2009-11-03 My friend Dan talked me into doing NaNoWriMo this month.If you're not familiar with this: "Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."Yes, I am completely insane.A few well-meaning folks have congratulated me for taking on this totally mad endeavor, thinking that there is going to be someone waving a contract and a five-figure advance at the end of it. That in writing 175 pages of absolute gibberish, I'm ... Read Full Story

2009-10-23 - I recently read an interesting essay by Glenn Close on the stigma of mental illness. She writes at length about the character she's most noted for:Alex Forrest is considered by most people to be evil incarnate...yet in my research into her behavior, I only ended up empathizing with her. She was a human being in great psychological pain who definitely needed meds. I consulted with several psychiatrists to better understand the "whys" of what she did and learned that she was fa... Read Full Story

Several years ago, my friend and I worked with a guy we called "Sensitive Ponytail Man." This guy was well past the age where that kind of hair frippery was any kind of appropriate, for one thing, but I can sometimes forgive this if the wearer in question has a personality that allows me to overlook said hair frippery. Read Full Story

2009-10-13 Here it is, just barely past Columbus Day, and I got me one HELL of a headcold.I really don't like to resort to over-the-counter "medicine." I prefer to, if I can, let the gack ride its course while indulging in nothing stronger than VapoRub.But sometimes I cave. I cave when it's 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm hacking away like a Dickensian orphan. That's when I will choke down some godawful "cherry"-flavored cough suppressant and pray for death.I bought some of this today. ... Read Full Story

2009-10-12 On Friday night, I went out to see some rockabilly played by two of my oldest friends, Jon and Jim. They were playing at The Cantab, in the downstairs room.Oy. The Cantab.At the end of my drinking, I didn't have a place where everybody knew my name. I drank alone (although in fairness, I drank alone even in a room full of people), in my apartment, sitting on the couch with my bottle and my headphones and the same 2 or 3 CDs that I'd play over and over again.But before all of t... Read Full Story

2009-10-02 It's October, 2009. This means that I have had this website for ten years.I still clearly remember the day I decided to take this up. I saw a banner ad on another site and thought, "Well, this could be interesting." I had a site on the long-since-folded chickpages.com server, and thought this would be an interesting supplement to that page.I never intended this to be what it ultimately became.For you younguns, understand that in 1999, there was no such word as "blog." There w... Read Full Story

2009-09-23 Did I mention that I have an iPhone? I can't remember.I have an iPhone. It's simultaneously the BEST and the WORST thing to ever happen to me.If you don't have one, consider yourself lucky. It will run your life. You will want to have it surgically grafted to your hand. You will download applications (or, in the iParlance, "apps") that you DON'T NEED, and you will pull others into your vortex of iInsanity.Last week I downloaded an app called Ghost Radar employs a proprietary... Read Full Story

2009-09-14 Today I am 39. I haven't decided yet whether or not I'm going to stop with this one, and be 39 until I'm 47 or whatever.Not long ago I read a letter that Justin Bond wrote to his teenage self. This seems as appropriate a day as any to try on this little exercise.----------------Dear Lisa,I thought about starting this off by telling you to pull your head out of your ass and work harder at school, but the fact is that if you DO, and wind up someplace like Stanford (or even Brown)... Read Full Story

2009-09-07 It's Labor Day, and already I've put most of my summer clothes away. I've left out a couple of light blouses and two pairs of sandals. I'm mostly okay with this; weather-wise, we did not have us much of a summer. For the last week-and-a-half, mornings have been clocking in at around 50 degrees. Whatever we had, Summer of 2009, is over now. Don't call me anymore, and stop looking at my website -- I have sitemeter installed and I can tell when you're on here. I do hope that w... Read Full Story

On those days when I am feeling out of sorts and a bit like a toddler with crappy pants who'd rather sit in the crap and wait for someone else to deal with it than learn how NOT to have crappy pants (and this is fairly regularly), I have been taught to count my blessings and make a GRATITUDE LIST. Read Full Story