Three Beautiful Things 10-30-2026: History of the Earth, Yakkin' at The Lounge, No Brain Fog

 1. I continued to slowly make my way deeper into the book Super Volcanoes. This book challenges me and that is exactly why I'm so happy to participate in the Science/Nature book club at Auntie's Bookstore. Yes, I'm having a lot of trouble absorbing all the geological and volcanological facts and processes this book covers and explains. The vast time periods in which geological and volcanological developments transpire boggle my mind and my imagination is too feeble to really think in terms of millions of years. 

I am, however, understanding the main thrust of the book. Volcanoes and volcanic activity is wondrous. Robin George Andrews helps his readers see that our planet is far from being finished as a formative entity. The ongoing activity of tectonic plates moving, of magma continuing to flow and escape beneath the earth's surface, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions all illustrate how Earth is not a static, fully formed planet, but is always changing. 

If you've been to Yellowstone National Park, you've seen this continuing activity -- and you are seeing the continuing shaking, belching, boiling, and turbulent ejections that are a continuation of activity that began eons ago. 

2. I met up with Ed at The Lounge around 3:45 and Debbie joined a table of her Kellogg friends. Ed was deep into storytelling and reminiscing with Keri and Mitch Alexander. I listened, talked with Cas when he had a second or two about baseball and other things. 

A salient fact came up in yakkin' with Ed, Keri, and Mitch. 

Yes, I was a three-year letterman in basketball at Kellogg High School, but if you look at my three years of being a Wildcat with cold objectivity, by almost any measure, my basketball "career" at KHS was a disaster. 

So, when the conversation at the bar turned to skiing/snowboarding, Keri asked me if I ever skied. 

I hoped Ed, Keri, and Mitch would immediately realize that I was being ironic and shooting for a big laugh when I dryly answered, "No. I was too busy being an All-State basketball player."

3. Christy had an appointment with her financial advisor today. Over the course of her medical problems, especially in the last four or five months, Christy has experienced some brain fog.

So, just in case her brain turned into pea soup at this meeting, I accompanied her and, for the most part, sat back and listened to her and her advisor talk. 

My impression was that Christy was understanding what her advisor told her. In addition, I thought Christy got solid answers to the questions she had about the account they were discussing. 

It was another sign, to me, at least, that Christy's recovery is moving forward positively, not quickly necessarily, but positively. 

This coming week, Christy will be very busy with medical appointments in Coeur d' Alene and a blood draw in Kellogg. Hopefully, these checkups and examinations will help Christy continue to get a clearer understanding of her condition and what to expect moving forward. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-29-2026: Volcanoes, Hash, Pasta Dinner

 1. It took me quite a while to work my way through the first chapter of Super Volcanoes. It focused on volcanoes and eruption activity in Hawaii and it took me a while to become familiar with volcanological names and with the names of the scientists Robin George Andrews writes about. The details of the volcanic history and activity fascinated me. 

Next up: a chapter on Yellowstone. 

2. While I was at the Michael Connelly event, Debbie visited Christy and Christy gave Debbie a container of meatloaf and potatoes. I ate about half of it when I returned home Wednesday night and this morning, I used the rest of the meatloaf and potato to make a kind of hash with onion, mushrooms, meatloaf, potato chunks, and eggs. 

It worked. 

3. Debbie subbed today at Pinehurst Elementary for the second day in a row. It was Halloween Day at the school, an annual blow out of candy and other activities that get the children understandably wound up. 

Debbie arrived home tired. 

She asked me to make whatever I could figure out for dinner. 

We had some ground Italian sausage on hand. And some ground chuck. And cans of fire roasted cans of diced tomatoes. Onion. Mushrooms. Seasonings.  I found a packet of fusilli. 

There you have it. 

I made us a pasta dinner. 

It worked, too!  

Three Beautiful Things 10-28-2026: Happy Birthday Pert, Dental Exam, Michael Connelly at the Bing

1. If he were still alive, today would have been Raymond Harold "Pert" Woolum's 96th birthday. This year marks thirty years since he died a few months shy of his 66th birthday. 

One of the fun aspects of having moved back to Kellogg is to experience how alive Dad continues to be for people around town who knew him. I am not the boisterous man Dad was. I don't charge a room with electricity and charisma when I enter it nor am I as funny as Dad was. Therefore, people who knew Dad and find out I'm Pert's kid always seem surprised. "Jesus Christ! No shit? You're Pert's kid?" 

Some people think I look like my Dad and that often spurs people to tell a Pert story or just shake their heads and laugh and say, "God I loved your Dad! I sure miss that fat one-eyed son of a bitch." (Dad often referred to himself this way -- I think it was a paraphrase of a line from the John Wayne movie, True Grit.)

If there's a Silver Valley area in heaven, more and more of Dad's friends have joined him there over the last several years: Donnie Rinaldi, Ted and Jerry Turnbow, Chicken Legs, Don Knott, and many more. I'm hoping the song "In Heaven There Is No Beer" was wrong and that Dad is still popping open cold crisp cans of Heidelberg and loving his reunions with his many friends as they leave life here and join him in the next realm. 

2. I started my day in a dentist chair and was very happy to be under the care of Kathy Mercato. She x-rayed my mouth, cleaned my teeth, and talked with me about the challenges of our dental health as we age.

I'm very aware of these challenges and was a little bit nervous when the dentist looked at the x-rays, hoping that a bunch of new problems hadn't popped up over the last year or so since last he examined me. 

A bunch didn't pop up. 

One did. 

It's early detection of some decay under a crown. 

I'll return in December to deal with this problem early and, I hope, be done with such things for another year. 

3. Debbie agreed to sub today and tomorrow at Pinehurst Elementary. 

When she returned home, I leapt into the Camry and rocketed through rain and wind and some low visibility to the Bing Crosby Theater in Spokane for another Northwest Passages event. 

This evening's featured writer was Michael Connelly.

Tonight's interviewer, Donna Wares, asked questions that led Connelly to talk about his history as a newspaper reporter, most often on the crime beat, and how that work led to him working as a full-time writer of crime novels. 

She prompted him to talk about his work habits as a writer and how other writers, like Raymond Chandler, have influenced his work. 

Michael Connely also talked about his work on the Netflix and Amazon productions of his novels, with special emphasis on the Bosch franchise and the series The Lincoln Lawyer. 

I was most fascinated by what he had to say about the book he was promoting tonight: The Hollow. 

It's another Bosch book and takes its readers back to the harshness of Bosch's life as a child and teenager and tells the story of Bosch deciding to look into a case that's been cold for over sixty years involving the death in 1965 of a fellow orphan, Charlie Lamb, found beaten to death in MacClaren, the orphanage where they both lived. 

The Bing Crosby Theater holds about 750 people and the house was full.

While Michael Connelly wasn't greeted with Beatlemania-like screams of ecstasy the way Rick Riordan was at Ferris High School by his young readers, Connelly's more seasoned readers filled the room with appreciative and joyous energy. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-27-2026: Adjusting, Home Cooking, Rays Keep My Wager Alive

 1. Things started to settle down a bit today after our four-night stay in Cincinnati. I took a couple of naps, hoping to get back into the Pacific Daylight swing of things again. Changing time zones has been more difficult for me than ever before. 

2. I heartily welcomed eating food cooked at home again. Yes, it's fun to eat pizza and buffet food on a river cruise and Mexican food and Bow Tie Cafe croissants and bagels, but nothing surpasses the way we cook at home. It's customized to how we like things. We combine ingredients I never see combined in eateries. Moreover, it's comfortable. 

3. It looked like my wager on the Rays was DOA after they lost their third straight game to the Brewers, but, in extra innings, the Rays came back and beat the Brewers tonight. 

The Rays are alive. 

So is my wager! 

Three Beautiful Things 10-26-2026: Bow Tie Cafe Again, Departure, Back Home In Kellogg

 1.  During our family reunion time over the weekend, in celebration of Patrick and Meagan's Sunday wedding, our central gathering place was the Bow Tie Cafe, where we could get coffee drinks and breakfast food like bagels, breakfast sandwiches, burritos, avocado toast, and more. 

We got together for our last breakfast blowout this morning and yakked, shared dreams for future get togethers, and continued to enjoy one another's company. 

2. We all had afternoon or early evening flights out of Cincinnati today, so we put our heads together, figured out transportation details, and hung out at Meagan and Patrick's apartment until it was time to go. Debbie and I piled into Adrienne's rental vehicle and Adrienne blasted us and her kids to the airport. 

It was kind of a dream come true for us. 

We both are averse to doing things at the last minute and riding with Adrienne meant we were at the airport about four hours before our flight. 

We bade Adrienne, Jack, and Eloise farewell and relaxed with some fast food, a bit of conversation, and charging our devices. Before long we were flying to Salt Lake City. 

3. At the Salt Lake City airport, we arrived at the boarding gate during boarding, so we slipped onto the plane and into our seats almost immediately and, before we knew it, we landed in Spokane. 

I spent time in the air listening again to lectures on the Romantic period of classical music and enjoyed it very much. I also enjoyed watching most of the Game 5 of the WNBA playoffs. 

Once on the ground, we shuttled to where the Camry was parked and successfully rocketed through the dark and rain back to Kellogg where we will take some time to recover from the way changing time zones throws our sleep and energy out of whack. 

Three Beautiful Things 1-25-2026: Wedding, Party, Memories

 1. The wedding ceremony went smoothly. We waited just a few minutes after five o'clock to start -- that gave the sun time to duck behind some surrounding buildings -- and about ten minutes or so later, I pronounced Meagan and Patrick wife and husband.  

2. The twenty of us who were on Patrick and Meagan's lower balcony paraded a short distance for a dinner party at El Barril, a local Mexican restaurant where spirits were high and the spirit of celebration was alive! 

3.  After dinner, I relaxed for a while at Patrick and Meagan's apartment after everyone else had left. Patrick and I spent some. time piecing together details of our the 1998 cross country trip from Eugene to Hendersonville, NC and back. Our reminiscing grew out of memories of the 1997 trip Adrienne, Molly, and Patrick took to Chicagoland when Debbie and I got married in Coeur d' Alene on Christmas Eve. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-24-2026: Mt. Adams Stroll, River Cruise, Yakkin' About Shakespeare

1. I enjoyed a Mt. Adams neighborhood stroll today. Well, actually two strolls. 

First, I went to the Bow Tie Cafe for a latte and a raspberry croissant.

Later, I walked to the United Dairy Farmers convenience store in search of n/a beer, a bag of chips, and beer for Debbie. Chips. Easy. Beer for Debbie. Easy. N/A beer. They don't carry any.

I excited the woman who checked my groceries, though. This store checks the ID of every purchaser of alcohol. I presented my drivers license and the checker screeched with delight. She keeps track of what states she sees IDs from and now she could add Idaho to her list! 

No n/a beer at the store, but I knew the Bow Tie Cafe carries Bero non-alcoholic beer -- very tasty ones -- so I strolled in and purchased four cans. 

I crossed the street and dropped into a terrific dive-ish bar called HiFi Cincy. 

It's a bar that features music played on vinyl LPs and I wanted to hear what was on the turntable this afternoon. 

Bliss! I walked in to hear Fleetwood Mac's iconic Rumors just as John McVie was playing his iconic bass solo in "The Chain". 

I grabbed a stool, ordered an Athletic n/a Golden Ale, chatted some with Sophia the bartender, and listened to the rest of the album, totally enjoying the rich sound of this vinyl LP and this bar's great sound system. 

2. Upon returning later in the afternoon to Meagan and Patrick's apartment, I enjoyed a reunion with Adrienne, Jack, and Eloise. 

A little while later, we all piled into vehicles and headed for Newport, KY and a river/buffet cruise on the Ohio River on the Belle of Cincinnati.  

I met Meagan's family. 

After dinner, I gazed upon the shores of Ohio and Kentucky and saw condos, financial institutions, hotels, churches, two sports arenas, a music venue, and freeway bridges and a pedestrian bridge crossing the Ohio River. 

A dj played yacht rock and interrupted the music from time to time to congratulate cruisers on the occasion of their birthdays and anniversaries. 

The weather on the river was comfortably moderate. 

3. Back at Patrick and Meagan's apartment, after a while, Patrick and I were the last two people who hadn't left the living room and we had a long and stimulating talk about a number of topics related to the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-23-2026: Lattes, Reunion, Pizza

 1.  The switch from Pacific Standard Time to Eastern Standard Time took more out of me today than it ever has before, so I slept in and once I'd had some time to wake up/come alive, Debbie and I strolled up the street a few blocks and enjoyed lattes at the Bow Tie Cafe in the Mount Adams neighborhood where Patrick and Meagan live and where much of this weekend's activities will happen. 

2. Debbie and I relaxed and napped back in our weekend rental before heading to Meagan and Patrick's apartment a few minutes away where I saw Molly, Olivia, David, and Ana for the first time in eight years. Meagan and Patrick introduced me to their modest and lovely two level apartment and its two outdoor balconies overlooking the Ohio River, making for terrific views. 

3. Patrick ordered pizzas from Your Mom's Pizzeria and, not long after that, Patrick's father, John, and his wife, Bonnie, arrived and we all ate pizza, yakked about all kinds of things, and had a merry time back in each other's company again. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-22-2026: Uneventful Flight, Yakkin' Past Midnight, My New Clothes Work!

1. Our flight from Spokane to Atlanta to Cincinnati went smoothly without delay and Patrick picked us up at the airport and brought us to our rental apartment in the Mount Adams neighborhood of Cincinnati, within a few minutes of Meagan and Patrick's apartment, site of Sunday's wedding. 

2. Patrick, Debbie, and I stayed up until past 2 a.m. EST yakkin' about all kinds of stuff: the upcoming weekend, family news, the world we live in, vinyl records, and more. It was really fun! 

3. The package I had Amazon send to Patrick and Meagan's apartment arrived. I'm shocked. The two shirts fit and look pretty good. Same with the two pairs of pants. What a relief. 

Three Beautiful Things 10-21-2026: World Series Wager, Spinning Reels, Packing Slowly

1.  Ed and I lay down a sports bet at the Caesars Sportsbook at the Spokane Tribe Casino three times a year. Super Bowl. NCAA Basketball Tournament (men and/or women). The World Series. Today we roared over and Ed wagered on the Brewers and I laid money down on the underdog Rays. Each betting on separate teams means we'll get to make another trip over to pick up someone's winnings. 

2. Ed and I both drifted around the casino floor playing machines, many of them unavailable at the CdA Casino or the Wildhorse Casino. I didn't come out ahead, but I didn't lose much money either. I enjoyed a nice break around noon for a Pepper Cheese Smashburger with tots. A very good snack. 

3. Slowly. Carefully. I packed for tomorrow's flight to Cincinnati. Why slow? Why careful? Because I'm always up against my proclivity to forget stuff and I worked hard this evening to make sure I don't!