About a decade ago I had Lasik laser eye surgery and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Prior to that I wore glasses and contact lenses, dealing with an astigmatism and gradually decaying vision which was muchly affected by the many hours of staring at computer screens in college and later. Turns out our human eyes aren’t designed for endless staring at a surface 15″ from our nose. Glasses weren’t too…Read More
I don’t know if my Mum realized it at the time, but there was a period during my childhood when my breakfast of choice was waffles with vanilla ice cream. No fruit, not even maple syrup, just a waffle and ice cream sandwich. Mad tasty, though as a parent now I cringe at the nutritional value of this meal. Still, you don’t have to be Eleven in Stranger Things to love waffles and the great…Read More
Just in time to help you enjoy the full Hotel Transylvania trilogy with the release of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, I’ve been invited by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to give away a double feature of Hotel Transylvania and Hotel Transylvania 2. If you’re not familiar with the overall storyline it’s quite amusing: Dracula is a single dad who has ended up running a resort hotel catering to a rather monstrous clientele. Because monsters need…Read More
Dates are a staple food of the Middle East but somehow surprisingly few people in the United States are familiar with this tasty and healthy snack. Usually about 2x-3x the size of an olive, dates grow on stalks on the date palm and are considered a fruit, not a nut. They’re also a great source of both fiber and potassium, but hey, who’s going to worry about health when it’s taste we’re talking about? Enter…Read More
You’re tending the fields and living the live of a medieval peasant, but somewhere in the back of your head there’s a voice, a voice compelling you to head for the hills and solve the labyrinth of The Abandons. Once you enter the maze, however, can you make it out the other end and survive collapses and seeming dead ends, or are you going to just be another skeleton covered in cobwebs for the next…Read More
You’ve watched Shakespeare’s plays as movies, hopefully seen at least one performed live, and maybe even read some of his many engaging and amusing tales, but how about his sonnets? Do your homework and you’ll learn that a number of Shakespeare’s sonnets were about a mysterious “Dark Lady” and four centuries later, scholars still can’t agree on the identity of the woman. Which makes it a fun and unusual theme for the fun and quite…Read More
A few weeks ago the Toyota team reached out and asked my family if we wanted to head to a Rockies vs. Mets game at Denver’s Coors Field Stadium. Better yet, we’d be enjoying the game from their luxe stadium box seats. You can read about it: Let’s Go Places with Toyota: A Baseball Game! Short summary: It was fantastic! 🙂 What I didn’t talk about in that post, however, was that Team Toyota also said…Read More
Living in Boulder, Colorado, there are a remarkable number of grocery store options, ranging from indie upstarts like Lucky’s Market to the big guys like Whole Foods, Safeway and King Soopers. Because of our community’s focus on health and wellness, even the big players try out new concepts with organic, natural, vegetarian and similar. Safeway, for example, had its North Boulder store as a showcase for its quite large organic and natural section, even flying…Read More
A mad scientist wants to bring America to its knees by shooting missiles at major cities. But that’s not all, he’s also invented a potion that brings the dead back to life! In fact, he’s brought a T-Rex back to life too, and it’s on a rampage in his secret desert HQ! And two groups end up fighting for their lives against both the T-Rex, the mad scientist and their friends who have been turned…Read More
Toyota reached out and asked if we were baseball fans. Of course we are, it’s the Great American Pastime! “Great,” they said, “how’d you like to drive a shiny new Toyota vehicle to join us at Rockies vs Mets at Coors Field?” Well, you don’t have to ask us twice for a gig like that so before you could say “major league baseball” we were ready to, well, go places with Toyota. To start out,…Read More
Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? And who doesn’t love the idea that we could recreate extinct species through DNA manipulation? Put them together and you not only have a great Michael Crichton book but one of the great movie franchises. The original 1993 Jurassic Park was a huge success, though its two sequels were not only increasingly dumb but were considerably less successful at the box office. The franchise rebooted in 2015 with the summer tentpole…Read More
Ah, minivans. Is there any category of vehicle that has such a love-hate relationship with drivers? My story begins many years ago when my oldest was a newborn. I was driving a light blue targa-top 1992 Toyota Supra (similar to the photo on the right) and loved it. Hitting the beach, driving through the Northern California redwoods, even just cruising downtown San Francisco, it was terrific. 1992 was also the last year that the Supra…Read More
My son graduated from school in Kalispell, Montana so we headed up for the event and festivities. I rented a house on one side of Main Street and his Mom rented a house about 5 blocks away, on the other side of Main Street. Kalispell is a small town outside Glacier National Park, with a modest popular of 22,000 people or so. Which means, yeah, it’s pretty darn small. Kind of the rugged mountain version…Read More
A group of us headed to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for a fun experience the other day: the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the DMNS IMAX screen. Big screen, primed audience, and a dark story that was rather more scary than I remembered. Fortunately I didn’t bring my 14yo with me as I think she would have had a hard time with some of the heavier scenes: a…Read More
I grew up in Southern California, so the idea of indoor pools was completely alien. When the weather’s always perfect, why wouldn’t you want to hang out at the beach or poolside in someone’s backyard? The rest of the nation doesn’t have the luxury of such weather, however, and as I traveled more – and lived in Indiana and Colorado – I learned about this white stuff popularly known as snow, about days colder than…Read More