[W]e have a pest problem and I’m not sure that an exterminator can help us. The creatures are nocturnal. They hide by day and only come out at night. They only come out, in fact, just as we’ve finished spending thirty minutes or so getting the baby to sleep. The baby–now seven plus months old–sleeps…

[T]he Little Man, and his team, the “Red” Nationals, played their first baseball game of the season this week, a 6-2 victory over the “Blue” Nationals that was called after five innings due to darkness. This is the Little Man’s first year playing kid-pitch baseball, and the team did a good job against the four…

[M]ine is probably the last generation that will lament the loss of our baseball cards. My dad has talked about all of the great baseball cards he had as a kid that his grandmother tossed in the trash. Think of what those cards would be worth today! I had some decent cards, and they have…

[S]omehow I missed it earlier this year, but January marked the tenth anniversary of signing my first contract on a story sale to a professional fiction market. In the decade since, I’ve sold ten additional stories, and at least twice as many nonfiction articles. I write a lot, but I sell a lot less than…

[S]ome dreams don’t want to die. A week ago I turned 45 years old. My birthday ushers in the baseball season, and each year, I watch spring training with the thought that there is still a chance that someday, I’ll play in the big leagues.Granted, I am far from peak condition, but even the thought…

[A]ccording to Sturgeon’s Law, for every good movie, there are nine bad ones. The same holds for books, music, and humorous YouTube videos. Bad art used to bother me, but it no longer does, and I have a theory for this. A person’s involvement with bad art is inversely proportional to one’s age. Call it…

[I] am declaring April 1 National Stay Off the Internet Day. I know that I recently railed against all of the awareness days we have, but April 1 is the worst day to read anything on the Internet. It’s bad for readers because you never know if what you are reading is true1. But it…

[H]ave you lost your keys? If so, they may be waiting for you in a walkway that passes nearby our house in Falls Church, VA. I first spotted these key hanging from some landscaped shrubs bordering the walkway while taking out the trash and recycling bins for pickup a few weeks ago.The keys were hung…

One of the topics I received for Reader Request week was an update on my writing workflow. As it happens, my writing workflow is in flux right now, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about where I’ve been and where I am going. [R]egular readers probably know that my all-time favorite word…

For Reader Request week, several people asked why I’d switched from todotxt to Todoist for my to-do list manager. I wrote a post listing the reasons I use Todoist, but the post didn’t really describe how I use Todoist. I thought I’d do that here. [I] have been using Todoist now for just about half…

Quite a few people asked for an update on how I use Evernote for going paperless as part of Reader Request Week. I wrote this piece in response. [A]pril 3rd will mark five years since my first Going Paperless post. That seems as good a time as any to reflect on my efforts to go…

Reader Request Week has arrived! For this first piece of the week, I am filling a request from a reader who enjoys the “road trip” posts that I write. It has been a while since I’ve written one of these, but it just so happens we took a short road trip on Sunday… [A]fter the…