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La Isla Bonita: An Excursion to Puerto Rico

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  Ever since my wife and I started dating back in (yikes) 2014, she's been regaling me with stories of Puerto Rico's loveliness. Oh, we simply must go there, she would say, in a voice that my brain remembers as being far more countess-sounding than it actually was. But, to incorrectly paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm: life, uh, gets in the way . Recently though, we were presented with a truly unique motivation to finally pay Sheila's homeland a long-overdue visit: her grandmother's 100th birthday party. And thus began, at long last, our voyage to the island of enchantment.    Into the Groove Purely by happenstance, before this whole Puerto Rico trip was even proposed, we had a smaller vacation planned in early March. Nine Inch Nails was playing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and, having not seen them live since George W. Bush was in office, the time seemed right to take a musically-themed mini vacation. And it was indeed that, though I could not have predicted the exact natur...
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My Halloween Village Display 2025: Enter Oktoberfest

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      Well, it's the Halloween season again, and if you're one of the seventeen people reading this, then you know what that means: it's time for this year's installment of my decorative Halloween village! And whether you've been following my posts about this for years or you're a first-timer, I've got you covered with some pretty exciting spooky miniature stuff in this installment. In fact, in many ways I'd say this is my freshest display in years.      The central theme of this year's Halloween village is one I've never explored before, and before I reveal it, I'll explain how I got there. Some years, I hit upon my theme early; for example, I happened to be listening to The Ramones last summer and had a flash of inspiration for the  Pet Cemetery theme that would eventually manifest itself in my 2024 village. This year, however, I entered August still feeling uninspired and rudderless, to the point that I considered only a minimal village s...
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My Halloween Village 2024: Pet/Cemetery Edition

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Setting up my Halloween Village decorations has been a tradition of mine for as long as I can remember. Well, that's not entirely true...I vaguely remember getting Haunted House for the Atari 2600 in an Easter basket at some point, which definitely happened before the first time I set up a Halloween Village, but even that memory is pretty on-theme so whatever. Anyway, I've written many posts and posted several videos about my Villages, as the setup is different every year, with significant variance in what pieces I display (I would need an entire room fully dedicated to the Village to display everything I actually own. Hmmm...there's an idea...). Consequently, one of my annual traditions that has formed alongside this is browsing each year's new releases from Dept. 56 and Lemax. This usually occurs sometime mid-spring. If nothing else, I can't be accused of lack of preparation. Lemax and Dept. 56, for those not as deeply ensconced in the holiday village displa...
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