John’s thoughts, rants, and crazy ideas
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…
We are all familiar with the saying “There’s a first time for everything”. Many of those first’s are locked into our memories forever. First’s like: your first kiss, the first time you drove a stick shift, the birth of your first child, or the first child getting onto the bus for their first time. Yep, many of our firsts are first’s for the one we share it with as well. Doesn’t matter your age, first’s continue to be inevitable…
The message at church this week was part two of a three-week series on “Dangerous Prayers”; The focus was, ‘Break Me’ – Praying to be broken. Knowing what it is to be broken, I found this discussion to be very interesting to see how others interpret it. The concept of asking that your spirit be broken enough to realize how much God is needed in your life was not new to me. After the service on our way to St…
If you’re old enough to remember The Jefferson’s on television, you probably know the main character was George Jefferson, a loud, wiry, funny guy who owned a successful dry cleaning business allowing him to “move on up, to the east side”. His wife’s name was Louise but he fondly called her Weezy. Well, since Wednesday, I’ve been fondly calling Suzanne, Weezy. As it turns out, after she had her Tracheostomy removed, air leaks out the trach hole as she breaths…