category archive: photos

This is a walking stick my wife and I found at our campsite in Akeley, Minnesota back in 2005. I thought it was pretty cool then and I still think so now. Not so much the picture itself, but just that a thing like this exists. (Although I think the picture is nice enough, with the wood chips, and the easy “Where’s Waldo” angle it suggests for the post.)

What about you? Walking sticks. Are you for, or against?

You seem like more of a crickets crowd.

When the sun falls on her little couch.

She has the usual cat power of being able to subdue a person by sitting on their stomach, preventing any chance of rising from the couch. Sometimes she sits on the back of the couch and washes my hair. She likes to eat grasshoppers. She tried to die about a year and a half ago but is doing okay now. She doesn’t bite. (Unlike the other one.)

I always have this vague and unrealistic hope that something will change on my vacations. Or on any given weekend, really. That I’ll have an epiphany. I’ll find a better way to live. I’ll finally discover what I want to be when I grow up.

Instead, I usually put thoughts of work from my mind and enjoy a brief fantasy of freedom, pretending that my life isn’t weighed down by the unsatisfying work I do to finance it. I indulge in other fantasies, where I consider calls like this one: “You should probably quit your job.”

Back in 2007, I posted a picture of flowers at an antique shop in Motley, MN. Patty Carey has taken the photo and turned it into a beautiful oil painting:

“Here’s Looking at You,” by Lisa Pertile