Last weekend I discovered coquito, also known as “Puerto Rican egg nog,” even though it contains no eggs and is really nothing like egg nog. A friend of mine, of Puerto Rican descent, posted a photograph to Facebook of a Starbucks sign for a coquito frappuccino. Now, I’ve not been in a Starbucks in aContinue reading “Some Christmas Cultural Appropriation”
Category Archives: Life
My Armistice 100 Adventure
In mid-September it dawned on me that November 11, 2018 would mark the 100th-anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Intellectually, as an historian, I knew this. I knew it in the same way that I know that water freezes at 32 degrees and objects fall to the earth at 32 feet perContinue reading “My Armistice 100 Adventure”
The First Snow of the Season
Three hours. It took three hours to get home from work tonight. Diamond announced that they were closing at 4 o’clock today due to the inclement weather. I was close to wrapping a project at 4, and at 4:15 I dropped the text for a catalog section for January’s catalog on a desk in Purchasing.Continue reading “The First Snow of the Season”
A Random Exhortation
So, there I was, driving to work, listening to an old UB40 CD, as one does, when suddenly, apropos of nothing, I exclaimed loudly and with vehemence, to no one at all, “Goddamn it, Christopher Lee is dead!” My brain works in weird ways.
An Encounter at Big Lots
This afternoon I went to Big Lots. I needed a fan for my apartment; the motor for my fan had seized up and burned out. I pulled into a parking space, and I saw a man of an indeterminate age, dressed mainly in brown, shuffling through the parking lot toward my Beetle, shuffling as thoughContinue reading “An Encounter at Big Lots”
A Mandela Moment
Today is my coworker Lance’s birthday. Had I known, I’d have picked him up a cake on my way into the office. Though we don’t have a “birthday club” in Marketing, no one would say no to a birthday cake. And when I told Lance that he should have told me that today was hisContinue reading “A Mandela Moment”
Leaving Flowers
Friday I took a vacation day. Though long planned, for about five months, I needed the day badly; work has been mentally exhausting and physically draining this year, and with the never-ending publishing cycle of writing and deadlines I have always struggled to even take the minimum required five vacation days each year, and it’sContinue reading “Leaving Flowers”
Adventures in a Mudslide
It took two hours to get home last night. One of my coworkers insisted I should leave early, at five, since it was a Friday and a three-day weekend, but I was in the middle of a project I wanted to finish, which I did, and I left at 5:30. The trip home was pleasant…Continue reading “Adventures in a Mudslide”
A Random Encounter
Something happened on Saturday at Harrisburg Senators game that I’ve been thinking about for the last few days. Not an intensive thinking. A background thinking. I arrived about when the gates opened, and I wandered around the ballpark. I was on the concourse, looking at the food options, when a woman, early twenties, working behindContinue reading “A Random Encounter”
The Wasp’s Tale
There was a wasp in the Beetle this morning. I didn’t notice until I was half a mile from home. I was on Oak Road, minding my own business, when a wasp comes out of nowhere and begins beating furiously against the (closed) driver’s side window. Startled, I cracked open both windows in the hopeContinue reading “The Wasp’s Tale”