This past August we took what was probably our most ambitious vacation ever — a nine day cruise around the Baltic Sea, stopping off in quite a few countries along the way. I say “ambitious” because frankly, we ran ourselves ragged in the course of things by trying to do as much as humanly possible and then some,… Read More »
Remember that line from “Eleanor Rigby” — “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear”? I’ve been spending my free time the last few days writing up our August 2018 cruise to the Baltic Sea, curating photos, and so on, all with an aim to posting it all to our WordPress blog at… Read More »
On January 18, 1994 someone posting as “Clarence Thomas IV” posted a message titled “Global Alert for All: Jesus Is Coming Soon” to basically every Usenet newsgroup 1text-based discussion forums, kind of like chat rooms but dating well back before the World Wide Web and dwindling in importance as the Web became the prevailing interface to the Internet on… Read More »
I would like to take this moment to say to the world: I am in a depressed, pathetic state of mind.[spacer height=”20px”] No, that has nothing to do with the Georgia/Alabama game.[spacer height=”20px”] I am incredibly grateful that no one invited me to a Secret Santa gift exchange this year.[spacer height=”20px”] Peculiarly, I have very little going on… Read More »
Carole and I live in northern Vermont, in a little town called Richmond. Every year we wonder if any given snowfall will be “the” snowfall, the one that covers our grass until spring. Some years it’s clear from the first eight-inch dumping. Other years we don’t really ever get “that” snow, as we have freezes and thaws off… Read More »
At times, when I stop and attempt to be “thankful”, I realize that I have life so absurdly good that it’s almost embarrassing. And I don’t mean in terms of the amount of money I bring home on my paycheck or the amount of luxury stuff I have sitting around the house (we have one (1) luxury item,… Read More »
My thanks to my sister Julie Furr Youngman and my brother in law Paul A. Youngman for their US Army service, and to all my friends and acquaintances who served and to strangers everywhere as well, for the work they did, the risks they faced, and the sacrifices they made. On this, the 100th anniversary of the day… Read More »
I finally got to see the vote totals for the Justice of the Peace race here in Richmond, VT (population, a bit over 4,000). Long story short: I won. Slightly longer version of the story: so did 11 out of the 12 other candidates on the ballot. “Woo-hoo!”, anyway. I was one of seven Democrats on the ballot… Read More »
A few days ago I got around to updating my profile on various social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook with my current employment information… and thanks to the wonders of modern algorithms, dozens of people I’m connected to on those sites promptly started congratulating me on my “new job”. Thing is, I didn’t actually change jobs. I’m… Read More »
I have been feeling pathetically old lately. I’m actually only 51, but the gray-haired stranger that stares out of the mirror at me is someone who (to me) looks far closer to joining Marley (who was dead, make no mistake about that) than I’d like. I need to arrest my slow decline by becoming much more active, one… Read More »