We Are Family

You wouldn’t really think of City Market as such a large place. Many people I know complain about having to go there. No one has any love at all for the parking lot, but the chief complaint I hear from shoppers is that they run into everyone they know, so shopping takes a lot longer […]

Bugged

Years ago I bought a Sleep Number bed from a woman so desperate to sell me things that she had to be working on commission. Sleep Number will only sell at their own stores, so that’s obviously their choice to pay people in that manner, and then it turns out that for all the money […]

Showered with Attention

I took a shower the other day (hold your applause) and went in determined not to come out until I figured out how everything worked. Well, I’m out, without even wrinkling, but much of my space-age machine remains a mystery. I have to say, the parts I’ve figured out I really like, and my showers […]

Three Weeks In

We have now been in our house for three weeks, even if it doesn’t feel like it. I don’t actually feel much more unpacked than I was two weeks ago; I haven’t done anything enough for it to yet feel like a routine; and I’m beginning to wonder if the final construction pieces are ever […]

Volleyball, Anyone?

I was AWOL yesterday. I scheduled my annual medical check-up so that it slotted into my blogging and bike racing time and thus missed both. For some reason thought I might be able to get something written at lunch, but half of my hour is taken up with transportation, half with lunch and the third […]

Fireantsy

We had guests last night, unplanned and unwelcome. The ants that can be found everywhere outside have started to find their way in. Invasion of the Ants — wasn’t that some campy ’50s horror movie? It’s not as campy on your own doorstep. Which is where they seemed to be arriving from, so I went […]

Guns. Again. Still.

Here’s what I don’t understand about gun control: Americans, those most “can-do” of people, so far are just throwing up their hands and saying, “Well, that won’t work” to every suggestion offered. And when I say Americans, I suppose I mean politicians, except that (in theory at least), they work for we the people, and […]

Cat and Mouser

When we first got Na Ki’o, he was overweight and we were told he had spent some large portion of his life lying on the bed of his previous owner, who was elderly and ill. Without even reading about it, I started serving some of his food upstairs, well removed from the kitchen, so that […]

Making (Micro) Waves

Our $50 microwave failed us last night, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a message in all this. Isn’t there some church — Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I think — that espouses wearing tinfoil beanies? It may be time to investigate their orthodoxy more thoroughly. Let’s review: Lynn and I left a […]

Walkabout

I don’t have much today — it is very late, and I’ve had non-stop problems with internet connection since arriving at work. But here, before your very eyes, is the update on Marrakesh. Yes, we went outside, probably in an ill-advised move, but boy did it put some spring in his step and made him […]