John’s thoughts, rants, and crazy ideas
Tonight, as Suzanne finished getting ready to relax for the evening she proclaimed “It’s a Good Day!” For her, in the scheme of her last eight months, it was a hugely big day. Since February, she has been on a mission of proving the Dr’s wrong that she would only “eat for pleasure and probably never speak more than a few words in a row”. Today was the sixth consecutive day that she ate 100% of her calories by mouth,…
I really struggled with how I was going to approach this post. As much entertainment as we got today, it could very easily be a post about bad judgment. Yesterday and through last night we received four inches of rain. That much rain is a guarantee that our bottom ground west of the house will flood and flow over our road west of the bridge. You see, on the other side of the bridge the road takes a dip and…
Most of us were raised by our parents and had siblings, brothers, and sisters that were an important part of who we are now. For some, you had a big sister, the one who taught you all that stuff your mom was too shy to talk about. But for the rest of us, the lucky ones, we had a big brother. It’s the job of the big brother to be the protector, the one who watches out for you at…
Many of you have asked why my blog is called ‘Tasty Travels and Other Stories’? For a number of years, I wrote about our travels, the places we saw and the restaurants we ate. Most recently, the ‘Other’ and only Story has been Suzanne’s Cancer and her courageous efforts to survive. That changed this past week because we actually got to travel for the first time in over a year and a half. Our last vacation was visiting our son…
We all love a good celebration. Birthdays, Holidays, and especially anniversaries. We celebrate anniversaries for all kinds of things, Historic events like the founding of the country, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11; Cultural events like the moon landing and Woodstock; Organizational events like business openings or product introductions like the Ford Mustang; and then there are Life Marker events like birthdays, weddings and the death of a loved one. Of all these, the wedding anniversary is probably the most celebrated. Suzanne…
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything we put on our schedule happened just as we planned it to? Take for example our trip to see The Beach Boys the other evening at the Champaign County Fair. Re-wind eighteen months ago when we purchased the tickets for a July 2020 concert. Well, COVID canceled that concert which was rescheduled for 2021. Now imagine telling your 4 or 7-year old that you’re going to Disneyland next year, that’s what it was like…
I remember when I was a child and stayed in Chicago with my (favorite) Aunt Esther. We would ride the elevated train to downtown just for the fun of it. She also took me to the Science and Industry Museum, an adventure that was always fun. The best part of the Museum was all the buttons, knobs & levers. Watching things happen because of the action you took was so exciting. What’s more fun than pushing buttons. As I got…
We were all given names at birth. Some have meaning, some are given on a whim, a famous person, a family name, or it just sounds right. Your name is your calling card from that day forward. John Fleshner Bruns was the name I was given at birth. The Bruns part is pretty simple, it’s my family name. Immigrants from Germany, I’m am the fourth generation in America. Fleshner was my mom’s maiden name. She was one of two daughters…
I’ve had a radio station on Pandora for years that is just patriotic music and about the only day out of the year I listen to it is the Fourth of July. From the time I get up, on the way to friends & relatives, during the fireworks and then all the way back home, that music is always in my head. This day, the Fourth of July, has always been a big deal in my life. My dad was…
We all have our morning routines, who makes the coffee, who gets the bathroom first, who’s out the door first. For all my married life with Suzanne, our first routine has been to share a cup of coffee in bed while we watch the news and talk about the day ahead. This routine is such an important part of our day, I built a coffee bar in our upstairs hallway just outside our bedroom door so we didn’t have to…