Dear David, I’m sorry

Dear David,
Please accept my sincere apologies for the fact that I did not collect your tooth and leave money last night.  I can only imagine your heart-rending sobs this morning when you looked under you pillow and discovered that your tooth was still there.  There’s so little in life you can really count on, and [...]

Odds and Ends and Odds

1. Like me, the Ad Contrarian has had a case of writer’s block. Or blog fatigue.  He’s now back after a month off, with this example of marketing at its finest. And I wonder why marketers get a bad name (especially from engineers, for some reason).
2.This spot-on animated parody about a social media guru, also found on [...]

Spinning the plates

One thing I’ve come to realize over the past few months is that people worry about me when I’m not blogging regularly. If a week goes by with no new posts, I start to get emails from friends and family asking if I’m okay.  Which is nice. It makes me feel cared for. And like [...]

Top 10 reasons I haven’t been blogging

10. Watching Thriller video over and over and over again, sobbing and eating popcorn.
9. Too busy consoling Patti Blagojevich on getting booted off “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.” (Although, given the name, isn’t getting booted off the whole point?)
8. Hugh Jackman asked me to run away with him and had to go.
7. Was sitting [...]

The music that was missing

I recently realized that something was missing from my life.
Music.
Not piano music that I play, or church music that I sing. I have plenty of both of those kinds of music.
No, the music that was missing was the music that I like to listen to.  Since I stopped driving to work (almost four years ago), [...]

Missing Emma

I miss Emma.  Standing-over-the kitchen-sink-weeping miss Emma.  Emma is in Ireland with her dad, her grandma, and her grandma’s brother and sister-in-law. (This is actually a much more fun group than the generational description would suggest.)  They left Friday and will be gone for almost two weeks.  Her dad’s been promising her a trip to [...]

Frick and frack

I love this photo of David and Margaret Ruth, taken by Margaret Anne at my brother Fred’s house at Easter:

Their body language says it all.  David, sweet, cautious,  tentative, holding back, holding on to the couch for support.
Margaret, smiling wide, arms raised as if she were on a roller coaster. Ready to take on the [...]

I <3 Paris

But of course, I have a few suggestions to make it even better:
1. “To go” cups. I like to take my coffee with me. The only place to get a coffee to go is at Starbucks, and they are few and far between.
2.  Faster service. I realize that we are way too fast-paced here in [...]

More thoughts on Paris

I’m still processing my trip to Paris. We saw so much, and I learned so much about French and European history, that I need time to process it all. (Although I don’t think I’ll ever keep all of the King Louis straight – what’s the plural of King Louis? – couldn’t they have used a [...]

Inside out

Here are a few things I’ve learned in the past year:
1. When I compare myself to someone else, I can only compare my insides to their outsides. And it’s not a valid comparison. Most people look waaaayyyy more together on the outside than they feel on the inside (myself included).
2. Hurt people hurt people.  People who say and do [...]