I have a friend who owns a car repair / body shop here in Minnesota who is enjoying a bumper crop of business from nasty potholes this spring. The roads are in such bad shape that you can see the old bricks & streetcar tracks poking through the broken pavement (upper right photo) near his shop, even though the trolley service ended almost 70 years … Continue reading Epic Potholes!
I never planned on making any money off of this blog or monetizing the traffic in any way. Still, if it had exploded into millions of readers and I received a 8-figure offer to buy it, this is the kind of place I would have wasted some of that money on … a real fire station! This one is for sale in the French Quarter … Continue reading The Real Mr. Fire Station
Happy Twixtmas! Twixtmas? Yes, the time “betwixt” Christmas/Hanukkah & New Years. Say it to yourself in a haughty English accent and it might sound authentic … Twixtmas). Twixtmas is the latest way to describe the extended holiday season, formerly known as “Christmas Break”. It’s the time when many people are off work, or work demands slow dramatically because so many others are out of the … Continue reading Happy / Merry Twixtmas!
About 10 years ago, I was one of those goofballs you see on the evening news waiting outside a store at midnight around Black Friday for the “big new thing”. Our son was excited for the debut of the Nintendo Wii U game console that was being released that night. I got there at about 9:30 PM and waited for the store to open for … Continue reading Not A Video Gamer
I took Thanksgiving weekend off from writing, but thought I would share this funny bit I saw posted on Reddit recently. It’s perfect for framing life in the ‘slow lane’ of early retirement… An Airbus 380 is on its way across the Atlantic. It flies consistently at 800 km/h at 30,000 feet, when suddenly an Eurofighter with a Tempo Mach 2 appears. The pilot of … Continue reading Slower, Older, and Smarter
Winter came relatively early this year. Snow fell every day for 4 days this week and now we have about 5” on the ground. With high temperatures falling into the teens today, there’s a good chance we’re stuck with the snow cover until next spring. I was ahead of the cold blast in getting the lawn mowed one last time and putting the Christmas lights … Continue reading Money Blowing In The Snow
We need to heal the wounds that divide our nation. I’m not talking about the upcoming midterm election, I’m talking about what we do with the heaps of leaves that fall on our lawns each autumn. Like politics, we’re divided into two parties that don’t seem to understand each other: the “BAGGERS” and the “MULCHERS”. The Baggers are lawn traditionalists. They believe that it’s critical … Continue reading Our Divided Nation 🙂
As the days grow shorter, our neighborhood is starting to light up at night with Halloween decorations. I usually set up a few things about a week or 10 days before Halloween night. My “decorations” are limited to some orange lights, flicker bulbs in our outdoor fixtures, and a few Halloween blow-molds like the ones above. I have these exact three. Each are about 3-feet … Continue reading Surprising Halloween Collectibles
I’ve always subscribed to the Thoreau quote: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” Autumn is perhaps the season with the fullest potential “bucket list” of activities, since the weather is still nice, nature is taking a dramatic turn, and people fall wistfully back into so many family … Continue reading Autumn Bucket List
As summer winds down, I’m also winding down two activities that have partly consumed my attentions for the last 3 months. On Tuesday, I collected my 75-mile State Park Hiking Club patch, and today I’m closing out my 25-beer Pub Pass. Both have kept me pretty busy this summer. I hiked loops in about 6 state parks this summer and pedaled about 250+ miles to … Continue reading What’s Are You Collecting This Year?
MrFireStation 