Off the grid

During our mid-winter break Snowboarding Adventure, we stayed on a remote piece of property near the Okanogan National Forest in North Central Washington. Our neighbors in Seattle built a house there that runs mostly on solar power, and is it ever cool:

co-lon-AH!-sco-py

There were some pretty cool things to celebrate when I turned 50 a few years ago: a marriage that works, two wonderful kids, an extraordinary circle of friends, and a whole bunch of lessons learned. Felt sort of like getting a second wind.

And speaking of wind,

Your pants are on fire

We’re being asked to believe that the military would use unproven technology in an unprecedented attempt to shoot down a satellite in order to protect us from a tank carrying 1,000 pounds of rocket fuel.

Holy hydrazine, Batman!

Old dog learns new trick

“How could you live in Seattle and never take your kids skiing??” It’s a fair question. I’ll take the blame since I’m just that kind of a guy, and I’m usually in charge of fun at our house.

It’s mid-winter break, so Friday we drove to Eastern Washington to stay with friends and remedy the injustice we’ve inflicted on Lauren and Zack. They wanted to try snowboarding

Learning to apologize

A couple of weeks ago I put a bug in the ear of a wonderful younger couple, suggesting that a word of encouragement from them to Zack might go much farther than a pep talk (he’d call it a lecture) from me. Ya’ think?

Grass roots

Every now and then I encounter one of America’s great institutions and it reminds me again of what a great country this is. Haven’t felt that way too often in the last seven years, but today’s Democratic caucus was one of those moments.

Fired up, ready to go

Took the bus downtown today to join more than 20,000 other people at a rally for Barack Obama. KeyArena was full to overflowing – there wasn’t room for about 3,000 more lined up to get in.

Highlights:   

The FAIL blog

I got some pretty good laughs here…

Caucus!

On February 9 voters in Washington State get a shot at good old grass roots politics. We can attend the Democratic or Republican caucus in our local precincts and – for Democrats – select delegates to represent us at the district caucus. It’s a chance to hear