My habit of holding onto old e-mails and documents paid dividends today. At Natalie and Beau’s wedding reception Saturday night I found myself talking to Natalie’s cousin. I was trying to figure out how long I knew them. I ran the numbers in my head, and I decided that it was almost exactly five yearsContinue reading “On Friends and Five Years Gone”
Category Archives: Life
On the Things I Did This Weekend
I went to North Carolina this weekend to attend the wedding of two of my dearest friends. So what did my weekend look like? Somehow I got out of the house Saturday morning at 3:30 without waking my grandmother. I’d forgotten just how much I liked Bryan Adams’ seminal album, Reckless. Takes me back toContinue reading “On the Things I Did This Weekend”
On Communications Woes
My computer has been mostly dead all day, and a little headshake won’t make it happy. Four years ago, a lightning strike while I was at work fried the motherboard’s comm bus. The onboard modem was a total loss, and I’m pretty sure the network port was a goner, too. I installed a PCI modemContinue reading “On Communications Woes”
On the Mop
Saturday was a rough day with my grandmother. However, I’ve not told the story of Saturday night. As mentioned previously, I went to Big Lots Saturday night, for no particular reason except that I could. And there’s a liquor store in that shopping center, and since I had no beer in the refrigerator, I couldContinue reading “On the Mop”
On My Grandmother’s Latest
Today, I wondered for the first time who my grandmother thought I was. I’d gone into the kitchen to fix some lunch. I wasn’t sure what I wanted; I would scavenge in the refrigerator until something promising came to the fore. My grandmother was in the kitchen. When she’s upset, she tends to wander nervously.Continue reading “On My Grandmother’s Latest”
On A Rough Night’s Sleep
Last night I slept for toffee. Warm does not describe the temperatures in my room when I hit the mattress at midnight. It wasn’t excessively hot, but neither was it comfortable. I turned the window fan up to maximum, turned out the lights, and hoped for sleep, even if it were a restless sleep. AtContinue reading “On A Rough Night’s Sleep”
On Things I Did On Friday
I was in a Scottish mood yesterday. My RSS feed reader told me that the latest episode of Scotland Introducing, a podcast devoted to unsigned Scottish indie bands, was available. I followed that, throughout the day, by listening to Idlewild, Camera Obscura, Y’All Is Fantasy Island, and I’m probably forgetting one or two other ScottishContinue reading “On Things I Did On Friday”
On the Death of Earthworms
There were no earthworms on the sidewalks this morning. A few weeks ago, when spring’s showers began, I could have been forgiven for thinking that it was earthworms, not raindrops, that fell from the skies. The sidewalks, the two blocks from the light rail station to the blue skyscraper where I work, were as drownedContinue reading “On the Death of Earthworms”
On My Grandmother and Grief
I read Slate pretty much every day. Well, when I type “read,” I mean I scan the headlines, and if something pops up that looks promising, I’ll take a look. I saw a headline today — “What Americans Don’t Understand About Grief.” It’s a series of articles, beginning back in February, in which Meghan O’RourkeContinue reading “On My Grandmother and Grief”
On Working With Opera
I’ve been experimenting with Opera for the past month. The world, at least the Windows world, is divided into Internet Explorer and Firefox users. With a contingent of Google Chrome users and Safari users. I’ve never used Chrome — Google’s EULA was creepy as hell — and while I’ve given Apple’s Safari a try, IContinue reading “On Working With Opera”