Oh, the Indian corn props at the JC Penney Portrait studio in downtown Anchorage; at least that’s where I assume this photo was taken, in the fall of 1977.

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Thanks to Kodak’s old-school metadata, an ink label rubber stamped on the back of the print, I know this photo was taken (or at least developed) in July, 1976, when I was one and a half. I chose it mostly because of the fence in the background, and its two-tone green aluminum privacy slats, as […]

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My birthday is just over a month into the new year, so now that Christmas is behind us, my mind has fully turned to the somewhat dreaded occasion of my fortieth birthday. It’s now only 40 days away, so it seemed like a good occasion for little review. It’s hard to believe I’m about to […]

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We’ve returned from a week in Alaska, and have just said goodbye to our New Year’s party guests, so we haven’t had much time to reflect on the past year, busy blur that it was. We’ve made a lot of changes in the last twelve months, and though I can’t say I’m sad to see […]

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We returned to Alaska for the second time in two weeks in early July; it was also the second time in a year, Grace and I traveled there together, just the two of us, to visit Nana and Grandpa. While the main point of the trip was Mt. Marathon, we did have time to do […]

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We had a few reliable holiday traditions growing up: glögg and Swedish songs at Christmas, fondue for New Years, and Mt. Marathon in Seward for the Fourth of July. While we’ve been able to recreate the edible ones after I moved from Alaska, it’s impossible to duplicate the experience of small-town Seward on race day. […]

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After getting our house nicely staged and hoping to attract a buyer or two, we headed up to Anchorage to visit the family and attend my 20th high school reunion. It had been many years since I’d been in Alaska right on the solstice, and the super-long days take on an interesting new dimension when […]

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For the better part of the last year, the possibility of moving back to the East Coast has been in the air at our house. I applied for a position at Yale University back in July, 2012, and over the last few months, beginning in January, I worked my way through the interview process, finishing […]

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While the main goal of my paternity leave was to bond with Lucy and help out with Grace, I also wanted to get a few projects done in the occasional downtime. Both were somewhat more complex woodworking projects than anything I’d done before, and both were essentially done from scratch, with all of the haphazard […]

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Grace and I went on our first trip together without Mom, a long weekend in Anchorage with the grandparents. We had a great time, Grace did really well on the plane in both directions, and the weekend was a big success. Grace got to sit in Grandpa’s car, and I even got a chance to […]

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We took Grace on her second trip to Alaska, and her first during the summer, over Labor Day Weekend. She had a good time seeing both my family and Aimee’s (visiting on vacation), and also discovered the world of stairs, since our house has none and my parents’ place has many. She took right to […]

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We took ownership of a new car this week, a 2012 Golf TDI. It’s the first new car I’ve ever owned and the first car Aimee and I have bought together, but it’s not the first Volkswagen our family has owned. In fact, if I did the math right, it’s actually the tenth VW owned […]

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Part of the reason for taking advantage of California’s paternity leave again at this point in the year was so we could take Grace home for the holidays to each of our homes. We won’t be doing this every year, but we thought it would be nice to do it once. We started off with […]

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Aimee and I put together our Top 10 (and Bottom 5) Films of the Year lists this past weekend, which reminded me that, as a life-long nostalgist and inveterate list-maker, I have done precious little reflection on the fact that we’ve just completed a decade and moved onto a new one. I haven’t gone back […]

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It’s tough to believe it’s nearly September, but here we are. So the weekend before last we were in Alaska, taking advantage of the seasonal non-stop flights on Alaska from L.A. to Anchorage, and returning for our second go at the Snow City 5k. I wasn’t as fast as I was last year, but at […]

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