Sophie's Story

I like writing letters. I also like getting letters. It's a toss up as to which I like more. I like choosing a pen (preferably black roller ball gel ink pens medium point) and good stationery (very hard to find so I use a composition tablet these days) I like sitting down with a cup of tea and writing to someone. I also like opening the mailbox and seeing familiar handwriting. It's almost like Christmas for me. With email,texting and social networking websites few people write letters anymore. That's very sad. Writing a letter is more than just putting information on paper, it's a way of letting someone know that they mean enough to you to actually take time to write. Letter writing is a dying art which is unfortunate as a lot of history has been chronicled via letters. I have had several pen pals over the years. Eventually we lose track of each other or something else happens and the letters stop coming. My last pen pal was my stepdaughter Elin. She no longer has...

We heard from Lissa yesterday. She is daughter of a close friend from high school. She spent the summer working in South Dakota, decided that she didn't want to live there and moved to Las Vegas to be closer to her boyfriend. We've heard from her on and off the past few years as she's moved to different cities and worked different jobs. She had some big news to tell us, were we sitting down? Nervously we each took a seat. I've known her since she was an infant so I braced myself for the worst. Then she told us. She and Kurt got married the day before at a drive thru wedding chapel in Las Vegas. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then.... Wait a minute! Drive Thru!? You can get married in a drive thru?! I understand eloping, I couldn't see Lis going for the whole big white dress thing in a church, but a drive thru? How do you do that? "I want a Coke, large fries, two hamburgers and a marriage license. Could we customize the vows please?" "That w...

As you may have guessed, C and I spent last week in Door County Wisconsin. This is a trip we take every year. We had a very good time and the weather was perfect. I'm pretty sure that this was the best weather we experienced over there. We are home now. All of the things we bought are spread out all over the dining room. Scamp and Colby gave us a warm welcome on our return. I guess they didn't want to play with the cat sitter who came in once a day to care for them. I thought I would share a few snapshots from our trip. We meet lots of interesting people on these trips. We've met a scrimshander, someone who creates works of art on ivory. We met a funeral director from Chicago and his wife. We met a pair of young lawyers, who after spending a lot of time and money on law school, decided that they hated practicing law and wanted to do something else. I'm not sure what the male half wanted to do, but the female half wanted to become a make-up artist. This year ...

C and I decided to hit the Bayside Tavern tonight. The Bayside is a bar in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. It is a lot like small town bars all over the Midwest. Neon beer signs on the wall,game schedules on the walls and a few large screen TVs so the patrons can watch the game. (Whatever happens to be on). It was also very smoky,but now that Wisconsin has a restaurant smoking ban the nicotine addicts have to go elsewhere for their fix. It is also a place to get the best pizza in the county. We wouldn't have ever gone there except for the the advice of Mark, the innkeeper, several years ago. We have been enjoying it ever since. The game that is on all of the big screen TVs is the Texas/Yankees playoff game. Texas is ahead by one game. I'm hoping that Texas spanks the Yankees as it would be nice to see someone else playing. We like to sit in a corner booth so both of us can see the TV. A Yankee player had just scored a run and it was under review. They showed the hit from severa...

The Sister Bay Fall Festival is this weekend. This is one of the last big events in Door County before some of the seasonal businesses close for the winter. It starts on Friday night and goes through Sunday. C and I usually miss the Fall Festival. We arrive in Door County on Saturday and spend the weekend doing other things or the Festival is the weekend before we arrive. This year we arrived on Friday. We stopped by the Festival after getting settled in to get the lay of the land and to look at the craft booths. They were starting to close up for the night, so we decided to come back on Saturday. Saturday morning we had breakfast and got caught up with the innkeeper who we haven't seen since last year. Then we set out. We decided to go into Fish Creek first to walk around. There was a parade which meant that that it would be very crowded and hard to get into town. We spent a few pleasant hours exploring the town and then headed north to Sister Bay. We like going to str...

I had to give a speech at Toastmasters last week. For those of you that don't know TM is a club where people can learn better communication and leadership skills. We do this by giving speeches,practicing extemporaneous speaking and taking leadership roles within the club. Every Thursday I drive into Wisconsin for the seven AM meeting. I was looking forward to the speech. It was one I had given before, last fall. I was showing off my new dulcimer that I had bought in Door County about a month before. I thought I could do a better job and not many people came to the first speech so I thought I'd do it again. It was a busy week at work so I had almost no practice time. I wasn't worried though, I had done this before and had planned out what to say. I just needed to practice a song I wanted to play and write out an introduction and outline. I did both on Tuesday before the speech. The only thing that needed to be done was to tune the dulcimer. C agreed to tune it for m...

I read two articles online today. The first one was how some Minnesota suburbs where starting to look into domestic partner registries. The other one was on how Americans are changing their thinking on gay marriage. This got me thinking, what is marriage? I know what some would say. Marriage is one man and one woman. That's not what I mean. Is marriage a legal contract between two consenting adults to live together sharing their possessions, debts and caring for any children that may occur from their union? Or Is marriage an agreement for two people to live together according to the dictates of whatever faith they practice and to raise any children they might have in that faith? This may seem like a silly question to ask, but it isn't. When C and I got married we had to get a license from the state we would be married in. We had to provide information about our parents,prove we were of age to marry without permission,swear that we were not related and in addition C had to...

The Minnesota Historical Society is hosting a travelling exhibit called "Chocolate" for the next few months. Starting out from the Field Museum in Chicago the exhibit has been seen in museums all across the United States. It is all about the history of chocolate starting from its beginnings as a seed from the cacao tree to the candy that is familiar to all of us today. C and I were able to go to the sneak peak of the exhibit before it officially opened yesterday. The morning started with breakfast at the museum. There were eggs, breakfast potatoes and, in honor of the exhibit, chocolate french toast. There french toast was excellent, I'd never had it before. After the meal we went up to see the exhibit. In front of it was chef was talking about how to make Guatemalan chocolate. This is a kind that you drink. It is made from rounds or bars of pressed Guatemalan chocolate that is dissolved in water,mixed with a wooden device to make it frothy and served warm. There w...