A Weak End

One of the standard conversational gambits at work (my work; perhaps yours as well) is to ask one another on Fridays what our plans are for the weekend, and then on Mondays, how the weekend went. My answers, rarely exciting, these days are that I am running at full tilt and never getting anywhere. Here […]

On the Fence

What a difference one week can make. Not in the world in general, not these days, but it’s been massively different in my backyard since Rufus arrived. One week ago my sister and brother-in-law were sitting on our back deck, their first visit in the time of Pandemia, and they were remarking on how many […]

Nursing (Un)certainty

I stopped in to see a friend yesterday and heard this charming story — well, I found it charming, and it made me laugh, so I’m passing it along. As I’m retelling it, please remember I got the “proud papa” version in case you want to quibble with details. I’ve known Sara since she was […]

No Lining of Any Color

Some days it’s just impossible to find a silver lining. I know you already know this about me, but I just can’t fathom the level of stupidity being evinced at the national and some state levels. These days, it feels unrelenting. In the last 24 hours I read four very angry columns that lambasted the […]

Freedumb

Yesterday I went looking for a painter and it led, as most things do these days, to covid-19. I don’t need a painter, particularly, but I bumped into my business landlord on Saturday, and as we were talking outside the building he owns that I rent, we both appeared to be noticing the crumbling trim […]

Monday, Monday

Yes, you’re right: it’s not Monday, it’s Tuesday. I meant this to “air” yesterday, but somehow my intentions are never well-matched by my efforts on Mondays. If I had posted yesterday, it might have been a discussion of how you probably ought not to look for posts on Mondays. I feel like I’m going to […]

Humbrella

There is a hummingbird, right now as I type, perched on the top of a feeder out back. He/she/it will rest there awhile, then drop down to imbibe, then fly back up and perch. King/Queen of the Feeder, is what it looks like from here. Prior to this summer I had not given hummingbirds, or […]

Risky Business, Part 2

Okay: No medical issues for me; the cat returned from the vet’s after his high fever went down, with a note on his chart about his adverse vaccine reaction; all would be well, except for where Lynn, who has waited nine months — nine months — to get her lower teeth implanted, did not get […]

Risky Business, Part 1

In August 1864, Rear Admiral David Farragut was leading a Union flotilla (not quite an armada) into Mobile Bay, intending to shut down the Confederacy’s last open port. The Confederates, anticipating this, had heavily mined the entrance to the Alabama bay, with what at the time were called “torpedoes.” The Union ironclad Tecumseh found one […]

License to Expand

I used to eat a lot of Honeycomb cereal as a kid. It wasn’t my favorite cereal — it was awfully big, each piece, and it just didn’t hold the appeal of, say, Lucky Charms — but it had the best prize in the world: license plates. Yes, for a long time in each box […]