Blog
Just… Breathe
For years Lena has made fun of me for being obsessive. It was nonsense, obviously—no matter how many miniatures you have it is easier to pick the one you want at a glance if they are stored in neat and orderly rows, organized by class and race, facing front, tallest at the back. That’s just…
Connecting With Online Faces
Yesterday a friend of ours was taking her daughter to the eye doctor (we live close to a hospital so there are a lot of doctors in our area) and she spotted Lena and me on the porch eating lunch. She pulled over and we had a nice conversation—with us on the porch and them…
Staying Home and Saving the World
Like everyone else in the known world, my wife Lena and I have been relegated to our home in our battle against the Chinese Coronavirus. (On a related note, the compass, gunpowder, paper, pasta, and printing, are now to be known as the Chinese Compass, Chinese Gunpowder, Chinese Paper, Chinese Pasta, and Chinese Printing. It…
Story Mode
I am an old videogamer. I owned and played the hell out of the first Pong home console, a single box with a dial on either side for your controllers, which was marketed as a date night activity. That last bit may have been a little hopeful. Today’s games are insanely fantastic by comparison. The stories,…
The Biltmore Palace
After coming down out of the Tennessee mountains, Lena and I stopped off at the Biltmore Estate and visited the palace and grounds. Huge and grand and opulent beyond reason, the home is created entirely to impress visitors with the wealth of its owners, which it does well. This creates an interesting tension with the…
How to Get Published in Five Easy Steps
Or not. This is the way I did it, which might or might not be helpful to you. The thing is, everyone’s story is a little different. But there are a few commonalities I’ll try to point out that might help. None of this replaces the process of research and query that everyone goes through,…
Congratulations on Your The Diabetus!
In the middle of last August I was positively diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.I had been losing weight without explanation, and developed a permanent, burning thirst. After a couple weeks of constantly drinking water like a dying man in the desert, I went to the doctor. My blood sugar was 267, (100 is the normal…
Christmas Cards for the Un-Affronted
Every year Lena and I create a new Christmas card, and mail it to anyone who wants one. It’s fun, and we get a lot of feedback. Also, every year, Lena torpedoes a bunch of ideas I have for Christmas cards, on the grounds that they are too offensive to send to our friends, and…
The Scream
“So what do you want to do?” Lena asks me this, and I ask her, at least once a day on the weekend, and maybe a couple of times during the week. My answer is always the same. “I want to scream.” Of course, I don’t say that, because the worst thing I can think…