Author Archives: C. Patrick

Two Sticks and a Corkscrew: Hamilton Mountain Hike

Two Sticks and a Corkscrew is a column here at Distracted by the Shiny where we’ll take you along with us (uh, virtually — we can’t be waiting around all day for you to get your gear ready) on some of our hiking adventures around the Pacific Northwest. So far, most of these have been in the Columbia River Gorge area — but that certainly isn’t limiting. There are hundreds of great hikes in the Gorge. For this excursion, let’s go to… Continue reading

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The Twelve Movies of Christmas

“You don’t want to watch “A Christmas Story” or “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or even “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” again, ’cause every year it seems like the same old thing. But you don’t have any good ideas on what you might replace these standards with.” Continue reading

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This Guy Wrote about “Upworthy Style” Headlines, and I Couldn’t Believe What He Said Next, or, Wait, Maybe I Could

“Just enough of these click-throughs are astonishing and/or adorable that I click on the many of the other ones, too, in hopes of finding those diamonds amidst the coal.” Continue reading

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