You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
I was driving down to Pal Alto and the sun hitting off of the Lake San Andreas was particularly beautiful.
What did I learn today?
Today I did some digging in to some options around hiking in Iceland.
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today was the realization that I feel really good, not stressed, and have a bit of clarity. Haven’t felt this way in some time so it made me happy to realize that’s where I’m at.
I’m able to actually choose places to go which have intrigued me for the last god knows how many years, and Tasmania’s always been one of those places. ~ Robert Plant
Three Questions, December 30, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful think I encountered today?
Today it was one of my favorite meteorological phenomenon, sun dogs. Sun dogs are the reflections that sometimes appear to the side of the sun. If you envision the sun as the center of the clock, the sun dogs appear at 3 and 9 on the dial. They sometimes are so bright it looks like three suns, but often, like this one, they are bright spots with rainbow colors.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned a lot about one of my travel targets for 2025, the Overland Track in Tasmania. A fifty mile hiking trail across a number of biomes in Tasmania. It’s typically a six day hike and I’m really getting excited about the possibility.
What made me happy today?
As I gear up for getting back to eating better and really trying to be in great shape for my surgery in August. I had a pretty strong craving for rye bread. So I bought a loaf of NY Rye and made myself a pastrami sandwich and man, it was one of those meals that really hit the spot.
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’ ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
Happy Holidays – Goodbye 2024!
This year has been a year of complete madness for me. I expected at this point to be fully writing about my impending retirement and be fully training for my next thru-hike attempt on the Appalachian Trail. Of course, if you’re a regular reader you know those plans have been scraped. Instead I’m prepping for at least another year of work and open heart surgery in August. Getting to that decision point included a solid month of feeling like a ball in a pinball machine. I’m happy to have clarity on where things are heading in my life, even if it’s a significant change and a scary surgery.
It seems the whole world has gone a bit mad in 2024, wars, elections, other governmental chaos in a number of countries. I won’t be sad to see 2024 go, although to be fair all years have ups and downs, I found the downs in 2024 to be a bit much.
One surprising upside was a better than expected Christmas holiday. With everything going on my normal planning went into the tank. However, I was able to get almost all of my Christmas presents out the door, and even plan a trip out to the Mojave and Christmas dinner with friends in Las Vegas. I also got a project off the ground in the middle of the chaos and have started doing my three questions posts every day on the road to writing my next book.
I’m looking forward to 2025, I’ve set my sights on getting in two international trips before my surgery. The big one being a hopeful April trip to Tasmania to do the Overland Track. This also will be my sixth continent and I’m excited for both achievements. I’m also seriously considering a trip to Iceland.
My holiday trip to the desert was as fabulous as I could hope for. A few days out in the desert in Valley of Fire State Park camping and hiking. The weather was fantastic, I had good camp neighbors, had several close interactions with Bighorn Sheep and got in some great hikes. I’m spending my time before going back to work taking it easy, doing some cooking and baking and getting back into my workout routines.
So here’s to positive hopes and expectations for 2025. I hope you are all able to head into the new year in the same way. And to kick it all off, below are some images from my trip, enjoy and have a happy day and a happy new year my friends. ~ Rev Kane
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
My little five year-old niece showed me a picture she drew of a unicorn riding over a rainbow. I am totally and completely biased but it was the most beautiful thing I saw today.
What did I learn today?
I learned a really interesting fact today. There are an estimated 35 million kangaroos in Australia. There are also and estimated 26 million people in Australia, Therefore there are actually more kangaroos in Australia than people, amazing.
What made me happy today?
My youngest niece and nephews live across the country, so while I try and visit once or twice a year. I don’t get to see them often enough. Today we Zoomed and it was absolutely wonderful, interacting with them makes me very, very happy.
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I experienced today?
It’s been raining in the bay area and unfortunately I needed to run out to the grocery store. I was actually quite frustrated, I had bought some cokes and they turned out to be cherry cokes, hideous. I had just made a homemade pizza and wanted a coke to go with it. So I was unhappily running up quickly to the store on a cold and drizzly night. Coming out of the store I stopped because the most beautiful thing I encountered today was an amazingly loud chorus of what had to be thousands of peepers calling out. I love they way they sound.
What did I learn today?
Today I encountered an alien looking vegetable and it turns out to be called Romanesco, pictured above. Learned that basically you cook and use it like cauliflower, I’ll pause before I give it a try.
What made me happy today?
Pizza, homemade pizza. Made a lovely pie and enjoyed it with that coke I went out for, it was quite delicious.
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled. ~ Benjamin Spock
Three Questions, December 27, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
The most beautiful thing I encountered today were smells. The smell of a cooking pot of homemade gumbo and the smell of baking chocolate chip cookies.
What did I learn today?
I’m a bit of a space junky and today was the third anniversary of the James Web Space Telescope. I’ve been following along over the last three years and today, given the articles posted, I got to review all of the discoveries and images produced over the last three years.
What made me happy today?
The gumbo I made was a particularly good batch and sitting down and eating a spicy bowl of homemade gumbo made me very happy.
Research has shown that the best way to be happy is to make each day happy. ~ Deepak Chopra
Three Questions, December 26, 2024
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
After a nine hour, all day drive the most beautiful thing I encountered was seeing my apartment and knowing that a very long day was over.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned in a radio piece about the Triops. Apparently this tiny critter lives in the desert and lays eggs that can lay dormant for decades until the area gets sufficient rain for them to come to life and repeat the cycle. Life is amazing.
What made me happy today?
I started out my long day of a drive really early and ended up driving longer than I wanted before stopping for breakfast. I was really hungry and when I stopped, even though I really dislike this chain, I stopped at McDonalds and I have to say that sausage egg mcmuffin and hash brown were really tasty.
The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. ~ Andre Maurois
Three Questions, December 25, 2024
What was the most beautiful thing that I encountered today?
The most beautiful thing I encountered today was the service at Carversteak in Las Vegas. While the dinner was very good, the presentation, particularly the pork chop presentation was magnificent. What was really beautiful was the utterly professionally trained staff. If you saw this season of The Bear and you saw the one character train at a top end restaurant, learning what it really meant to provide absolute top level service, that’s what I experienced tonight. It was truly beautiful.
What did I learn today?
I learned that Jon Bon Jovi was married at a Las Vegas wedding chapel on Las Vegas Blvd. at least that’s what their sign said.
What made me happy today?
If you’ve regularly read the Ministry of Happiness blog that I write you know that I’m not a fan of Christmas. It’s the reason most years that I retreat to the desert for the holiday. This year I was also going to be in Las Vegas for Christmas and have good friends who live there. They graciously invited me to Christmas dinner with their family at Carversteak, it was a really wonderful Christmas dinner, good conversation, great company, fabulous food and wonderful service. It was a rare happy Christmas for me.
Pizza makes me think anything is possible. ~ Henry Rollins
Three Questions, December 24, 2024
Three Questions, December 24, 2024
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Today the most beautiful thing I encountered was a whole herd of Bighorn Sheep walking through camp this morning when I woke up. They came through in three groups, a group of five rams, followed by four females and finally a group of 15 rams, it was amazing.
What did I learn today?
What I learned today was that I had never stayed at the hotel I was staying at before. When I booked it I had assumed that I had stayed there before, but in fact I’d confused it with another property. Oops!
What made me happy today?
What made me happy today, after several days in the desert was the opportunity to have a really good pizza at Good Pie in downtown Las Vegas and to be joined by a friend for that pizza. And then get to hang out with my friends for the afternoon.
Happiness is a direction, not a place. ~ Sydney J Harris
Three Questions, December 23, 2024
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
One of the reasons that I love Valley of Fire State Park is that Bighorn Sheep are all over the park. And unlike the other parks that have bighorn, in this park they are not afraid of humans at all. As such, you often wake up in the morning to them being in your camp or walking through while you’re eating breakfast. This morning I saw my first sheep as I was heading out to hike.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned that Valley of Fire State Park was the first official state park in the state of Nevada. It was officially opened in 1934.
What made me happy today?
What really made me happy today was hiking into the red wave section of the park early and finding a place that is normally full of tourists completely empty of people except for me.
The Ministry of Happiness 