words from the coast

Last week a few friends and I decided to go to a coffeehouse in Vancouver. They put on a trivia night once a month, and I, loving trivia, decided to join in. The cafe was cozy if not hipster-like. Mismatched chairs, wooden tables, an old bookshelf in one corner with books to take and leave–including …

Today I was at work on campus, doing some routine sort of job that needed to get done for an upcoming open house, and during this monotonous routine work one of those awkward memories crept up, from when I was younger. It involved my friend Barb and an entourage of other teenage friends. It was …

I believe that as we grow older, our pasts become different worlds. If we could only time-travel, we might get back there, but the only practical way to really get there is to dream or step back with memory. Daniel Faraday, from Lost, when speaking of such old familiarity, used the word “constant”. While he …

Three years ago today my father passed away after a long, painful struggle with Parkinson’s Disease. Watching our loving, kind, stubborn, athletic, highly intelligent, spiritual, open-minded, sometimes silly, and life-loving father lose nearly all functional parts of his physical and mental self was tough to see.

We’ll be moving on February 11th over to Coquitlam, just one town away. Our new but older house is situated above the town up from Dawes Hill–not far from the lovely Fraser River, the longest river in British Columbia. The neighborhood is full of unique and rather large houses, with atypical large lots for the …

The women in my family began doing surveys after the death of my dad in 2009. We all live somewhat apart from each other: southern California; central Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; and the lower mainland in British Columbia, Canada. After a week of bittersweet events comprised of a funeral, a somewhat giddy birthday celebration at a …