Both M and I both worked on Monday, July 3. After we had dinner we walked the dogs down to the lake to enjoy the sunset. After that, M suggested we drive down to the Metroparks and look for fireflies. While we could see plenty of fireflies near my house, she thought we'd see more of them in the dark of the park.

We drove down into the Rocky River ( Read more... )

I landed in North Dakota on Thursday. It was a beautiful summer evening, warm and comfortable, with a gorgeous sunset. On a day like this, I will think things like "I should move back to North Dakota ( Read more... )

I came back from Europe. I'd like to tell you that the number of times I ate out dropped to zero, but that would be untrue. In the 30 days after I returned from Europe, I ate out 22 times.

234. Wednesday, September 9 - Deagan's - On my very first night back in Ohio, still jetlagged, M took me back to our favorite haunt for dinner ( Read more... )

My last full day in Portugal was also the last day of my trip. On the morning of the 9th I didn't do anything more exciting than take the train to the airport. After an extensive grilling by a security agent before I was even allowed to check my bag I made it on board my flight to Newark with no hassle whatsoever ( Read more... )

I could have titled this "Sabbatical 9/04 - Granada", but let's be honest, if you made a list of the top 10 reasons that anyone would travel to Granada, The Alhambra would be numbers 1 through 9. It certainly explains why I was there ( Read more... )

The day before I went to the Museo Picasso. Today I would climb the Montjuic and visit another single artist museum, the Fundació Joan Miró. Ok, so "climb" is a bit of a stretch; I took a funicular, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

By unofficial tourist custom, every day in Barcelona has to involve Gaudí in some way. I hit my quote for the day by ( Read more... )

When I had dinner with mishamish and babymonkey, they pointed out that Barcelona covers an enormous amount of territory, with tourist attractions at all points. They suggested that I get oriented by taking one of the tourist "hop on hop off" buses around the city on a scouting tour. This seemed like excellent advice, so when I work on Sunday, August 30, I headed to ( Read more... )

After 12 days, the REI adventure portion of my sabbatical was complete, but I still had more than two weeks to enjoy in Europe. It was time to make the acquaintance of the much vaunted European train system.

First, we were bused back to the Geneva airport. I parted ways with the group (and I should have gotten some email addresses, doh). I ( Read more... )

Now that we'd arrived in Chamonix, we were on the verge of hiking more than 100 miles through three countries over nine days. In a situation like that, you need good boots that have been well broken in. Fortunately, I had plenty of advance notice and a major tuneup hike in the the Southwest four months prior to the Tour du Mt Blanc, so in February ( Read more... )

Over the Sundays of 2015 I have chronicled my trips to Major League Baseball Parks over the years. As a result of the 2015 tour, when I write up my 2016 game stats I'll be able to say that I've seen every team in baseball play at least once. Next up is seeing every team in their home stadium at least once. How far do I have to go ( Read more... )