Empire and features such figures as Pompey the Great , Julius Caesar , Mark Antony , Cicero and Augustus . This is also the subject matter from HBO's Rome , tremendously good TV which, in all honesty, is helping me read this book. This is not a beginners book on Rome, so I do need the help. It's very dense and blunt and I would not have been able to ge

I don't often say movies change my life, but it's possible that can actually be true. Before we get far down that line of thinking, however, right now I'm referring specifically to the music I seek out. Music has never been an obsession, like movies or books might be, but obviously I do like it. My tastes just don't shift all that much. The last example of this, I think, was Walk the Line (2005) . I remember when Johnny Cash died a couple years prior, and knew it was a big d

There's this meme I've see online, seems like it's fairly new, about people demonstrating competence and bemoaning that they...

My wife a few years ago introduced me to the idea of 1000 hours outside . The concept in basic terms is making it an annual goal to spend...

At the end of August tragedy struck the family on my father's side. My dad, 'Papa' to the kids, is in his mid 60s now. One of his younger...

At this stage of life I didn't think I was a big fan of fairy tales. That's something you grow out of, right? Well this spring I was...

When my wife and I visited the Scottish island of Islay, before kids, there were eight distilleries there. Most of these are quite old:...

I've written twice this year already about our daughter. One of these detailed how she's becoming a handful, thinking she's a princess ...

As a kid, in middle school probably, I read the first two parts of C.S. Lewis ' Space Trilogy. Then, for some reason, I could not get...

We travel to Alaska about a week each summer, as I've written about before, to see my wife's sister's family. They're homesteading up...

A couple years ago, when I picked a favorite movie per year , a great experiment btw, there was one recent choice that, at the time,...

Since moving back to MN we get to see our east coast friends about once a year, maybe. Here I'm talking two other families, all with kids...

Let's explore a fancy Bourbon, shall we? I've been a fan of the output of Michter's since I was given a bottle of their Single Barrel Rye...

We moved back to Minnesota in November 2021 and I was very conflicted at the time (see: Leaving home , Leaving home part II , and The...

Kindergarten, and 'real school,' is when most kids truly start learning to read. It's a crazy process to watch, and one that's certainly...

Comparisons between America and ancient Rome are inevitable, they're the most culturally and militarily dominant empires the world has...

'She's SO cute!' Everywhere we go, our daughter, our youngest and kid #3, gets this response. The comments used to focus almost...

Marvel's Daredevil , as a super hero, is less popular than the characters of the cinematic Avengers like Spider-Man, Iron Man or Hulk....