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“Oma & Opa” is Dutch for grandmother and grandfather.

It wouldn’t be my 60 days of gratitude if I didn’t include coffee. And vodka. And coffee-flavored vodka. And coffee-flavored rum, while I’m at it. And Starbucks, of course. You get the idea. I’m grateful for coffee, with and without alcohol, and preferably from Starbucks. But when I think about it, it’s really gratitude for […]

Sometimes it’s something very simple and yet out of the ordinary that I stumble into and suddenly feel some weird level of gratitude for.

Like my mother’s car.

Kathy and I occasionally throw the dogs into the car, hook up the trailer and head out to one of Washington State Parks’ campgrounds. Since the day we started doing that some years ago I’ve been impressed by just how well they’re kept.

As part of my daily research to produce Not All News Is Bad (NANIB) I run across a lot of positive news stories. (That daily research is the intended goal of NANIB — that I publish it is just a side effect.) When my wife stumbled into a story about a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease that […]

It’s not fashionable to speak positively about the government, particularly in the United States, and particularly during the current administration.

I don’t really believe in traditional “retirement”. The concept being that you work for some number of years, stop, and go on to a life of leisure at best, or boredom at worst. I never planned to stop working, and I still don’t. To me my work is my “life of leisure”, so to speak. […]

I volunteer for a local animal rescue organization — not the “adopt a puppy” kind, but the “my dog’s stuck in a ravine” kind. When called out we mobilize with a collection of people, skills and equipment that allow us to help get animals — often large animals — out of a variety of sticky […]

This will be difficult to articulate, because it’s another of those things that folks tend to take completely for granted. It’s also difficult to put the appreciation into words without coming across as arrogant or condescending. My intent, of course, is neither.

This may sound a little odd to some, but I’m grateful to be an only child. I’m sure that if I’d had siblings today’s stop on my sixty days of gratitude trip would be about them instead, but — honestly — being “an only” has worked out well for me, and I’m thankful for that. […]