Writer, Dabbler In Things
We’re on the way to visit one of my aunts while we continue to clear out the remaining storage locker that has contained my mother’s belongings since she was admitted to long-term care with dementia ages ago and still is today. The cleaning out of these storage units has taken an embarrassingly long time to … Read more
For the sake of expediency, I won’t get into the needless background details about why this came about. But let’s just say that in the last 12 hours, I got a huge confidence boost — thinking I wasn’t yet ready to do something that I sat down and was able to figure out and start … Read more
We went to a friend’s pool party this past Saturday. One of our friends there had found a tiny baby bird–way more skin than fluffy down, eyes still not open, not able to move around too much and even that very unsteadily and unbalanced–on the pool deck. With no nest in sight to try to … Read more
Hearing my eleven-year-old on a phone call is equal parts cringe-worthy and hilarious. You’ll note I said “call”. Not a Zoom or FaceTime or text thread, but an old-school phone call, where you dial up someone’s number and only talk to them. Kids–strike that, anyone under 25–ask your parents about what “phone calls” are. It … Read more
I recently had a minor epiphany. Or perhaps not so minor. My wife is a teacher and has regular report cards due, which is always a slog in the household: She’s barely keeping her nose up out of the added work that’s on top of the plenty of work she normally has. It’s a couple … Read more
In my ongoing struggle with tech, it wasn’t surprising that at some point, I’d have to replace a laptop battery. So it was with my half decade-ish old laptop, which at least held an hour’s charge as of just a couple of weeks ago but went downhill fast and as of a few days back … Read more
Today marks the last day of my month away from Twitter and Mastodon (and Tumblr, which I recently realized I was still on). What I will or won’t do with Twitter aside, I’ll likely be going back to Mastodon (and Tumblr?), just to touch base with the few people I’m connected with there and poke … Read more
I heard that phrase recently in regard to a new podcast that’s out. With apologies, I don’t recall which podcast it is, but I loved the phrase because it succinctly encapsulates my approach to writing (and various other things) that I’ve been using for a while. Life and everything in it will rarely be perfect, … Read more
There’s a time in a parent’s life–I’m making a sweeping assumption here based on my own experience, but I’d bet money it’s accurate–that in raising their child(ren), they encounter not only toys that are particularly cool (with thoughts of, Man, I wish they had stuff this cool when I was a kid), but also revisit … Read more
My nine-year-old daughter has had some interest in coding for the last couple of years. Now bear in mind, at that age, “coding” is pretty much using a program that lets the user drag and drop pre-set commands into a stacked order for, say, a basic (real or virtual) robot to execute:Forward 1 spaceForward 1 … Read more