Mory Holmes, a close family friend died Friday at age 75. Always amiable, Mory was the type of guy I was always excited to introduce to a friend or family member. He had an eternal smile and a kind gentle way which, along with his Grizzly Adams beard and boisterous laugh made him a character you instantly wanted to know better. Getting to know him was easy to do. He lived a full life and was always ready with a story about the funeral home he ran in Sacramento, a new car that he had added to his collection or a grandkid who had dome something memorable.

Never have I known someone who was so quick to make new friends in life. He and wife Rae [Read more →]

I think Adobe’s automatic updater got a bit convoluted lately. Here is a dialog box that appeared while installing Photoshop the other day.

How did the updater know that it needed to be updated?

Leave it to Patrick to find a way to lose his tooth while eating soup! Either way, he didn’t want to give it up. Here’s the note he wrote to the tooth fairy.
(Click the “Dear Tooth Fairy” letter below to see the full version.)

What an incredible day we had today! Two last-minute dives were an unexpected treat. Last night at dinner I realized that our flight was more than 24 hours away and I could dive again today. As for Lisa, she was dived out. Too bad: she missed a doozy.

As Lisa and the kids slept, Jojo the dolphin, a local regular, paid a surprise visit to [Read more →]

We were off to the dive shop early once again so we could get a two-tank dive in again today. This was Lisa’s first duo-tanker, and I was glad to have her along. There’s just something comforting about having your [Read more →]

Lisa and I took our first Scuba dive today in Grace Bay on the leeward coast of Provedenciales. The location was called cathedral due to the shape the box canyon that drops to about 100 feet. The plan was to dive just over the edge of the shelf and hit a depth of about 60 feet, but we ended up doing a 40 minute dive to about [Read more →]

I thought it was going to be simple to sum up our second day here: breakfast, beach, scuba class, dinner, sleep. And in fact the beginning of the day started out just like my summary. By dinnertime though, the action heated up with a tear-filled dinner, a father-daughter moment of a lifetime and some high-tech shenanigans that turned Emily into a ghost.

[Read more →]

The first day of our week-long vacation to Beaches Resort on Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands was an extremely long travel day filled with anticipation. The kids were on edge constantly with an energy that overcame their lack of sleep. Patrick slept on the plane, probably more than anybody. The adults slept when and where they could: Beth on the hard [Read more →]

Emily and Patrick dazzled the crowds at this year’s Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby competition with their unique hand-crafted racing vehicles. Patrick sanded until his [Read more →]

Not since college days has the enthusiasm of an election whelmed me as did the recent U. S. primaries. Some of my Kiwanis pals and I worked at a polling place.

We started at 6 a.m. to get ready and closed by 9:30 at night.

Primaries can be a bit slow at times.

ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Tom M
Click the photo(s) here to see a larger version.