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Taking after Daddy

When I was in junior high and high school, I was a proud member of the school’s drum corps. During my six years as a member of our school’s competitive marching band, we won six straight Massachusetts titles and two New England titles. When your school doesn’t have a football team, the marching band can…

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A new plan for dealing with the never-ending coffee clichés

I know I have attacked the institution of coffee before and also immediately reconsidered that same position. But did you know that there are nine Dunkin’s Donuts within three miles of my home, and seven of them are located within my relatively small, suburban town? My commute is about five minutes, and I pass two…

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Hurricane Irene on the tongue

I took advantage of the excessive rain of Hurricane Irene to teach my daughter how to catch raindrops on her tongue. Note that the sound effects were he doing.  She added them without my consent.

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Your words are doing more harm than good

Today’s Living Social deal for Providence reads like this (with my added commentary): In a city that’s dripping with design (Cranston, Rhode Island?), it’s sometimes difficult to define your own personal (font) style (Font? Is that supposed to be a play on words? The world’s first and hopefully last attempt at a font joke?). Walk…

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No buyer’s remorse here.

“Wait!” my wife said as she was heading upstairs to take a shower. She turned around, went into the living room and switched on the television.  “What?” I asked.  “I saw a commercial for the new Hard Knocks (HBO’s behind-the-scenes look at a NFL training camp).  I want to make sure we record it.” Reaffirmation…

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Amorphous, blabbering blobs do not sell books: Learning to write physical description

When I wrote my first novel, Something Missing, I was lost when it came to the physical description of characters, and the characterization of many secondary characters was entirely non-existent. No one who read my original manuscript could tell how old my protagonist, Martin, was, or anything else about him in terms of appearance. I’d…

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Spitting in the eye of Hurricane Irene

The hurricane wasn’t exactly roaring when we went out to jump in the puddles, but the rain was most definitively hurricane rain. I’m teaching my daughter to disrespect the power of Mother Nature.

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One of these things are not like the other

My wife bought the new Sebastien Braun picture book Goldilocks and the Three Bears on Amazon yesterday. While completing her purchase, she noticed the books that Amazon says are frequently bought along with Braun’s book. They are: Microcrafts by Margaret McGuire, which is described as a “step-by-step instructions for making tiny teddy bears, little ladybugs,…

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The lesson: You can kill mothers, fathers, and children galore. But don’t ever kill the dog.

I Am Legend is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film loosely based upon Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name. It stars Will Smith as one of the few survivors of a plague that has killed most of humankind and left many in a zombie/vampire-like state. It opened to the largest ever box office for a…

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