So on Sunday, Liz and I were driving back from a friend's son's christening in Suffield, CT, when "The Living Years" by Mike and the Mechanics came on the radio. "The Living Years" is dull by-the-numbers pop music without much of a hook and with gooey saccharine lyrics that a Hallmark writer would hesitate to put in a greeting card. It's a ( Read more... )

I've never attended a major league baseball playoff game. I mention this because Yankee Stadium is closing today and because I came oh so close on several occasion, like the time I had a ticket to Game Six of the '98 series (which I didn't know) and there was no Game 6 ( Read more... )

In the first chapter of The Lord or the Rings, Bilbo throws a party for his 111th birthday, and Plot happens. In the exposition, Prof. Tolkien uses the following phrase, "Eleventy-one, a curious number." I mention this because it is Leap Day, a curious day in itself, but made even more curious for me, because of it's relationship to my birthday- ( Read more... )