• Best Books of the Year Lists

    26 Nov 2021 » 2 min read

    Impatience seems to get the best of us when it come to best of the year. We are ready for the year to be over in October. November and December seem abandoned when it comes to the best-of-the-year. A year, as I understand it, is 12 months, which in turn represents 365 and one quarter…

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  • Thanksgiving Morning

    25 Nov 2021 » 2 min read

    Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke from an usually pleasant dream. I dreamt that I had submitted a novel manuscript to TOR, and at meeting for something, I was handed a sheaf of paper. The top page I cast aside, and beneath it was the first page of a contract for the…

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  • “Low Fat” Foods

    24 Nov 2021 » 2 min read

    There are certain foods for which “low fat” should be forbidden. Cream cheese is one example. Lately, I have seen low fat cream cheese in our refrigerator. They don’t call it low fat. They call it “light” cream cheese. The purpose of light cream cheese is lost on me. What is one supposed to do…

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  • A Programming Reminder for Practically Paperless

    23 Nov 2021 » 1 min read about Blog & Site Meta

    Just a reminder that I am taking this week off from the Practically Paperless posts. Lots of holiday preparations going on, and I wanted a little time to relax. Episode 8 will be back here next week, Tuesday, November 30.

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  • Prepping for the Holidays

    23 Nov 2021 » 3 min read

    For as organized as I like to think I am, I am terrible at prepping for the holidays. I’ve lost count of how many trips to the grocery store we’ve made at this point. We are having my sister and her family over for Thanksgiving. Preparations began a few weeks ago when we ordered a…

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  • 10 Evergreen Posts

    22 Nov 2021 » 3 min read

    Among the pieces of advice I’ve seen on the Internet for bloggers is that bloggers should focus on writing “evergreen” posts. An evergreen post is one that doesn’t age, doesn’t get out-of-date, and is always useful to the people who find it. It is a post that does a lot of work for you after…

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  • Retro Posts, Week of 11/14/2021

    21 Nov 2021 » 1 min read about retro-posts

    For those who don’t follow along on Twitter or my Facebook page, I post a link to “retro post” once-a-day, selecting from one of the thousands of posts I’ve written here on the blog over the last 15+ years. Here are the retro posts for this week. My general rule is not to link to anything I’ve written…

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  • A Quiet Morning Walk

    21 Nov 2021 » 3 min read

    For the last half year I’ve been up early and out for a 2-1/2 mile walk without fail, rain or shine. Until Friday, that is. I was getting over a cold and woke up Friday morning thinking it would be better to sleep a little longer. I decided, reluctantly, to skip my morning walk. I…

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  • The Newly Inconvenient Common Cold

    20 Nov 2021 » 2 min read

    Catching a cold used to be an annoyance. In COVID times, it is particularly inconvenient. I speak from experience as the cold swept through our household last week. People complain about masks, but I’ve got to say that one advantage is that they keep colds away. Whereas the cold used to run through our house…

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  • Should I Read The Wheel Of Time: A Follow-Up

    19 Nov 2021 » 2 min read

    A few days ago, I asked if I should read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Normally when I ask questions like these, I get a couple of answers, but for some reason, this time, I got many more responses than I expected. The responses came as comments to the original post, on…

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