In South Fulton County, Tennessee, if you want firefighters to show up at your house during a fire, you need to either pay a $75 annual fee or a $2,200 fee during the fire. If you don’t pay and there’s a fire, your house will burn to the ground. This is essentially an elective tax. … Read more
Looking back at my 2016 list, I’m quite happy with how many of my eagerly anticipated movies ended up surprising me and/or meeting my high hopes. There were only a few big letdowns (The BFG, Batman vs. Superman, Suicide Squad, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) and only a few movies that I didn’t … Read more
On the lifehack scale of frugality, I’m maybe an 8 out of 10. At least for some things. Take toothpaste for example. I’ll squeeze every last drop out of it. Every time I think I’ve filled my toothbrush for the last time, I manage to find just a little more. The one problem with this … Read more
36 years ago, a few days after I was born, I was adopted by my parents. Technically, I was adopted before that, but January 12 was the day my parents picked me up and took me home to Virginia. Birthdays don’t do much for me, but I usually take a few minutes to pause in gratitude … Read more
How long is an episode of a TV show? If you’re like me, your mental image of a TV show is 30-60 minutes (or 21-42 minutes if you have a TiVo). That’s just the way it is, and how it has been for a long time as the result of network and cable programming. Because … Read more
Earlier this week I tried out a new restaurant here in St. Louis called the Hi-Pointe Drive-In. It’s a bustling venue with a variety of interesting burgers and milkshakes. I wouldn’t normally get a milkshake for lunch, but I decided to splurge a little and go for a chocolate shake. To my delight, it had … Read more
I recently saw a commercial for a company called the Duluth Trading Co, which makes what they call “buck naked underwear.” The prospect of a pair of boxer briefs that “feels like wearing nothing at all” intrigued me, so I checked out their website. There I found that the price of the boxer briefs is … Read more
Last week I wrote about my first cat cafe experience. Then the next day I went to an entirely different kind of cafe: a board game cafe. Board game cafes–places where you can get all the regular fixins’ of a cafe or bar alongside the main feature, board games–have been around for a while, but … Read more
I studied abroad in Japan several times in my youth, but I missed out on one key Japanese phenomenon: Cat cafes. A cat cafe is a cafe for humans that is crawling with cats. Dozens of them. I think it was (and perhaps still is) popular in Japan because people often aren’t allowed to have … Read more
I’m 98% sure that the first movie I saw in a theater was The Jungle Book. I have a vague recollection of going to a second-run theater with my mom and sister. I’m sure I had no idea at the time that I would grow up to love movies as much as I do. In … Read more