Good morning, friends.

Today is the first of May. Happy Beltane to any of you celebrating. It's that time of year when we whip out Jonathan Coulton's song and hope that it doesn't snow again.

My garden beds are full of weeds. I'll need to get out there this week …

My in-laws have a four-year-old standard poodle they raised since he was a puppy. This dog gets between 3-6 walks a day. There's a good reason for this. As my father-in-law likes to say, "You need to give poodles projects, or else they come up with their own."

Poodle projects …

It is July 1, 2001.

Our story opens with Vince Ippolito receiving an assignment from his superior in the Family. The job, he is told, should be straight forward: retrieve a bowling-ball sized artifact from the vault in the White Collection of the Cleveland Public Library and take it to …

Though I gamed through most of the pandemic, it was all online. Through Zoom, like everything was. It was fine, we had fun, but I really missed playing in-person.

When things looked like they were lightening up (just before Omicron), I brought up playing in person to my regular D …

I'm out this morning meeting Laurie, a friend I've known since kindergarten. We usually meet up at the Starbucks in Brunswick before work. It's been a long time since we've met thanks to COVID.

I'm struck by the difference between the last time we met here and this morning. Last …

The wheels began to fall off somewhere around Thanksgiving, if memory serves. Omicron had just made it's debut and people were starting to have second thoughts bout the upcoming holiday parties they’d been invited to. I was no different. The further we got into December, the less I looked …

a poem about how I experience an anxiety attack

It starts small, with a feeling
The animal notices it first
The unsettled heart
The shifting of the self
Then the rumble
And something falls
Shattering with a crash
The moment has passed but the expectation remains
Waiting for the next …

Public Service Announcement: Friday is Unsubscribe Day! Huzzah!

On (and the week leading up to) Black Friday, marketers that desperately want you to buy stuff, many you could not give a shit about, will bombard your mailbox with offers. This is a tremendous opportunity to clear out all these unwanted …

Hello world.

Probably about time for an update.

At this point, I've been gainfully retired for about five weeks. In that time, I've only sat at a computer to play games.

Mostly.

There was six hours about two weeks ago where I sat and tried to troubleshoot the problem with …

So far my favorite thing about this retirement thing is having time to cook decent meals for my family. Nothing too fancy yet (though I do have some fun cookbooks I want to dig into) but solid all-day soups and stews are my favorite. It's great that the house smells …