In 2004, I sold my possessions and hit the road on my bicycle for a 10 month, 7,000 mile solo bicycle trip, going south for the winter and returning north in the spring. Five years after I completed the trip, I wrote a series of ten essays, each on a subject where my perspective had changed due to the trip. I've revised the essays each five years after that, so they've now been revised twice and are in the form of a Google doc that can be downloaded or printed for easier reading.

For posterity, here's our annual newsletter from January, 2020.

I have to start by saying that The Arithmancer by White Squirrel is the first fanfiction I've ever read, unless you count mainstream works like The Mists of Avalon. I wouldn't have given it a chance if it hadn't been recommended by mathemusician Vi Hart. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. Having now finished the second book in the series (Lady Archimedes), I'm ready to lay out why I think you should read it, too.

Last time I wrote, almost a year ago now, we had sold our house in Emporia, Kansas and were moving to Omaha, Nebraska. We lived in an apartment in the Dundee neighborhood for 10 months (from the end of August through the end of June), bought a house in the Benson neighborhood at the end of May, and as of yesterday we have finally moved the last of our stuff out of storage. I feel like our unusual move needs some explanation.

This is a waltz arrangement of the Super Mario Bros theme song. Although I can play the melody notes, I'm only providing the accompaniment chords at this time. Each chord shown below represents a full measure of three beats (or two beats, if you're playing it the traditional way).

In a silent auction I won a day trip with experienced canoeist Dave Juncker down Minnehaha Creek from its headwaters through the Minneapolis suburbs. It was a wonderful experience! Here are my photos from the day.

From 2002-04, I lived with my friend Marisa and cat Simon in an apartment at 2910 Pleasant Ave. in Minneapolis. Here are my photos of that apartment.

From 1998 to 2005, I was active in a Unitarian Universalist young adult group called Circles. Here are my photos from group activities.

In spring of 2003, I visited my uncle Carl on the big island of Hawai'i. Here are my photos from the trip.

My grandparents retired to Arizona around 1990, and we went to visit multiple times in the 2000s and 2010s. Here are my photos from Tucson as well as Biosphere 2, Meteor Crater, and the Sonora Desert Museum.