Weekly Ephemera #169

Last weekend was a bit busy so I missed  a weekly update so this one will include some of last week.

• Last weekend the Wife's aunt and cousins visited from Florida.  They treated us to a Creighton men's Basketball game.  Unfortunately, my sports curse which had disappeared seems to have returned and Creighton lost.

Creighton vs Saint John

• This weekend the Wife hosted Bread Camp for her niece's husband and five year old son.  She taught them how to make different types of dough with their bread machine and made homemade pizza for dinner.
• We have finalized the bones of our next three trips.  The first will be a road trip after the Winter Olympics around Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.  The second is just under two weeks in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of July.  The last is a month-long trip to Paris, northern France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium.  We have quirky things planned for all three of these trips, which I will document in posts prior to our travel dates.
• Over the last two weeks I walked four times for a total of 30.7 miles (49.4 km).  I missed a couple of walking days due to the visits.

2025 Balkans and Malta Travels - Magnet Edition

We Purchased magnets on our Balkan and Malta travels last fall, as we usually do, and added fifty-two new magnets to our collection.  Our collection now stands at Eight-Hundred-Thirty-Eight magnets.  Here are a few of my favorites from our last travels.

Zeus.

Meteora, Greece.

Communist era pillbox in Tirana, Albania.

Northern Macedonian shoes and dress.

Popeye, filmed in Malta.

You can see our entire collection in our 2006-2025 Travel Magnets Google Photos album.  You can also access them from the Travel Magnets tab above.

Weekly Ephemera #168

The Holiday season has come to an end and, frankly, it felt like the shortest Holiday season ever.

• On New Year's day, after a quiet New Year's Eve, I took down the wreaths, lights, and ornaments from the front yard.  I took down the Christmas tree.  The Wife took the rest of the indoor decorations.  I will be stuffing everything into the furnace room closet this week sometime.
• I didn't walk this week.  I decided to take the last week of 2025 off.
• We watched the finale of "Stranger Things", which was a good end of the series.  Unfortunately it ended wide open for a sequel series.

Best Photo Of 2025

We had a quiet New Year's Eve watching the celebrations around the world.

I looked through my favorite photos I took in 2025.  From the three trips we took, plus a few I took in between the travels, I ended up with twenty-six that I would call my favorites.  Of those, my favorite is a simple one taken in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.  It shows a can of burning incense and flower petals on the steps of a church/mayan temple.

"Smokey Faith"
by Bruce H.
(Taken on the 13th of February, 2025)

I can't wait to see what photos I capture in the coming year.  I just have to keep my eyes open.

A Homer's Travel's Look Back At 2025

2025 was a mix. On the negative side there was politics. It sucked. This year successfully destroyed my news-junky nature.  By the fall, I was no longer paying that much attention to news.  I kept myself informed but I didn't dive deep into it.  An early year, low-grade prostate cancer diagnosis was a cherry on top of the crappy part of the year.

The positive side included a return to Guatemala where I spent my teenage years, the completion of the Wife's Camino, and a trip to the Balkans and Malta.  In general, these trips, and my life in general, were pleasant.  No major drama, no major issues, and a smooth year was a nice change from the last few years of turmoil. 

Let's look back at 2025, shall we:

• January:  Our Christmas cactus bloomed for the first time, weeks later than usual.  It's time sense, like mine, has been way off.  This would persist throughout 2025.  I had disappointing medical test results.  I explained how I rate books.  I avoided news on inauguration day ... but it still happened.
• February:  Despite avoiding the inauguration, I still Doom scrolled, which also persisted throughout the year.  We went to Guatemala for two weeks, a sort of homecoming for me (I documented the trip in March posts).  
• March:  While we were in Guatemala, the first snow and cold of Winter arrived and was missed.  I had a kidney stone removed.  The prostate biopsy done during the stone removal found the presence of low grade prostate cancer.  For some reason, this really didn't bother me.
• April:  Tariffs were announced and we divested.  I kind of regret doing that.  I thought about forming an escape plan.  Our roof finally had the hail damage from last July repaired.  I added more metal sheeting on the she-shed wall to hold our ever-growing travel magnet collection.
• May:  We spent a long weekend in Minneapolis celebrating family and antiquing.  I finally photographed the Great Britain and Guatemalan magnets.  We got a new Pope.  We had a houseguest.  We returned to Spain to finish the Wife's Camino.  The day we started walking would have been my Mom's ninetieth birthday.
• June:  We walked the Camino the entire month of June.  The Wife had no foot issues and we never took a break.  I worked through some issues that darkened my mood and surrendered to the experience.  This was the first month since I started Homer's Travels that I've never posted even once.
• July:  We finished the Wife's Camino including walking to Finistere and a visit to Muxia.  I decided not to document every day of the Camino.  We had a low-key twenty-eighth anniversary celebration as we were too tired to do anything.  Our dog-friend Cooper stayed with us for a week.  I turned sixty-two.
• August:   We went to an underwhelming Santa Lucia Festival procession.  The anniversary of my Mom's death came and went.  I celebrated my faithful backpack and its retiring.  I had another bad blood test and am now on diabetes medication.  An unwanted vole was found in a planter.  Starting in late July and through August and some of September I really didn't do much.  I had a period of powering down, quiet, and a lot of television watching.
• September:  Another doctor's appointment.  No bad news so that's good.  I posted about our Camino magnets. Another autumn arrived.  Another rapture did not arrive.  We prepared for another adventure.
• October: We traveled most of this month in Greece, Albania, Northern Macedonia, and Malta.
• November: I started documenting our Balkan and Malta travels this month.  Iago got a proper burial.  We celebrated an early Thanksgiving with family.  I had my last doctor's appointment for the year and I seem to be doing ok.  We had our first snow.
• December: 
• Hiking: 2025 was a good year for walking.  This year was my third highest number of miles walked at 1,043 miles (1,678.6 km) over 115 hikes, the second highest number of hikes since I started keeping records.  The Wife's Camino contributed a large chunk of those miles.
  
• Books: I set a goal to read fifteen books this year and, unlike last year, I met my goal.  I read nearly everyday including while we were traveling (which is odd for me) though I slowed down a lot near the end of the year.   Here are my Goodreads Stats for 2025.
• Concerts, Shows & Music :  We went to a few concerts this year. With the Wife, I went to Bob Dylan. I also went to Kansas and Rilo Kiley by myself.
  
  I listened to a lot of music this year - mostly during naps and on long airplane trips. According to Spotify I listened to 2,184 songs from 1,075 artists for 44,358 minutes, so I listened to fewer songs, from fewer artists, for more time than in 2024.  Spotify thinks I am sixty-nine years old.  This actually makes some sense since my taste in music came from my brother who was five years older than me.  Here is my Spotify 2025 Wrapped if you want to explore what the shuffle button did music-wise this year.
• I posted 93 times this year. Not as many as 2024 but good enough I guess.  As usual, I think I need to write more. 

What will 2026 bring? We are going on a southwest road trip which will include visiting with friends.  We are planning a Cape Town, South Africa trip in the summer and a northern European trip including northern France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg in the fall.  Other than that we will be trying to keep our sanity intact and brace ourselves for what 2026 has in store for us.

Here's to a Happy, Prosperous, and Healthy New Year for all.  May you all find happiness in 2026.

First Bloom

Yesterday, despite it being late this year again, one of our Christmas cactuses has bloomed.

December 30th bloom.

Weekly Ephemera #167

• We had a quiet Christmas.  We went to see a movie ("Marty Supreme") which the Wife and I thought was Meh.  We ended the day with yummy steaks on the grill.
• I hiked three times this week for a total of 22.5 miles (36.2 km).  The walks were uneventful.
• We started watching "Stranger Things".  This is the last season and it seems to be a fitting finale so far.

Merry Christmas!

Weekly Ephemera #166

Not much happened this week.  Just a relaxing week overall.

• I walked three times this week and did a good 23.1 miles (3.2 km).  The walks were uneventful though I learned not to park under a tree.  My car was covered in sticky berries/bird poop.
• I watched a couple good things this week.  The first was the third installment of the Knives Out franchise. "Wake Up Dead Men".  It probably wasn't as good as the first one but it was still entertaining.
  
  The second thing I watched was "The Amazing Digital Circus".  While I watched this on Netflix, it was first available on YouTube.  There are currently 7 episodes and the episodes do not come out in a fixed schedule,  varying from one month to seven months between episodes.  The show is a bit twisted and the seventh episode blew my mind. 

Weekly Ephemera #165

• I walked three times this week.  The first one was ... interesting.  This is what happened:
  

  I was walking in a middle-class area in Omaha called Benson.  I noticed three boys, sixteen to eighteen years of age (not sure) at a corner.  One of them flagged me down.  Now, I often get asked for the time or someone asks for cigarettes or a light, so this wasn't unusual.  What he asked was unusual.
  
  Boy: Can I ask how old are you?
  Me: Why do you want to know?
  Boy: Are you forty-five plus?
  Me: Why do you want to know?
  Boy: I hear when old people think too hard the blood drains from their d!cks and they go floppy.
  
  Ok, The kid is being an asshole for his buddies.  I give one of my standard answers to assholes:  God Bless, Jesus loves you, or 
  
  Me: I'm happy for you.
  Boy keeps on talking about flippity-floppity d!cks, not getting it up, and stuff.
  
  He's sort of blocking my way though I could easily have gotten around him but instead I said:
  
  Me: So, do you sit around thinking about my d!ck all day?
  
  He kinda moved out of my way and I walked away hearing him ranting at me. I didn't really hear what he said but He did say M*therf*cker and fa**ot.  They didn't follow me.
  
  I'm not sure if I handled that the right way.  My last statement did confuse him a bit.  I think he saw me as an easy mark and me throwing it back at him kind of stopped him in his tracks.  I'm sure his 'friends' were having a chuckle, too.
  
  All I can say is, I'm happy it ended well.  Omaha has had its share of shootings and stabbings.  It could have ended much differently.

  For the week, I walked three times for a total of 21.7 miles (34.9 km).  The second two walks were uneventful.
• On Tuesday our garage door spring broke.  Fortunately we had it fixed by the end of the day.
• I put up the big balls in the oak tree on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, we had a big wind come through.  I was finding big balls over a block away from our house.  I didn't find all of them either, though I did find one that wasn't ours, so I think I broke even.