I love to fly, but so rarely have the opportunity to do so that each time is a jarring experience, as if I somehow haven’t done so since some imagined history of flight before the Wright Brothers—a horse-drawn aircraft, if you will.  I’m imagining only one service provider for my hypothetical pre-Wright era, and it […]

Of all the things mankind has invented, one of the most astonishing to me are those automated car washes.  Pull your car up to the tracks, put in it neutral and away you go, with rolling brushes and sprayers coming from unexpected directions.  It never stops amusing me, like you’re in some sort of old […]

Fun fact: did you know there are technically not just ten, but more than six hundred commandments in ye olde testament? From what I know (which I will concede is little), the ten everybody has heard of are the summary-level and the bigger list is the details. Looking at the nitty gritty, I find myself […]

While there is no such thing as objectivity as regards a person’s degree of empathy, I will concede I have always been a bit too sensitive. When I was in the early years of elementary school, I somehow won a prize at a county event for having the “saddest eyes”. Not only is that a […]

Written at 7 am on 8/5/2025, roughly six hours before he passed For the longest time, we had on our fridge an image clipped from a magazine, one of this adorable little black kitten.  He (I suspect) is of that age where the rest of their body has yet to catch up with their head, […]

Today is one of the most important occasions in the United States–more important, in my opinion, than any holiday. It is a nationwide, presidential election day, though I take all elections seriously, whether they be national, state or local. It is on very rare occasion I use the word “un-American”, but I will when talking […]

On April 8, 2024, I saw my first total solar eclipse. I just happen to live at the very edge of totality, so the sun was only fully obscured by the moon for a couple of seconds. Still, it left a strong impression on me. My first thought as the moon crept across the sun […]

A solar eclipse is happening today, and I happen to live in the path of totality.  This is the kind of event which excites me because the rare occurrences of such have had such a profound impact throughout time, all the way back to our earliest ancestors.  That we (and even those early humans) exist […]

As of today, we will have lived in our current residence for 25 years.  That is a considerable amount of time, especially since I believe the longest I lived in any place before then was three, maybe four, years.  My life prior to living here was one of instability and constant change.  I like to […]

Iceland has been on my mind a lot lately.  I have long been obsessed with the island but have only been able to visit it once so far.  That visit, in 2013, left a deep impression on me I doubt will ever be diminished.  So it pains me to see the nation in the news […]

I love fall, and I love pumpkins.  To try to keep the spirit of the season alive, we usually keep a small pumpkin in the middle of our dining room table through to spring. For years, we talked about growing our own pumpkins from the seeds of that one on the table after it had […]

It is impossible for me to forget the day one of my favorite people I have ever known walked into my life.  The date is easy to remember: October 10, 2010. It was a Sunday, and we were returning home from buying groceries.  With only about a mile left to go, I saw a figure […]

Everybody knows that song about how the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, and so on.  It wasn’t until I had been practicing yoga for a while that I realized how much truth is in that. Following surgery on my face recently, I started to experience intense discomfort from my glutes through my […]

I believe one has to put their own meaning on their few trips around the sun. My raison d’être is my desire to fall in love every day. By that, I don’t mean love with another person. I am fortunate to have that already. Instead, what I mean is I want to constantly discover movies, […]