Last weekend I visited my parents in Lynchburg, Virginia, and this was only the second time I’d been there since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Having nowhere I needed to be in no specific hurry, on Friday I took a scenic route down through the Shenandoah Valley to Natural Bridge, then across Virginia Route 130 back … Continue reading A Cemetery in the Mountains
Category: Life
When COVID shut down the world eighteen months ago, I began a little project. “Began” makes it sound like it was planned, but it was really just something I stumbled into. I took pictures of clouds. It wasn’t a daily thing, but it was certainly a semi-regular thing. A couple of times a week. Then … Continue reading The Daily Cloud: September 3
Last weekend I was in the Baltimore area. A former colleague from Diamond was holding a comics and toys show in Westminster, so I drove down to show my support. After, I drove down to visit the cemeteries, which I’d not done since Memorial Day. I was both glad and sad that I did. Glad … Continue reading An Explosion of Trees
I overslept this morning, but it didn’t really matter. It hasn’t mattered in a year. Working from home, thanks to COVID, there isn’t really any reason to get up early. There’s no traffic to fight. As long as I stumble from my bed to my computer at a reasonable time, all is good. A year. … Continue reading One Year
This has been a week. Honestly, the month where we offer the year’s Free Comic Book Day books is always a rough one. Usually, it’s something that’s done around Thanksgiving (the January catalog goes to press the first week of December), but with a later Free Comic Book Day in 2021, it was this month, … Continue reading Deadline Week
After a couple of mild winters, this year has brought the snow. Since the beginning of the year, I think there’s been a snowfall at least once a week, and for most of the last month there’s been snow on the ground. It hasn’t been warm enough to melt the last snow, and the next … Continue reading Investigative Cemetery Explorations
Pennsylvania has been blasted with snow since yesterday. The forecast had called for anywhere between 8 and 24 inches of snow, and I think the total came in closer to the lower end of that spectrum. I cleared the sidewalk this morning, then cleared my car. Then it started to sleet and another phase of … Continue reading A Frumious Snow
This week, Funko announced POP! figures based on beloved 1990s sitcom Frasier. A Funko POP! figure, for those three people whom I envy for having successfully avoided them for the past decade, is a vinyl figure of a pop-culture icon (celebrity, comic books, film, musician, etc.) that stands about 3 3/4″ tall, has a weirdly … Continue reading A Puzzling and Troubling Absence
Yesterday morning I had to run an errand in downtown York. The local Democratic Party office offered a virtual inauguration package — a party bag of two bottles of sparkling cider, plastic glasses, buttons, flags, and other stuff — with a donation, and I thought that sounded cool, so I ordered one, which necessitated a … Continue reading An Abandoned Church
I’m working out of Diamond’s offices this week — publishing deadlines. I happened to walk through the lobby area yesterday, and what did I find? A Christmas tree. Even though there’s only a small staff — less than twenty most days — on site, even though almost no one would see it, they still put … Continue reading Early January
I have no idea when I am now. What day is this? What month? What year? I have no idea. It’s not the short weeks at work due to the holidays. It’s the isolation. There are no rhythms now, no structure. Days feel indistinct and indistinguishable from one another. What does Tuesday mean? Or Saturday? … Continue reading When Am I?
Do I need to say that 2020 was an awful year? Must I? Let’s watch a Carl Sagan video before I get to my annual review of the first post of each month. This is not the “Pale Blue Dot” video I was looking for. I went through my blog archives, I went through my … Continue reading 2020: The Year In Review