Month: March 2007

  • “Before You Click Your Heels Three Times…Is There Really No Place Like Home?” Last week, Oroneta tagged me with a meme about living the expatriate life. Now, I know Duluth is far North, we all talk like Canadians here as we putter “aboot the hoose,” people do willingly eat herring, and we celebrate St. Urho’s […]

  • “Happy Bir– Oh, Hell, Whatever” (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/38626538@N00/401568720/) I’m turning forty on Sunday. My dad would have been seventy-two that same day, had he not passed away four years ago. Suddenly, four years ago, I stopped enjoying a shared birthday and now face a lifetime of solo celebration. Since 2003, even as I greet a new […]

  • “A Pimped-Up Paddy’s Day” (thanks, Paintergirl, for the pikipimp hook-up!) I’m an Irisher by heritage (that, combined with being a quarter Finnish, makes me strangely silent yet talkative, somber yet jovial, staid yet merry), so in honor of yet another mass-media-manufactured holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, I’m resurrecting a post containing one of my favorite Irish […]

  • “Paradise White” Look at them, those long, white, snowy lines of powder. I spent all last weekend snorting them up. It was quite a binge. Two weeks ago, I was jonesing for snow. But then I pawned my fishtank, sold some plasma, and scrounged for loose change in the sofa cushions. And whaddya know…I got […]

  • Get Off Your Knees, Stop Clasping Your Hands, and Read Some Aristotle, Ya Knucklesuckers

      “Get Off Your Knees, Stop Clasping Your Hands, and Read Some Aristotle, Ya Knucklesuckers” I am an English teacher, so I get to be crabby. That, along with wearing intimidating glasses, is part of my job. What’s more, it’s not enough just to be crusty; fundamental to the profile of English Teacher is the […]

  • Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief?

    At loose ends this morning, Wee Niblet queried, “Dad, can we go down in the basement and find stuff we’re not using and tape it together?” Hoppin’ sassafras, but that’s my kind of question. After some basement diving and an hour of various tapings, the result was this: Even more fun than the result, of […]

  • My Fantasy Island: Herve Villachez Is to Ricardo Montalban As…a Hawaii Getaway Is to My Snowy Weekend in Duluth

    “My Fantasy Island: Herve Villachez Is to Ricardo Montalban As…a Hawaii Getaway Is to My Snowy Weekend in Duluth” Some folks might argue that I am prone to excess. For example, I have been known to have more than 60 pairs of shoes loitering in my closet, mingling and sweating in there until I’m ready […]