Thoughts on the Brexit
The Brexit frightens me. (In the unlikely event you have no idea what “Brexit” is, it’s the decision made by the United Kingdom last week to leave the European Union.) What frightens me about the Brexit is not what it does to the stock market, or global trade, the value of the dollar compared to […]
Solstice (and not much else)
Happy Solstice! At least in my particular corner of the world, the sun reaches its zenith, i.e., its greatest distance from the equator, today at 6:34 p.m. In terms of daylight, we’ll have 15 hours, 19 minutes, 33 seconds of it today. Woohoo! I am once again back on submission. My manuscript is in Carrie’s […]
“Not MY Son”
There was a kid on my block that used to really piss us off. He wasn’t part of our regular group. He was a couple of years younger than the youngest of us (me), presumably enough of an age difference that he just didn’t quite fit. We generally avoided him and his friend, a nasty […]
Monday Musing: No Real Theme
Starting is always the hardest part. Do I ease into the post with an introductory paragraph, or dive right in? It’s supposed to be fun. Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading Stacy McKitrick’s agonizings over the Pittsburgh Penguins’ playoff fortunes. She’s up! She’s down! She’s up! She’s down! (Today, she’s down) And as […]
Musical Monday: Concert!
Having a dog comes with many benefits. The downside? They get old. Our pup is twelve this year, and as she gets older, she gets more neurotic and definitely more entitled. This morning she woke me up at ten past five so I could take her out. But what I think she most wanted was […]
We Have “Leaf” Toff!
Oh, that’s a bad title, isn’t it? Yes, it is. And I’ll use it again on my personal Facebook page. I’m not too proud. Last week, while mowing the lawn, I checked in on the fabled chestnut tree and saw that it appeared to be doing nothing. Well, not entirely nothing. The buds looked round […]
Wandering in the Fog
The beauty of being a wingman is that you can start with an empty page and the briefest glimmer of an idea–it doesn’t have to be an overarching idea for a novel, either; it can be a character or a single scene with almost no context at all–and start writing. At the end of the […]
Monday Musing
Another Monday morning that catches me rather bleary-eyed and unprepared. Second cup of coffee is on its way in and I’m not much better off than when I got up! -Despite having to work through almost all of my Saturday, attending a memorial service for a really good guy I knew through work, having to […]
Squeezing Time
Last week was one of those weeks. Each year, the organization I work for runs a garage sale. The purpose of said sale is for people to find new homes for old items that would otherwise either go moldy in a basement or garage or end up in a landfill. It also helps raise a […]
In the DNA?
Did he steal his fate or earn it?Was he force-fed, did he learn it?* Anyone with even a passing interest in the Beatles and/or John Lennon probably thought the same thing I did when hearing “Valotte” — the first single from Julian Lennon’s debut album — back in the fall of 1984: “Holy shit, he […]