Best Semi-Recent Happenings

And I'm going to just keep trying to catch you up until we're all caught up. Here's some blogworthy content from the last month, month and a half.

At the beginning of October we had a Story Telling FHE. Lots of storytellers came out, lots of great stories got told, among them . . .

Ned talked about a mysterious ring he found gardening.

LeAnna talked about adventures in the Amazon.

And Becky blew my mind with her story of moving to South 71st in Chicago when she moved there for school. All Chicagoans need to hear this story!  

We've got another story night coming up in January. Stay tuned for more info!

Andy and I still hang when we can. Thought that was worth mentioning.

A couple weeks after the story telling night I lead an East Harlem taco crawl that turned out to be more of a two-stop trip. If the whole group wants to go to La Cabaña, I'm not going to stop them! (But these first photos are from El Aguila).

Discovered that my smoking friend

Is standing on a skull!

Made it to La Cabaña. This photo does not convey that we were about twenty in number, I'm guessing.

Sometimes I get the chalupas. It's one of my tricks.

Then at the beginning of November everyone came out to celebrate Alpha's birthday.

The centerpiece of the evening was this piñata.

Piñata hanging in Manhattan takes some inventiveness and risks.

Blammo! That star was no match for Judy's mighty swings.

Aubrey baked up a beauty of a Funfetti cake.

All the movers and shakers were there.

Including some of our greatest ex-New Yorkers (and ex-New Yorkers turned renewed New Yorkers)

About a week or two after that there was a BIG formal that I'm relieved to say I did not have to plan or put together but I was very wow'd by the whole thing. Look at all those tables! Look at all those chairs!

On Veteran's Day I visited the USS New York with Jeff and Emily (in town for a bit from Boston).

We're always in the mood to hear about the Minigun.

Minigun: Fires 3000 rounds a minute. You know, 50 bullets a second!

View from the hovercraft cockpit.

View of the Intrepid. From the New York.

View of the Intrepid. From McDonalds.

The I ran over to the Met to see some art with Carol (also in town that weekend) but was distracted by this art along the way.

We went there to see the "Girls and Cats" exhibit. No photos allowed of the exhibit. Could have used more cats, if you ask me.

And in midtown? Statue of an inflatable rat. Perhaps the 1% have a sense of humor?

Guys, in some ways, we're almost all caught up!

Best I Did It! I Posted About Yellowstone!

Slightly more than 3 months ago I was in Yellowstone with my family. A while ago I managed to blog about our time in the Tetons. Today I'm finally posting about Yellowstone. I'm only posting pictures with family members in them and just a few no-family pictures I couldn't not post. This is the only way this post will ever get made. As I'm about to see the whole family this weekend, I had to get this post up before I left.

And also I'm going to resist captioning everything but who knows how that will go.

We arrived at Yellowstone JUST as Old Faithful was going off.

After you see Old Faithful then you walk around and look at all the pretty, stinky water.

After taking in the majesty of the outdoors we took in the wonder of the Old Faithful Lodge.

Then we drove to, I don't know, another place with water and colors and steam and walkways.

Sunglass Club.

Lunchtime!

#lifehack: If your candy bar melts in the car you can heal it by resting it on top of the vent knob in front of the air conditioner blowing full blast.

More lodge dining.

I got a few family members to try mussels. And the ones that tried, loved! That's how it is with mussels.

The next morning some of us got up real early to try to see some nature. And mist.

Best part was we leveraged the outing into our one hot breakfast of the trip.

Mom thought it looked like this man had come out of a cave.

We did this thing called Uncle Tom's Trail where you walk down so many steps to see a waterfall a little better.

A few minutes later Cory and Walker would arrive. Walker, who is two-ish, hiked the whole staircase on his own!

Headed uptown once more, not sure what they were looking at here.

Then visited the Roosevelt Lodge.

Who do you like better? Greg?

Or Owen?

Ellie kept saying this menu was her camera. That's crazy.

At this point we were getting more used to seeing buffalo.

That night we played a little more D&D. Perhaps our best session yet!

The next morning it was time to go. At this point we couldn't care less about a buffalo.

Get out of our way! We're going home!

LOL!

Necessary stop in Afton, Wyoming.

Necessary line in Bear Lake

For one more meal together.

At that's it! That's basically my last trip to Utah. Sure, you're missing out on some pictures of Del Taco, but this was pretty much the main stuff to show off.