Wherein I contemplate arboreal action

Since the Wife has already begun to cycle Christmas songs through her iTunes account, I might as well post something before the Fall ends.
Over our den there is what appears to be a black walnut tree. It tells us the Fall is coming because it starts shedding golf-ball-sized green orbs with a spongy outside [...]

Wherein I emulate a transfer student

I was up on the roof of my garage this past weekend, using my leaf blower to prevent the rot that inevitably follows the decomposition of leaves on that surface. The last time that I was up there, it was with one of my immediate neighbors named Jason. I mention his name only because I [...]

Intellectual dishonesty

I hate, hate, hate writing posts about politics. Mostly because my positions are usually so uninformed that you could blow them over with a feather. I admit that. But it just astounds me that the first thing that Sarah Palin’s partisans chose to focus on was her supposed “foreign policy experience”.
Now, it has been obvious to [...]

Mortgage crisis hits home

A neighbor of ours hadn’t been mowing his grass for a while, and a couple of weeks ago we saw a Rent-A-Center-type van in the driveway. The Wife and I were confused, but then it all became clear to us when we talked to some other neighbors (gotta love the information systems of the suburbs). [...]

Take Two

Wait, I’m going to do a second one of these, because I obviously didn’t get it the first time.

I love eating artichokes, even though I haven’t had one in years.
While flipping channels, I am constitutionally unable to flip past the last 10 minutes of the original “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”.
Growing up, I liked [...]

Talking of Michelangelo

Piggybacking on Jeanne’s and Lemming’s posts about National Pottery Poetry Month, I must add my favorite poem that I first heard in the last year or so. I heard Stephen Breyer say it on C-SPAN (In fact, I blogged about it before) and I was just enchanted. It is by the Canadian poet Tom Wayman, [...]

Like Road and Track, without the Botox

I hope that I’m not stealing too much of NewMexiAmIMovingToSeattleOrNotKen’s thunder, but the most recent Dan Neil column, about the new Porsche GT2, makes you think, “Oh, sure, it’s not a big thing that an auto writer won a Pulitzer.”
To love the GT2 is to embrace its malign indifference to your well-being. To cuddle one is to feel [...]