Valentine's Day Skiing Style. . .

Part of the trail system in the vicinity of Lake Lansing here in Mid-Michigan.

After a 9am meeting this morning on campus -- a very pleasant meeting by the way thanks to the personalities involved -- I had the day to myself and decided to hit the trails given our cold and snow here.

Just 10 minutes from the house, I enjoyed a wonderfully invigorating 90-minutes skiing through the woods and across fields at a leisurely pace. Besides brief and happy chats with two or three other skiers going in the opposite direction and two different couples snow-shoeing through the woods, I had the place to myself. I arrived home tired, relaxed, content in the way that only extended physical exercise permits, and with a clear mind.

If only I could manage this sort of thing three or four times a week, my stress level would be considerably lower. Hmmmm. . . I might have to purchase some of those fancy roller skis for dry land training during the summer. Now, THAT would give the neighborhood something to talk about!

That goofy observation notwithstanding, there are those little bits of magic all around us everyday if we simply take the time to stop, look, and listen. Today's magical ski tour was a fine example thereof. At the risk of sounding like a certain Hugh Grant movie, magic is all around us. Sometimes, we just have to find it.

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The Young Master has a special Valentine's 'Parents' Night Out' event at his Tae Kwon Do studio this evening for three hours, so The Grand Duchess and I plan to try a new Indian restaurant and then enjoy relaxed cups of coffee (for me) and tea (for her) after dinner before retrieving Paul at 9pm for the trip home. As the song by ABC used to intone way back in the early 1980s, "Shoot that poison arrow into my heart!"

-- Heinz-Ulrich

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Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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