I’m defective. For the last 18 months or so, my left ear has felt clogged. But instead of just muffled sounds, I started hearing a high-pitched buzz. ALL. OF. THE. DAMN. TIME. It’s now become almost impossible to understand conversations in public places, especially if there is any sort of background noise (I’m looking at… Continue reading WHAT
Tamie took my place in Idaho a few weeks ago so she could continue to help my mom recover from knee replacement surgery. I love my wife dearly, but really wish she’d learn to be more responsible. She should know, after nearly 32 years of marriage, to not leave me unsupervised in Seattle. Last time… Continue reading Misdirection
My youngest son is finishing his first year of college this week which means I’m going to be very busy editing a final paper on a book that neither of us read. I’m really looking forward to it. After all, it’s nice having an excuse to spend quality time debating grammar rules and discussing current… Continue reading Will Edit for Free
I once snuck a large Burmese python onto a flight from Arizona to Idaho. Then back again. If you think this was the hardest thing I’ve ever done with Hank, the snake I bought as a pet back in college, you’d be wrong. Before 9/11, airport security was primarily based on the honor system, so… Continue reading The Hardest Part
I found a fancy bar of soap in our spare bathroom last week. It's supposedly made from “Alaskan Glacier Mineral Clay” which is a very expensive way to spell “mud.” Like $8-per-bar expensive. I'm not rich enough to afford anything that luxurious, of course. My son left it behind when he moved away to college… Continue reading This Is Not an Ad
My youngest son graduated from high school last month. This means my wife and I get to retire with a perfect 4-0 record against our children, each of whom would’ve preferred to drop out and become a rich teenage TikToker. I don’t blame them. School is harder than ever nowadays. Nobody understands how New Math… Continue reading Generation.next()
I turned 53 last month. So far things have gone pretty well except for the time my eyeballs dried out and stopped working normally. I spent that entire day dousing myself with saline solution and wondering how blindness would affect my mountain biking skills only to later discover I’d been wearing an extra pair of… Continue reading This is 53
I was mountain biking last Friday and feeling pretty good about my efforts when my smartwatch started freaking out and barraging me with alerts because it’d detected some sort of regional incident. Since I was currently descending a section of trail ill-suited for stopping, I had to finish getting to the bottom before I could… Continue reading Incident Detected
We celebrated the first anniversary of Rupert’s Adoption Day last week. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t send a card. I can see how you might forget about the existence of a 71-pound dog if you weren’t living with him every day. Besides, I’m not sure if Hallmark even covers this specific occasion, so you… Continue reading Truth in Advertising
Do you ever find yourself with an abundance of extra money and/or free time? Then I highly recommend learning to maintain and repair your own bicycle. To get started, you’ll just need a few simple tools, a can-do attitude, and access to a good internet debugging proxy. Here’s the step-by-step guide I recently used to… Continue reading Give Me a Brake
