"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Feeding body and soul
Consider the great gains we’ve made in this country: from universal suffrage to civil rights, from labor unions and protections for workers to minimum wages and unemployment insurance, from Social Security to Medicare, from free public education to womens’ athletics, from good highways to the postal system. If you follow the news you know that […]
My computer’s back from the shop, and what a pleasure it is to work on it again. Yesterday I typed a post on the other computer at Donna’s desk, where everything is six inches lower. I couldn’t get through a single sentence without making multiple typos. It didn’t help that she has her keyboard on […]
2011 went out with a bang; 2012 came in with a boeuf … Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon. And if you think that sounds tortured, you should have seen me in the kitchen trying to make sense of the recipe! Three Christmases back I gave Donna a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French […]
The year, that would be. Out with a bang. Shot right through the brain. This Christmas we added a compact 9mm pistol to our arsenal, so Polly and I took it and its big brother (a .357 revolver) to an indoor range this morning. I wanted to get the feel of the new pistol, and […]
Well, it does, doesn’t it? We drove to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving and the weekend with our son, daughter in law, granddaughter, and grandson. To make the family gathering complete, our daughter Polly came with us. We got in Wednesday evening and headed home Monday, sans Polly, who stayed behind in Las Vegas to […]
I just ended the longest no-flats streak I’ve had since taking up bicycling again a few years ago. The culprit: the dreaded goathead, a thorn that detaches itself from the devil tree it grows on and then, through some kind of plant/asphalt magnetism, migrates unerringly to the nearest bicycle path. What amazed me, once I […]
One Friday night, back when buffalo wings first became popular, I decided to make them at home. After cutting the wings, I breaded them by shaking them in a paper grocery bag filled with flour, a little paprika, some salt, and pinch or two of powdered cayenne. Then I deep-fried the wings and dipped them […]
What’s new? An Australian friend from Perth, traveling around the States on a two-month sojourn, dropped by to spend the weekend. Since John’s a fellow Hash House Harrier I took him hashing Saturday night. The hash started an hour late and trail took two and a half hours to finish, and of course we went […]