These February days have been unnaturally bright and mild, inciting the early bloom of cherry blossoms, the early buzzing of bumblebees, and awakening the paddling bug. Moving water has an incredible draw for many people, myself included. There's something powerful and soothing about being near a waterway, a kind of medicine of sorts, good to ward off the ill effects of cubicles, work stress, and overly full inboxes (check out this article for an exploration into the health

I think we know a real thing when we meet it, even if we can't quite figure out how to describe it exactly. That feeling you have while staring into a fire? Can you boil it down into one word? Maybe so, or maybe not (I haven't succeeded yet), but it turns out that there are some specific words in other cultures and languages that get to the core of some "real things" concepts. And over the course of the recent long President's Day weekend my family and I went big on hygge

Old Tools I've been pretty happy to get back into building things. Before my stint in the world of technology I took a turn as a carpenter and woodworker. The work was, and is, incredibly gratifying. There is magic in transforming an imagined thing, like a cabinet, a house, a boat, into a real thing...a thing with reasonably objective standards of quality and durability, against which the results of the builder are measured. You know when you've built something great, or