ROFO. Quick stop at Royal Farms before the hour-plus drive from DC to home. Came into the city for the second time in a week for a goodbye dinner for a longtime colleague. There’s something inspirational about the Royal Farms chicken.
First bike ride of the year today (and first in a long while). Beautiful day in the Mid-Atlantic, beautiful day to be in the saddle.
Lovely evening, and further evidence spring is on the way.
Sunday Morning Coming Down.
A Saturday full of errands, a Saturday night where we take one more step towards spring. Welcome back, daylight savings time.
Made the drive to DC today for lunch with some old (and long-time) friends. I gotta disagree with Tony Soprano - sometimes “remember when” is a very elevated form of conversation.
Goodbye to winter.
Today is the first day this year the light changed - the color, the feeling, the very smell of it. It’s a sure sign spring is on the way. It may be weeks away, but it will come.
When I joined this platform at the start of the year, I wasn’t sure where this experiment would take me. What’s emerging is a mosaic of my year, mainly pictures and a daily diary of focused (and sometimes random) thoughts. For several years my wife has used the “One Second Every Day” app - and at the end of each year, she has evocative memory capsule. This platform - and blog - may serve that function for me. I’ve committed to posting every day, and stuck with it so far. At the end of the year, the accumulation of small thoughts may add up to something meaningful.
Today felt like the first “normal” day in a while. Walked Ruby this morning. Did a few hours of work, including a few Zoom calls. Lunch at home. Then pickleball and my first visit to the weight room in several weeks. Getting ready to make dinner at home and settle in for some reading and TV. A return to routine. A good day.
We’re already two months into 2026 and well past “New Year’s resolutions.” Time for me to recommit to exercise and a healthy diet. That means cardio, resistance training, flexibility work, and continued embrace of stoic values. Lots of work ahead.
Ok. Quite the Saturday. Let’s review the bidding. We go to war with Iran while: we’re running Venezuela, we have a military embargo of Cuba, we’re supporting Mexico in a war on drug cartels, ICE is occupying US cities, we’ve got designs on Greenland, and we’ve threatened several other countries. I guess this is one way to campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. But remind me again how this is America First?
We spent one last night on the road, at our daughter’s house in Washington, DC. She and her husband were wonderful hosts and it was lovely to spend time with them. At the same time, we weary travelers are ready to be home.
Tonight, as we continued our journey home, we stopped off in our old Takoma Park neighborhood for a lovely dinner with friends at Cielo Rojo. Tomorrow, we’ll be back in Easton, and back to our welcome routines.
On the way back north, we stopped for a couple of nights outside Charlottesville, VA, and enjoyed a walk in the woods.
Though we only got a few hours above fifty degrees (not kidding), we still enjoyed our time in South Carolina. We traded the snow storm in the mid-Atlantic for views like this:
Must say, I got a chuckle out of this:
With snow hitting the mid-Atlantic, we spent a lovely afternoon at the Murrell’s Inlet (SC) Marsh Walk.
Now in South Carolina comes news of a major snowstorm forecast for home - 10-13 inches is the prediction. We may not have true spring weather, but overcast skies and rain sure beat a foot of snow.
Driving south on I-95 you begin seeing billboards for the South of the Border rest stop as you approach the South Carolina state line. Seems wildly inappropriate considering what’s currently happening in this country. (Actually it was inappropriate even before Trump’s mass deportation efforts.)
