When I was 22 or so, my mother noted reddened areas on the backs of my arms which I hesitantly explained were rug burns (the result of extensive fooling around in my girlfriend’s individual office) and looked at me and said “Joel, do you know how to get a girl pregnant?” I said “Yes.” She said “Don’t.” And… Read More »
Little things that pop into one’s head unbidden department: the heavyset Russian guy with the diamond pinky rings who wound up sharing a hot tub with us on our first (Western Caribbean) cruise in 2004. He did not appear to speak any English and we certainly didn’t speak Russian and we didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox,… Read More »
At some point, in a bout of what turned out to be utter foolishness, I gave my cell phone number to ActBlue, which promptly resold it or shared it with every Democratic candidate from the candidate for the Billings, Montana dog-catcher race to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. I get at least one text every day asking for… Read More »
Two random thoughts that popped into my head today at almost the same time: 1) I have never had to sleep in a bathtub. In movies and sitcoms this sort of thing seems to happen all the time; you have one more person than you have beds and couches and next thing you know the person whose house… Read More »
When I was a kid growing up in the mountains of Virginia, there was a large black walnut tree directly behind our house, close enough that on windy days you would hear thump! thump! thump! as green walnuts dropped from the tree and onto the flat roof of our house, especially over the room I slept in. Dozens… Read More »
I had a random flashback just now to an unpleasant memory. From late 1995 to May of 1998, I worked for a franchised computer software training firm in the Triangle region of North Carolina (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill). We offered the kind of instructor-led classroom instruction that you sent your office staff to in order to learn how to… Read More »
Parenthetically, I’m on a caffeine fast. I started on Sunday and am most of the way through a week and am doing pretty well. This will be the second time I’ve tried weaning myself completely off caffeine. The last time I tried was a decade or more ago when I tried going cold turkey at the beginning of… Read More »
After all these years, I have an explanation for why I absolutely can’t stand listening to someone eat an apple. It’s misophonia — and apparently the loathing of hearing someone eat an apple is one of the most common expressions of the syndrome. Not all crunching sounds drive me up a wall. There’s just something about the crunch… Read More »
I enjoy travel. I mean, I’d pretty much have to, or it wouldn’t make much sense for me to work as a trainer who travels all over the USA two thirds (if not more) of each year, right? But even though I take pleasure in memories of places I’ve been, I spend as least as much time fantasizing… Read More »
Carole and I tied the knot on a sultry North Carolina afternoon just shy of 22 years ago — September 13, 1997. That date was picked because: it was the night of a full moon and we thought that was romantic in some strange way it was a week before my 30th birthday and I was semi-determined to… Read More »