The Swarrell Life

I'd always seen people on this path beside highway 62 as it crosses the Minnesota River...Loud! I remember a few years ago, I won a trip to New York City to see John Legend perform a short set in front of maybe 200 people. It was sponsored by Stella Artois and was some sort of stunt involving exploratory data sent back from space that incorporated the "sounds" of stars. Great performance, by the way! It was a whirlwind trip that lasted about 42 hours total. I'd never been, so we packed as much into our time as possible. In addition to the concert, we ended up as extras on Good Morning America in Times Square, got off the subway because of delays (a very New York thing to do, I'm told), had lunch in Greenwich Village, toured the Guggenheim Museum, walked through Central Park. Our hotel room was paid for and it was a few blocks from Times Square. I remember riding the elevator down on the way to the event. Autumn and I rode down with two ladies and wh

Oh where do I start? I think  that I may have written a blog post within the past 12 months, but it has been erratic enough that I'd have to look and honestly, if I do that there is a good chance that, I'll end up distracted and and before you know it, no blog post. So I'm not even going to look. As I side note, I took a creative writing in the spring and one of the main criticisms of my writing is that it's too loose. I use too many words. Wait, where was I? Maybe that's because the teacher is a poet she tends to focus on shorter pieces. What happens though, is that I tend to lose my literary voice when I do too much editing, mostly because I don't do it very often. So in order to sound  like me when I write, it comes across more...conversational and less precise. So it goes. But I like that idea and I think that my writing is just fine the way it is for this format. If I really want to do more with my writing, I'll have to refine my craft. But really t

Hey Folks! I used to update this regularly. Not so much anymore. Since it's been so long since I've written here, I struggle with how to approach an update. Do I just update with the latest? Do I try to summarize since I last posted?  It's a tough thing to figure out! Fortunately I have a fantastic wife who is always ready with an idea for me! As many of you know, I am in residential real estate appraisal. It's not glamorous or extraordinarily exciting, but I enjoy the work and I get to see a lot of houses. I get to see a wide variety of houses. In varying condition. It's...interesting sometimes. So occasionally I will regale Autumn with an anecdote about my day to either a) impress her (nope, doesn't work), b) make her laugh (more success here) or c) gross her out (easy!). It's funny because she's in medicine and enjoys assisting in surgery. The cutting, sawing, drilling, scraping, sewing, twisting, wrenching and other various manipulations of the hum

I grew up camping with my family. Well, if you've ever seen a Datsun B210 hatchback, you'll know that it was more like backpacking than camping! We graduated to a Volkswagen bus with a pop top, which indeed was an upgrade, except when it came to speed...but that's another story.  It was a huge upgrade in sleeping accommodations as well as cargo capacity. It changed the quality of camping in Western Washington, where rain, like tomorrow, it only a day away. I've backpacked on and off since I was 9, sometimes sleeping in a tube tent . Ever heard of that?  The point is that I've been camping all my life, and while it's taken different forms. over the years, there's always been one constant: s'mores. Whether we carried them on our backs or in the trunk, graham crackers, Hershey milk chocolate bars (in all of their bland glory) and jet-puffed sugar always found a way to our campsite. They still do, especially now that we have children of our own. I'

Trust me, this post makes way more sense to me tha to you. Maybe. Either way it will be like chasing a rabbit through a brier, minus the stickers. Well, minus the physical stings anyway. We landed in Stillwater, Minnesota about a week and a half ago. Autumn flew out first, I drove out a week later and the kids flew out a couple of days after I did. We I drove in, the moving trailers (literally) met me at the door so I could sign for them. Oy! This would be the third time moving this particular set of boxes, so I was ready to be done! Update: I'm still not done moving many of these boxes, as many of them are still in the garage! This time we did hire some help and a couple of guys came and helped empty the trailers. Oy! But enough about boxes, how about that elephant tied around Teagan's head? Silly kid is always up to something. Yeah, safe to say that Teagan has a fan. No, this isn't Minnesota. This is one of the kids that Teagan used to go to daycare wi