A vacation well spent, and a request

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I hope everyone is enjoying their variation on December weather. Here in Portland it is cold and raining. We are finally seeing our highly unusual snowpack disappear, although the street in front of my house is still basically impassable without serious work.  The weather created lock-down conditions here in Portland, to the extent that my family and I were essentially stuck in/around our house for five days without a break.  It was actually wonderful, your mileage may have varied.

This unprecedented free time combined with my recent intellectual development has found me much more interested in posting content to this blog.  I guess I feel like I have more things to say that aren’t explicitly Chinese medicine related (which would have me posting on Deepest Health : Exploring Classical Chinese Medicine instead).

I’ve been examining the blog and doing some background maintenance, so you may see a couple of irrelevant posts for testing purposes or see the site look a little wonky.  I hope you’ll forgive me.  This post, in fact, is a kind of test post - only with some content for your reading pleasure.  What content, you say?  In a narcissistic display, I will share with you my Top 10 Winter Vacation 2008 Highlights!!!

1. Excellent tea session with Paul Rosenberg (itinerant tea monk of Portland) and two of my favorite people in the world.
2. Playing numberless games of Munchkin- including the Clerical Errors expansion and the Munchkin Fu version.  Playing this game with my family reminded me how much I love them and how perfectly we fit together.  We all “get it” and have a great time.
3. Playing numberless games of Bohnanza, see note on #2.
4. Playing Shadows Over Camelotlast night in a game that found us up waaaay past our bedtime but unable to just stop playing.  Yeah, we played a lot of games while we were snowed in.  :)  If you think you don’t like board games or card games, but haven’t ever heard of these games - may I recommend that you check out the excellent website Boardgamegeek.com and do a few searches by category.  The ratings have matched up with my experiences in all cases, and you can buy the games from smaller companies than Amazon.com.
5. Introducing my daughter to Dr. Who through the awesome (and newly Mac compatible) watch instantly feature on Netflix.  She’s now addicted and proclaims that it is her favorite show ever and that she loves it even more than any other movie she’s ever seen.  Ever.
6. Christmas morning sans hectic vibe.  It was hard not having more family around (it was just the three of us) and sometimes it felt a little un-Christmassy, but in the end it was just an excellent time shared with the people I love most in the whole world.
7. Sleeping in (for me, this means not waking at 5am or earlier) several mornings in a row and having absolutely no guilt about it.
8. A grand adventure involving hiking in knee-deep snow/ice, riding on a VERY over-capacity bus (often on the wrong side of the street), purchasing supplies and last minute gifts at Whole Foods and Powell’s City of Books, and arriving home exhausted but somehow quite happy.
9. Remembering why I love Qigong so much.
10. Watching my dog run circles around me as he discovers the wonders of playing in the snow.

Simple, a little domestic, and beautiful.  It’s been a winter vacation to remember.  I’m nearly ready to jump back into the fray.

Eric

PS:  One request.  If you like this blog, please share it with your like minded friends or add it to your blogroll.  Also, if you’re interested in Chinese medicine and are not already a reader of my other (older, bigger) blog - please check it out by clicking that shiny blue “Chinese medicine” link earlier in this sentence.