Posed for a pre-race photo, here are this year’s entries for the cub scout pinewood derby: Three of us built entries this year. From left to right, Mary’s mouse racer, Andrew’s flaming car, and my last-minute Conestoga wagon. Hopefully, we’ll do well.

Those wily English, with their tea and their Doctor Who and their National Health Service, also happen to have an interesting perspective on the American political circus. The other day, the BBC offered up a solid investigation as to why Americans tend to vote against their own interests. And, oddly enough, it’s not entirely that […]

I am happily wrapping up my last work-related trip for the year, and it feels, unsurprisingly, refreshing. For the rest of 2009, I get to sleep in my own bed, and if I don’t, it’ll be my choice. That’s a really good feeling. To briefly revisit another good feeling, I found this old article archived […]

After FINALLY closing a long-standing action item Saturday morning (Hoo-Effing-Ray!), The whole lot of us ventured across town to hang out at the VA Comicon for a few hours and rub elbows (sometimes literally, given the crowds) with fans, creators, and geeks of all stripes. This weekend’s show was a much larger than the usual […]

About an hour ago, I typed “the end” on my first NaNoWriMo project, provisionally titled Get Out of my Head!, crossing over the 50k goal in the midst of the denouement. A full eleven days before the deadline. And I owe it all to spending way too much time living in hotel rooms. I’m reasonably […]

Maybe we will get something resembling a public option after all; even if there’s a “states can opt out” provision. That kind of pisses me off (given who’s likely to be running my state come January unless the polls shift dramatically in the next week), but honestly, if the eventual health care reforms actually work, […]

I took a long weekend away from the biggest part of the grind; didn’t go much anywhere (except for a little shopping and into the city for a few hours with the eldest for dance class), and spent the time getting some chores done, reading some books, and playing some games. I almost feel rejuvinated, […]

…and it was glorious. Beyond trying to keep the house at a reasonable level of clean and doing the usual Saturday morning shopping, did relatively little that wasn’t recreation-related. Checked out a neat little kebob place in the city and played a few hands of Munchkin, but little in the way of the large, single-use […]

…by Friday evening, I’d come to the conclusion that the best remedy for lingering sinus malaise was to just get past it and do something else… In an effort to satiate our bibliophilic tendencies, and because we had some errands in that part of the world anyway, the five of us packed into the family […]

I read the Onion AV Club‘s interview with Patton Oswalt today, because I think the guy’s very funny, and I’m a great admirer of his work (as is my youngest daughter, though she probably doesn’t realize it). After talking about all his recent projects, he spends some time talking about all that social networking stuff […]