Pet Please #26: Random Hugs from Little Kids
Family reunions just aren’t the same without little kids. As my family grows older (and as my generation fails to reproduce), there are fewer and fewer little kids around. The youngest cousin at this year’s family reunion is 9. However, this year my aunt’s sister brought her son, a little 4-year-old named Alexander. He’s a [...]
Pet Please: Grandmas
I love so much about grandmas that I wish I weren’t typing this on my iPhone so I could go on and on. I love that my grandma took four giant scallops wrapped in bacon tonight when that would have been impolite for anyone else. I love that my sorta grandma can turn off her [...]
The Ribs
This photo didn’t turn out all that well, but I wanted to share with you one of my favorite parts of my family reunion: Uncle Mike’s homemade ribs. He broils them in BBQ sauce plus extra vinegar at home, brings them to the beach, and then grills them with more sauce here. The result is [...]
Pet Please #25: Bikinis
I’m at the beach at Nags Head, North Carolina this week, so I’ll be blogging from my iPhone. These entries will be short and sweet, and perhaps riddled with grammatical errors I actually can’t even see the text I’m writing right now. I just want to take a minute to thanks the genius who invented [...]
The Kitten
Ever since I posted incessantly about my new kitten on the blog, friends and readers have been asking me about the kitten. Understandably so. I have been avoiding the topic for about a week and a half now, but it’s time for me to tell you what happened. I took the kitten back to the [...]
It’s That Time of the Year for a Weird Disease
Two years ago on July 4, I went to the emergency room so that doctors could puncture a peritonsillar abscess in my throat that was filled with pus. Last year on July 5, I went to the doctor’s office to get antibiotics for an infected eyelid that had bloated to the point that I could [...]
The Day College Died
I had a good college experience at Washington University in St. Louis, I really did. Some of the choices I made in terms of classes and majors left me wanting, but overall, good times. I think the key is that I went in with unreasonable expectations. My perception of college when I was in high [...]
Floppage Time
I think pickup sports are the purest forms of any game. Let me explain. After college, I started playing pickup ultimate frisbee (I love any game with an open field). Then I added pickup soccer and pickup football to the mix. And I tell you, there’s nothing better than a pickup game to relieve stress. [...]
How I Saw Every Summer Movie in One Day
Lately I’ve been yearning for someone who gets as excited about movies as I do. The trend seems to be that I get excited about a movie, no one else expresses enthusiasm, and I save it to my Netflix queue for 6 months down the road. However, I really like seeing movies on the big [...]
What Do You Crave?
Many of my decisions find their origins in cravings, mostly in terms of food. Sometimes my cravings hit me hard and fast–popcorn, cake, Indian food, cucumbers, sushi. But sometimes I find myself sitting at my desk at work in the evening, knowing that I’m craving something, but the craving is just out of my reach. [...]
Management Tactic #28: The Chosen One
One of the little things I do in addition to my full-time job is coordinate the marketing for a local barbershop called Cutters & Co. This basically means that I take the e-mail addresses the barbershop collects, enter them into Constant Contact, and send out a monthly e-newsletter. But then along came this company called [...]
My Greatest Fear #11
I consider myself fairly athletic. I currently play soccer, football, and kickball, and I’m in the upper tier of the athletes with whom I play. At my age, having fun while pushing myself a little is what’s important to me. So the sport itself doesn’t even matter that much. However, there is one sport that [...]
Are You Too Old to Buy Books?
I was really excited to attend Dan Ariely’s talk at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters tonight for several reasons: I rarely attend talks or lectures of any kind, much less on my own. I think Ariely is brilliant, as exemplified by the increase in the number of blog entries here about behavioral economics. Ariely [...]
What Are Your Guidelines for Giving?
I’ve had something on my mind all weekend. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it, so I’m going to share it with you. I’m open to any thoughts you may have. A person who barely knows me called me on Friday and asked to schedule a time to chat. They said that they wanted [...]
Welcome to My Sheets
A few weeks ago, I noticed that there was a small hole in the fitted sheet on my bed. No problem. It didn’t affect my sleep. Then I caught my toe in the hole and it got a little bigger. That was followed by a dream that placed my entire foot in the hole. Soon [...]
Management Tactic #16: How to Name Your Salary
As I recently mentioned in my blog post about the keys to a great job application, I have been interviewing for several different positions at my job. One of the questions I asked on the applications was their requested salary. What’s the right answer to that question? Especially when you don’t know what the employer [...]
My Greatest Fear #10
As long as I can remember, my grandma has lived in the same house. I ate many a pot roast in that house, and tossed many a Andes mint wrapper behind my grandma’s TV (I later learned that she knew I ate her candies but never said a word to my mother…such a good grandma). [...]
Home Sweet Home
I spent a long weekend back at my childhood home in Chesterfield, Virginia. My parents organized a family reunion (as they do every other year) for my dad’s side of the family, who I discovered (a) have vastly different political views than me and (b) really know how to talk (which is good for me, [...]
The Question of Windfall
Before you read today’s blog, please answer the following question: I think this is a great question about human behavior. The logically “correct” answer is that you’d choose the monthly payments for a total cashflow of $1,200. That’s 20% higher than the $1,000. The odds that you could make a 20% return over the next [...]
My Greatest Fear #9
Did you ever have someone of authority tell you something when you were a child that you now know is absolutely ludicrous, and yet you can’t let go of it? Today’s greatest fear is one of those things. Back in my fourth grade science class, my teacher told us a scary story. She told us [...]
