Going With the Flow

Yesterday was Ben’s last day at Pat’s Screen Printing, and instead of getting all mawkish and maudlin over it, Kara left for a weekend filled with Cat Fest and a whole list of other questionably “fun” plans with her friend Suzanne. Me? I spent the afternoon fussing with a leaky roof. At work, let me […]

Travels With TL: Salida

I first met Ed Quillen at a Headwaters Conference hosted by what was then Western State College. I was standing nearby as he told a man from New Mexico that he was from Salida. In good Colorado fashion, he said, as we all do, Suh-lie (as in tell one)-duh. The man from New Mexico frowned, […]

Tiny Purpose

Lynn and I devoted a little over an hour last night to watching tiny houses get built on TV, and I have to say I don’t get what all the fuss is about. The overall price may seem “reasonable,” by which I mean an amount one could have used 20 years ago to buy an […]

Tamping Down the Back(sp)lash

The last piece has finally fallen into place: my bathroom vanity has a backsplash and is, at very long last, complete, the punctuation mark on the conclusion of our build. Ta-da! I was fully expecting, and semi-prepared, to have to craft this myself, with an extensive assist from my woodshop teacher. But since I’m still […]

Rocket Man

A few days ago, a man named “Mad” Mike Hughes died in California. I didn’t know him, although I knew of him: his goal in life was to prove that Earth is flat. He kept building rockets to take him high enough that he could gain photographic proof, and said he didn’t care if he […]

Cat Squall

Wasn’t it the poet Carl Sandburg who had something creeping in on little cat feet? Well, that’s what the snow is doing here this morning, despite the shrieking alarm I just got on my phone. While watching the news from my bed, surrounded by cats and dog, I saw one little flake wisp out of […]

A Guy Walks Into a Bar and Says Ouch

I am no good with jokes. I like hearing them, although not at the expense of ethnicity or hair color, and sometimes they really make me laugh — but I can never remember them. There’s a bookkeeper who works in the building that surrounds Pat’s Screen Printing, and she knows a million jokes. She stops […]

Exercising My Demons

I don’t know that you can call it an epiphany when it’s been months in the making, and the realization spread over hours, but I had at least a long moment yesterday when the obvious finally smacked me in the face: I need to make some changes. As I have done every day for several […]

Keeping It Under His Hat

While many of my late friend Bob’s other friends were angling for his guns, there was only one memento I was hoping to procure from his “estate”: his red sombrero. But somewhere along the way it vanished, and I figured the best I was going to get was our friend Pete’s photo of Bob wearing […]

Calendar Daze

Thirty days hath September,/April, June and November/All the rest have 31,/Except February, all alone. You know how brilliant insights occur in the early hours of the day? Well, of course they don’t, but I was sure I had one anyway this morning. It was a solution in search of a problem, which certainly seems like […]