Merry Christmas to those of you who are celebrating! I hope you have a fantastic, stress-free, fun day with your loved ones. I hope those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas ALSO have a fabulous day. We’re going to hit the theater (providing the five of us can agree on a movie)…right after we do all of this:
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As Good As It Was, The Conversation Ended Pretty Much How It Started.
The enjoyment of weight training workouts is something seventeen-year-old J and I have in common. When he was playing midfield in lacrosse a couple of years ago he discovered that adding resistance training on top of his practices made him stronger, of course, and his game improved. For the last two years he has chosen a weight training unit in gym class as much as is allowed, skipping over other units like basketball, soccer, and other sports, and on school breaks he’ll use the Bowflex we have in the basement. I have always (well, since I started working out twenty years ago) enjoyed feeling strong and having some tone in…
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Record Store Day 2012!
Your Black Friday traditions might include trying to find retail bargains, sleeping off your food coma, or putting up your Christmas tree. As usual, my family goes in a totally different direction. Our tradition, which is in its second year, is twofold: some of us (Jim and the boys) leave bright and early to hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and some of us (my sister and me, joined by Mom this year) head out to celebrate Record Store Day! Record Store Day celebrates vinyl and the idea of actually holding your music in your hands rather than using a digital file: believe it or not there ARE…
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The Greatest Show On Earth
Last night I went to the circus. My sister, J, and I headed out to take in the show and I realized it had been approximately thirty-five (ish) years since I had enjoyed a “real” circus, if you don’t count the much smaller-scale Shrine Circus that my father-in-law participated in when he was a clown named Jingles. (And I don’t.) Even that was about eighteen years ago. As the circus–the one known as “The Greatest Show On Earth’–started and seventeen-year-old J had the look on his face of being really impressed with the amazing acts (rather than the “I’m a teenager and I really don’t belong here” face), I suddenly…
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Weirdest Halloween Ever.
Halloween came and went (as it tends to do), and for the first time in twenty years we didn’t have a kid in costume. Not only that, but Halloween was almost–dare I say it?–exactly like any other day. It was bizarre to say the least. In fact, when J left for school, he said goodbye to me like he always does and walked out before I even remembered that it was Halloween at all. My decorations, as I’ve written about before, were pitiful. I didn’t even have time to take pictures of Roxie in her 2012 costume because I took a TDM class in the morning and then worked on…