Congratulations, you have landed on This Is Drivel, my web page & blog. Scroll down to see blog entries, or click “POSTS” above.
I changed the look of it recently but haven’t quite figured out all the bells and whistles yet, so bear with me.
about The Author
Living & work(ed) in Madison, Wisconsin (2005-2025)
After retiring from military service, I began living the civilian life in the Madison area. “Retirement” is a bit of a misnomer here; after becoming civilianized, I had to get a job because a military pension isn’t quite enough to pay the bills. I worked at a bank that folded after the financial crisis, then for state government before I finally called it quits.
US Air Force (1984 – 2005)
I spent half my professional life in the military at far-flung bases all around the world, the point at the tip of the spear defending the freedom of Americans (so they told me).
Posts
-
B and I finished listening to the podcast “Dead Eyes” last week. I don’t normally listen to podcasts, but this one caught my attention when the creator and host, comedian Connor Ratliff, appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to hype the final episode of the show, when actor Tom Hanks came on to answer…
-
After checking out the wooden canoe festival, I ate lunch a couple blocks down the street at the Round Man Brewing Company, then drove about a half-hour south of Spooner to hike to the Blue Hills Felsenmeer. While I was helping cut trail at the Ice Age Trail event last week in the Blue Hills,…
-
I have a weird love of wooden boats. Well, maybe not so weird. They are undeniably beautiful, especially when you can see the insides. The woodwork and all those pretty blonde ribs lined up next to one another are so pleasing to the eye. I got to see quite a few wooden canoes at the…
-
Just one week after volunteering to help build new trail for the Ice Age Trail Alliance in the Blue Hills of Wisconsin, just northeast of Rice Lake, I went back up nort dere this weekend to check out the seasonal opening of the Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum in Spooner, Wisconsin. I learned about the museum…
-
I set out on a hike this morning and I got one, but not the hike I thought I would get. My plan was to hike a ten-mile stretch of the Milwaukee River Segment of the Ice Age Trail near Kewaskum. To walk that far, I planned to drop my bike off at the southern…
-
I spent five days last week in the Blue Hills of northern Wisconsin, helping a gaggle of about 90 volunteers build new trail for the Ice Age Trail Alliance so they can re-route the IAT through a more scenic part of the county. It’s a beautiful part of the state that I don’t visit often…
-
“Platform Decay” is the latest installment of a series of books from Martha Wells nicknamed “The Murderbot Diaries.” I read it in two days and enjoyed it, but then I enjoyed all the books in the series, although I enjoyed the earlier books more than the later ones, if I’m honest. The books chronicle Murderbot’s…
-
I finally bought a recumbent bicycle. I’ve wanted one for years but the price always scared me away. Used recumbents cost more than a thousand dollars; new recumbents cost more than two thousand. It was hard enough to make myself spend more than three hundred on a nice Trek bicycle back in 1998. But Monday…
-
Comedian Tom Popa said something like, “The best day I can possibly have is one where I don’t have to recover my password for anything.” I couldn’t agree more. I did not have a best day today. I got a subscription to Apple TV over a year ago to watch the Tom Hanks movie “Greyhound”…
-
Last week, my pile of books to be read (TBR) was down to just two. Today, it’s up to seven. At the top of my pile: Right now I’m powering my way through “Solaris” by Stanislaw Lem. I read this science fiction classic when I was in high school, didn’t understand it at all. The…
This Is Drivel 