Archive for July 2023

The seemingly impossible happened: I found a meat that I do not like: Boar I ordered a pasta dish with a boar ragu, and I did not like the boar at all. I can’t believe it.

At one of the many middle school concerts that Elysha and I attended last year, I (and presumably many others) noticed a female student and performer onstage wearing a black tee shirt with the words “Ironically hot” emblazoned across the front. It was unexpected. Surprising, even. Especially considering the rest of the performers wore the…

I was recently arguing via text message with my friend Jeni. We argue in real life, too, but when we’re apart, texting is a great way to annoy each other. Jeni is a storyteller who teaches alongside me in my workshops from time to time. During a week-long workshop at a yoga center, one of…

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Elysha, Clara, Charlie, and I were aboard an airplane heading to Washington, DC. Charlie had been talking about this flight for weeks. It would be his first since 2019, when we flew to Florida to spend a week at Disney before the pandemic.…

I had never heard of an eggcorn until I saw this video, but I found the topic fascinating. I think you will, too. An eggcorn is a  word or phrase resulting from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another word or phrase wherein the substitution sounds similar or identical to the original meaning. “Free rein” and “free reign”…

Back in 2008, I wrote the following screed against the movement from two spaces after a sentence to just one. The two-space rule was a fossil of a time when people typed with typewriters. The extra space was needed to delineate the beginning of a new sentence because the spacing between words was uneven on…

Elysha and I are celebrating our 17th wedding anniversary today. As I have often said, it feels like we were married yesterday. It probably feels a little more like 17 years to Elysha. Since it’s our anniversary, I thought it would be a good time to return to our wedding vows. We each wrote vows…

A birdhouse is a lovely thing. A birdhouse with a bird inside, staring out at the world, is a magical thing.

A new study of three supermarkets in Sweden found that on weekdays, customers spent an average of $23.31 per person when music played in the supermarkets compared to $14.96 per person when music was not playing. When asked to rate their shopping experience, those who heard music rated the experience 8.8 percent higher than those…

Texas passed a law that will eliminate mandatory water breaks for construction workers in cities where the local government had enacted such ordinances to protect people from extreme heat. Texas also happens to be the place where 13 people recently died from the heat (one week after the bill was signed), and more than 300…