bleh. “love bites” – def leppard “king of the nighttime world” – KISS “god song” – beth orton “the pearl” – emmylou harris “space oddity” – david bowie “lowside of the road” – tom waits “breaking up” – patty griffin “cruel to be kind (live)” – pete palladino “the man that couldn’t cry” – johnny [...]

I must be slipping. Until this week, I had never heard of Will It Blend? I bet Tom Dickson sells a ton of blenders. the Blendtec costs four hundred bucks, but can your fifteen dollar blender from the MegaMart blend fifty-three die-cast toy cars into a finely-granulated pile of powder? I know I want one.

As usual, I’m working on <scarequotes>BLACK FRIDAY</scarequotes>, as I figure it’s only fair to give everyone else their long weekend since I’m not going anywhere special. Then I don’t feel at all awful about taking my week-plus at Christmas/New Years and leaving some other lucky stiff with the duty of sticking around in case of [...]

Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Usually, our household goes non-traditional for the big feast, with reasonably good results (last year’s duck was excellent). This year, I was leaning toward something a little different – lamb or something; but the kids voiced their opinion for tradition. So, for the first time in years, I’m making a turkey. [...]

One of my daily tasks around the office is to run a little application that attempts to re-process the data packets that, for whatever reason, did not post to the system the previous day. Anyway, this morning, before I set the job running in the background so I could take care of some other stuff, [...]

you know the drill by now… “The Ballad of Dick and Jane (live)” – The Badlees “The Flag” – Barenaked Ladies “Makes No Difference” – Sum 41 “Let’s Sew Our Pants Together” – Weezer “La Cienga Just Smiled” – Ryan Adams “In This Diary” – The Ataris “Day Is Done” – Charlie Hunter Quartet feat. [...]

In a somewhat atypical turn of events, I actually got out this weekend to do some interesting things… With the girls planning to take in the Richmond Ballet studio performance Saturday afternoon, and not feeling like sitting around all afternoon, Andrew and I took a little drive to the Metro Richmond Zoo around mid-day. The [...]

You know, I’d feel great if my throat didn’t feel like somebody had a pair of vicegrips squeezing it; the last remnants of whatever’s been ailing me are rather tough tenants to evict this time. Oh well, If that’s the worst that’s getting me, I suppose I ought to be thankful. Anyway, here’s today’s shuffle: [...]

Yesterday on the way back from ballet class, Mary asked me, while wearing her Totoro shirt, when we can travel to England so she can buy the really good Doctor Who toys.  She’s also eight years old and a huge Bruce Campbell fan.  Sometimes life goes out of its way to remind me that despite all the [...]

Happy Wednesday dear readers, all half-dozen of you! I compose this small missive from the lobby of the Richmond Ballet building in beautiful downtown Richmond.  As has become habit in the last month or so, I’ve taken the mid-week taxi shift to haul my firstborn child to her ballet class; since it takes a good [...]