My sister was five years older than me, and I used to be as scrawny as they come. Ergo, my big sister used to beat the shit out of me ( Read more... )

If I had to trace things back, I guess I owe a love of reading to my mother and, especially, my big sister. Oh, sure...my Dad read some Fantastic Four comics to me when I visited on weekends (he did a good Thing voice, but his Sue Richards was lacking), but my earliest memories of books were my mother reading Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories to ( Read more... )

Yesterday when I got home, there was a very nice note on my desk from my wife accompanying the way-cool green scarf she made for me that matches my autumn/winter coat perfectly (I say autumn/winter coat because, in this part of Texas, there's really not a winter...it's like a long, dead autumn ( Read more... )

I realized something strange earlier today: it's been two years to the day that I was laid off from my last job. I remember that Friday very well, signing the papers that would give me the nice severance package we were promised (half a year's salary plus bonuses and a year's worth of benefits. I got a cell phone that day and there was a spark to ( Read more... )

I went to visit a good friend in the hospital last night (Lyme's Meningitis...long story short: he was hanging out in the hills of Pennsylvania and got bit by lots of bugs). This same good friend and my sister were together for years. He was in one of the same hospitals my sister was in an out of so many times while dying from cancer. It was ( Read more... )