Well, I’m back from a spring break road trip. It was novel. I went to a rodeo, and saw guys ride bulls and stuff. It wasn’t my normal Saturday night out, but it was new and different, and something I’d never done before. It also seems as if I brought some flu-like symptoms back from […]

I look forward to reading the rest of Steve Hyden’s six-part(!) series about his experience being a life-long R.E.M. fan over at the av club for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of the first installment’s uncanny ruminations about the experience of being “a fan” in the way that only a certain type of […]

I’ve recently come to learn that my favored general shopping strategy is actually a thing. That thing? “Perimeter Shopping”. There’s a surprisingly intricate science to the way grocery store shelves are organized. High profit, brand-name items are more likely to be shelved at eye-level or on end caps. The produce and/or bakery sections of the […]

I wanted to share a couple of thoughts I’ve had in the last twenty-four hours or so, both because I think they’re important thoughts to share and talk about and to show how wildly my brain swings from topic to topic. First, I find it absolutely baffling that here, in the year 2012, a time […]

I’ve been sick. That’s pretty much it. I spent most of Friday and Saturday crashed on the couch watching old movies in between bouts of unconsciousness. I did get out a little bit despite the circumstances; I supervised an after-hours school field trip with the eldest to see children’s author Graham Salisbury speak at an […]

As I’m an early middle-age white male hipster contrarian type, I mostly ignored Whitney Houston past the initial wave of pop stardom (though “How Will I Know” and all that were pretty popular tunes when I was a ten year old). I saw “The Bodyguard” of course, and spent most of my time cringing at […]

So, I watched the game yesterday. It was a good game. Better than usual. All games should be that good – talented teams in a well-balanced and somewhat strategic contest, and didn’t need any of that semi-staged “aw shucks” human interest story stuff about the more photogenic players tacked on to be compelling. It was […]

Today is my wife’s birthday. I’m happy she was born, so I could meet her, befriend her, fall in love with her, marry her, and keep hanging out with her. As I write this (yesterday, actually – I’m spending today with her), I have no idea how we’ll be celebrating, but I’m sure it’ll be […]

Just something to think about – remember ten years ago when a computer not connected to broadband internet was a perfectly useful piece of equipment, and not a plastic and silicon doorstop? I’d written a bit more here, but I deleted it after I realized it sounded an awful lot like Abe Simpson yelling at […]

Ever since I heard about it yesterday morning, I’ve been casting about for a proper way to talk about the Komen foundation’s decision to stop donating funds to Planned Parenthood (which does a lot of work to make early screenings for breast cancer available to all kinds of women), as a result of their “new […]