TeamReedBlog.2020

My fantasy football team has no hope of making it into the playoffs. I tried 198 times to thread a needle today and failed every time. The gray in my hair continues to spread. And I'm not where I want to be size-wise. Yet, I'm feeling incredibly grateful. We had a great time with Team Burlingame just before the holiday on a trip down to Brown County to see Chris Isaak, who did not disappoint. Photo credit: the Captain. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family and had a lot of quality time with our girl. We had another lovely Friendsgiving with the Jacksons followed by a great dinner with Jeff & Susan and Eric & Tracy. Alison is happy, healthy and doing well in grad school even though she misses the turn of the season and wishes it wasn't always hot and wet in Florida. We had a significant issue with the Subaru, but it was fixed quickly. It's seriously cold and rainy out there now with a threat of snow, but the sandbags are in the trunk of my Mustang so I...

 The Captain had a dream last night in which he reading something on an iPad, minding his own business when I, dressed in some sort of Mae West red feather boa dress, call, "Hey cowboy, make me a cocktail." That was pretty much the end of his dream, but I'm totally stealing the line and have, since we woke up, referred to him only as "Cowboy." Had I not opened a yummy bottle of wine last night that Peter and Mambir talked me into, he would be called into service to make me a cocktail tonight.  This is the only cowboy-like photo I have of him. Ali may not have even been in Kindergarten. I don't remember the group having the event. It might have been Brownies, which would have been first or second grade. The photo to my left is courtesy of one of his state softball league buddies, who took advantage of good weather and a state holiday to play golf.  It reminded Cowboy that A. He hadn't played golf in too many years, B. He's terrible at golf C. He needs...

I'm currently on the couch, kind of watching football. The Captain has been in Phoenix at a baseball nerd fest since Thursday, an event that came after a prior long weekend where we were both in Portland, Oregon, drinking wine and hiking 20,000 miles up and down a canyon full of waterfalls. The hike was courtesy of our friend, Sami Khawaja, who, with great confidence, described it as a beautiful walk at Silver Falls State Park with 10 waterfalls, some of which you could walk behind. He asked me which I would prefer:  the 3-mile hike, the 5-mile hike or the 7-mile hike. Knowing we'd be going into a canyon with an elevation difference of 700 feet, and being generally lazy, I opted for the 3-miles. "I mean, once you've seen four waterfalls, you've kind of seen them, all," I reasoned and he agreed. Off we set. It is glorious. The trees are a blinding array of yellows, oranges and greens. The trail is wide, the waterfalls are tremendous. The stream gurgles and mea...