Sometimes I don’t know what to think. People around me have strong opinions and the inertia and history behind those opinions make them difficult, if not impossible to change. There are things that I have strong opinions about, too, but more often than not, I find myself uncertain as to what I think about a…
The battery in my wristwatch died a few weeks ago. In the intervening weeks, the watch has sat, lifeless, on my desk. In normal times, I’d take it to a place near my office where I’d have the battery replaced. Instead, I decided to see how difficult it was to replace the battery myself. I…
I finally got around to replacing my 2019 World Almanac with a 2021 World Almanac. I thought this one would be particularly interesting, what with all of the asterisks one might expect from the unusual year that 2020 turned out to be. Of course, a paper almanac can’t be completely up-to-date, and as I skimmed…
On weekend mornings I usually find my two girls up early watching episodes of a reality TV show called Sugar Rush. They have seen every episode and they know the winner of each one, but they still watch it, seemed glued to it in fact. Maybe it’s all of the confections the contestants make during…
I keep a secret stash in my desk drawer. It varies from week to week. Recently, it has been M&M candies. I’m not much of a sweet tooth. In fact when it comes to snacking, I’m generally pretty good. I like to occasionally have chips, for instance. When I have them, I’ll eat a handful…
We were out of Q-tips and I went to the store to buy more earlier today. I wasn’t entirely sure which aisle they were in, but figured they’d be in the same aisle as things like medicine and nail polish remover. There was store employee stocking shelves on that aisle and I asked where Q-tips…
In another life I might have been a sailor. I also might have been a sportswriter a la Red Smith or a curmudgeonly columnist a la Andy Rooney. Today, though, it’s sailing, or more generally, boating that I seems just the thing. This happens from time to time, as I have mentioned on the past.…
I have an email folder called “Upcoming Travel”. It is one of the few email folders I actually have. Most of my messages just go into an archive folder and I rely on searches to find what I am looking for. But the “Upcoming Travel” folder is separate because that’s where travel plans, confirmation messages,…
I started keeping a list of books I read back in January 1996, over twenty-five years ago. As of today, there are 1,063 books on the list. I have a simple rule for how a book gets on the list: I have to finish it. If I re-read a book, which I occasionally do, it…