Gather 'round…
Got m’self in the paper again, yessir I did. Yep, yep, yep. *shines fingernails* This is, as I’m sure you can imagine, quite the feat of fame and fortune in a town like Colfax, where all 1,054 of us are fighting for airtime. Burbling masses all vying for the limelight. Competitive newsmaking at its finest... Continue Reading →
Rolled a deer the other night. At that very duskiest time of dusk, where the headlights still have no real darkness to cut through, yet all the world is fading to blue and the eyes begin to lose contrast. This is not the first deer that has fallen to the Ottinger fleet. Oh, no, there... Continue Reading →
Ran home from a few hours of work today to revel in the sunshine and warmth before it fizzles. First, I spent a frenzied 15 minutes trying to shovel out the front deck. Why? Well, this: You may not recognize it, but this is the view from the front windows less than a week ago.... Continue Reading →
Sprung the hubs from the hospital the other day. The sorts of photos that would be appropriate to this story just really aren't appropriate to share. We'll have to make do...This is us in the ER on Scott's birthday, which was much more fun that the free birthday-food trolling that was on the docket. I... Continue Reading →
How does one go about collecting words? You know, quotes from this and that. Snippets. Sentences you need to remember and hold onto. Paragraphs that are life-altering and never to be let go of. Words you simply must collect. Anybody else do this? I know you do. Tell me how you've done it. The nuts... Continue Reading →
I’ve never sat writing in my winter boots before, at least not inside. I’ve also never, not to my memory, burped up chocolate guacamole, which also just happened, but that is beside the point. I’m here writing in my clunky winter boots because a guy was supposed to be here almost an hour ago to... Continue Reading →
I was with a few close friends the other day, and we were talking about our experience of God. Now, please understand, Im’a simplify the context violently here, or we'll never get anywhere. I'll just cut to my part, which was kinda' two parts: First there was my general presence answer. The deep knowing, the... Continue Reading →
Today, a photo-essay. Think of it as a flipbook with captions, and lots of nice pictures of the hubs... Just in case you're not from around here, we had some hellacious winds last night. Made me think the house was gonna' lift right off the foundation and fly away. Thankfully, that didn't happen. We made'r... Continue Reading →
Boy, oh, boy. I'm gonna make this part short, because I know I'M sick of this particular saga, so I can only imagine that you are too. Here's the long and the short of it: Not COVID was COVID. Damn it. You see, as I last reported, I had passed the mystery bug on to... Continue Reading →
There’s not a lot of wood out there in the wood piles. Specifically, there’s this much: I’ve recently taken to telling people that we have literally 17 sticks of dry wood for the winter. While that is only true in the Gen Z rendition of ‘literally’, it's not far off. Who are we kidding? It’s... Continue Reading →
A spent toad graced the left rut of my driveway this morning, an unfortunate casualty of the early morning commuters. I'll spare you pictures--mostly because the phone was in the house whilst I mounted my morning walk investigation--but this was a large toad when he lived in three dimensions. Now, as most of him--but not... Continue Reading →
It’s 9/11. 20 years later. And somehow we’re living through something even MORE awful. Who could have imagined? That’s all I’m going to say about that. It’s September 11th. Which would indicate that we are fully into fall, and fully past summer, and to that I say, “What? Who punched the FF button on my... Continue Reading →
Tales From the Nexus 