• Famous First Words

    “Famous First Words” (photo: Jay Johnson) The owner of these feet jumped into my bed this morning, had a little cuddle, and then uttered the household’s First Words of the Day: “I have dried boogers in my nose. You need to get them out.” If, like the gypsies of Romania, you are a superstitious person […]

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  • “Talent Will Tell” Most nights, I watch only the first three minutes of the evening news. Everyone knows the first three minutes are where it’s at, and the other twenty-seven minutes are all weather teasers; superficial overviews of happenings nationally and internationally; the weather guy in an outside-the-studio weather garden ringing a bell because the […]

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  • The Wisdom Is Not Actually IN the Teeth

    “The Wisdom Is Not Actually in the Teeth” A couple of weeks ago, Groom, at age 36, had two wisdom teeth extracted. Since he’d had the bottom teeth taken out during college, he had only the top two with which to contend. One of his top buckers had emerged from the gum and, with no […]

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  • Seven Years Since the Blue Moon

    I got engaged and pregnant on the same day. Even better, it was “Buck Night” at the local ball park, so I also got to drink a whole lot of cheap beer on a really humid July night while feigning interest in an All-American sport. You might be trying to forge a connection between all […]

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  • “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 […]

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  • “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 […]

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  • “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 […]

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  • “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 […]

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  • 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 […]

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  • 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 […]

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