When I was 8 years old, an elderly friend of my mother’s, Mrs. Smith, passed away and we agreed to adopt her beloved dog, Toby, a Spaniel of some sort. Not being especially adept at breed identification, I wouldn’t be able to offer much else about his origin. On the other hand, if Toby...
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Music denotes points of interest along the road of life, bookmarks if you will. We’ve all got events, significant or outright mundane, that are made memorable because of a song or piece of music that will forever elicit a memory. Since I’ve become quite a fan of randomness, here are several of mine in...
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There’s been plenty of speculation over the decades as to the source of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’s nice shiny red schnoz and most of it centers around some kind of lazy DNA. Thanks to 2009 being the last year of Rudolph’s legal suppression of the true story, this December it can finally be...
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I never quite detected any real affection from my dad (father #2) when I was a kid and, as detailed in many prior stories, he seemed to be a never ending source of disappointment. I want to believe that he loved me but there’s no concrete proof of that since deeds would be a...
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To successfully execute the slacker lifestyle it is imperative that one keep busy. Being a slacker is humiliating enough but an inert slacker is a waste of good space. So, with my arrival in Portland, Oregon, my $33 a month rent and my meager unemployment withdrawal I was ready to dive right into the...
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There was a time, my friends, oh what a time, when I had lots and lots of freedom to do… Nothing. It wasn’t necessarily a rewarding time in life…more like leaving the lawnmower idling in the backyard while you go in the kitchen for some lemonade. The mower sits there churning away, gobbling up...
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I’ve always had a problem with cliques; the little exclusionary groupings that insulate people from one another for, usually, superficial reasons. Cliques are most common in school settings, even through college (although they’re usually on the wane there) and, hopefully, by the time a person enters the real world, these things are gone for...
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