I went over to Mb's Wednesday afternoon and just got back. Am amazed I still have 'net, all the most so because BrightHouse left a pay-or-die tag on my door while I was gone, so I'm taking the opportunity to post while I can ( Read more... )

In the spirit of back-to-school, what is your favorite book that you had to read as a student?

Treasure Island. As far as I'm concerned, that's the ONLY good thing that happened in 6th grade. Our teacher was a 24-karat asshole, I have no other good memories of that year, but the adventures of Jim Hawkins are a shining exception ( Read more... )

Back in the day, circa 1989, GK got me and a few of the usual suspects into attending Renaissance festivals, and at one of them, we encountered The Chameleon.

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We got to see the inventor and his crew demonstrate its versatility, and SBJB, Doc and I all purchased one. (According to J, Doc had more than one, but whatever.) It wasn't what I'd call ( Read more... )

What is your best memory of time spent with your father?This would've been sometime between 1965 and 1967, making me six or seven years old, because I remember riding in the '64 Galaxy we had back then. My dad always had his Rolaids on the red bench seat, and memory conjures up the aqua blue label on the plastic bottle their chalky-mint taste ( Read more... )

If you ate school lunches as a kid, what menu item did you most dread seeing on the week's menu list? Or, if you more often brought a lunch from home, what did you hope wasn't inside your lunchbox or bag when you opened it up? What made this item so revolting for you?Mostly, I brown-bagged it. Sometimes I'd have school lunch (You could sign up ( Read more... )

If you could live one day over without the consequence of changing the future, what day would it be and why?I had to think about this one for a few minutes. My first reaction was, What the hell would the point be of going back WITHOUT fixing anything? I can think of a few tipping points that could've gone another way, IF ONLY ( Read more... )

What's the most embarrassing moment you've had to live through? Do you look back at it now and laugh, or do you still cringe when you think of it?The year was 1989. I'd lost quite a bit of weight over the course of about a year, going from 315 pounds down to 230ish at the lowest. I don't recall *exactly* how much I weighed at the time of this ( Read more... )

Today's mail brought a manila envelope from GK. Got a sheaf of EW covers starring Johnny Depp, an article about Boston-based mystery writers, and a bunch of photos from 1986 through 1998. The photos were mind-bending. My reaction to most of them was OMG, WTF are you wearingAs much as I would like to chalk some of it up to bad camera angles, peach ( Read more... )

I didn't actually get to sleep last night til after midnight. Then my eyes popped open around 4:30 and refused to let me go back to sleep. Swell ( Read more... )

I remember an episode of "The Flintstones from a million years ago, where the gang thought Fred had some kind of sleeping sickness, and they had to keep him awake for 24 hours, because if he fell asleep, he'd never wake up. (Except it was actually Dino who was sick, and he could sleep all he wanted---but I digress ( Read more... )