Blog posts by Peter DeHaan, many of which are in his book Woodpecker Wars.
A couple of weeks ago my wife took me out for my birthday. The actual date of the event had long passed, but that’s okay; that’s how we do things. Precise timing is not important to us, as long as it is eventually celebrated. Sometimes we’re several months late, but if it’s within six, it’s […]
Last week we packed up our Christmas decorations, took down the lights (we couldn’t think of a good place to hang “mood lights“), and over the weekend, we trimmed the tree. Say, what? Yes, we trimmed the tree. The first time we “trimmed” it was to put the lights on. The second time we trimmed […]
But Without Over Eating I gained five pounds over the Christmas holiday—and it’s all my wife’s fault. Really. It is. But is this how I should best celebrate Jesus’s birth? A few days before Christmas, she, code named “the Queen of Desserts,” went on a baking spree to celebrate Jesus’s birth. She produced a bodacious […]
I didn’t have time to post anything last night, but I have a good excuse. Son Dan’s hockey team was playing for their men’s league championship. They won 8 to 0, for an undefeated season. Their opponent, having notched upset overtime victories in their first two playoff games, played admirably, but simply ran out of […]
After another post, considering how words are used—and misused—my thoughts turned to how words are pronounced—and mispronounced. I, for one, have a “flexible” pronunciation style. For any word possessing more than two syllables, I am seemingly able to enunciate it in at least two different ways—sometimes within the same sentence. Amazingly, I have not had […]
I mentioned that, from my perspective, the ideal winter was for it to snow on Christmas Eve and melt the day after New Year’s Day. In an uncharacteristically Michigan-winter manner, I got my wish! (At least so far.) After about 12 inches of snow over New Year’s weekend, the temperatures began to rise, eventually shooting up to […]
Over the holidays, friends from southern California made a surprise visit. Although my buddy grew up in Michigan, complete with it’s snowy winters, his bride and their three sons are California-raised. As such, snow is a greatly hoped for occurrence during any Christmas-time visit. This year did not disappoint. With only mild embarrassment they admitted to becoming […]