My wife mentioned that someone was throwing out a few pieces from a drum kit and we should go get them for the kids. She had noticed the pieces on a treelawn while driving home from grocery shopping, but the minivan was filled.While owning any pieces from a drum set might sound like a terrible idea for a family like mine with two children in the house, ages two and eight, I found the idea intriguing. Many, many years ago my wife had been a drummer in a punk rock band, and my kids loved to ban... Read Full Story

Today I was attempting to recall a name of a co-worker from years ago, and I couldn't remember. There is a very specific feeling of frustration when you can't access a memory -- like an itch in your brain, or that infuriating tingle when your foot falls asleep. Oddly, it makes me feel like I should spin around -- I never do, but it seems that if I could just untwist myself from whatever invisible coil of time I got myself tangled in, I would remember.I try tricks, and sometimes they w... Read Full Story

I am 45 years old, but people often say I look younger and ask me if I have a secret. Is it diet? Stress management? Exercise?No.The answer is moisturizer.I put moisturizer on my face every day, borrowing whatever cream or lotion my wife has in the bathroom.My face has smelled like a lilac bush, an ocean breeze, cucumber & mint, lemongrass, a romantic evening, and even a spiced pumpkin, but it hasn't dried out.Now if you are a guy you likely do not know much about moisturizers or such... Read Full Story

Post-Halloween candy is scattered around the office in bowls, but everyone has picked out the chocolate, leaving Smarties and gum. Fine by me, really, since I've been eating healthy, but today I wanted something, so I settled on an Ashlynn coconut Dum-Dum*.Ahh, coconut. Fake coconut. An artificial flavor so strong it is like eating a smell, and I remembered....I remembered the coconut-scented candle I gave to my third-grade teacher Miss Stein as a Christmas gift. This would have been 1971... Read Full Story

Finally, no more election ads, robocalls or fliers -- an end to the political media offensive.As bad as the campaign barrage was, though, the campaigning was still fought old school, and while mudslinging was heavy on the Internet and through emails, it was the old paradigm of provided information -- maybe slanted or inaccurate, but just information - an ad or opinion to interpret and apply.There is an entirely untapped market, however, that we have yet to face.Video games and cartoons.Sure, ... Read Full Story

Anyone who knows me knows I love Halloween, and while I have cut back on my diet of horror movies, they are in my blood...my cold, red blood.  This season, however, I haven't had time to catch a single monster movie, so Thursday night, after getting the kids into bed, finishing the cub scout blog and putting away the dishes, I treated myself to a guilty pleasure -- an online horror game. I selected a free Flash game from Psionic called Ghostscape, a creepy little mystery where you walk ar... Read Full Story

This past weekend, my son and I camped out with Cub Scout Pack 11 at Camp Beaumont in rural Ashtabula County in Ohio. No TVs, PCs (or Macs), PlayStations, XBoxs or Wiis.  Also, none of the in-home nighttime constellations of LEDs from baby monitors, microwaves, answering machines and DVD players (if you look closely, you can see Sirius the dog -- see? His ear is that green light from the cell-phone charger, although people now call this constellation Sirius XM.)  No. It was Thought Bubbling... Read Full Story

I am comfortable with Web 2.0 offerings -- I write and follow blogs, I'm LinkedIn, I bookmark links on Delicious.com, use web rating services like Technorati and StumbleUpon,  watch videos on YouTube, and work on a national steering committee developing a corporate wiki/corporate-social network where I work. I have not, however, until now, used Twitter.Twitter is a social networking tool that allows people to follow what you are doing -- a person can update Twitter with 140-word or less d... Read Full Story

I am considering my perfect word. If I needed to tattoo a single word on my forearm, what would it be?The scary preacher played by Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter had "Love" and "Hate" tatooed across the knuckles of each hand (people often mistake that imagery as being from Cape Fear, but it wasn't)  -- so did Eddie (played by Meatloaf) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show -- good words that work well in tandem, but I am after a single word.There are many words I... Read Full Story

Thought Bubbling is not about the serious things -- it's not what I do, not here, anyway.I discuss the trivial, and on my good days they might tie into the universal condition. On my better days, they are just plain silly. On my best days, they make at least one person laugh out loud.Still, I am part of the very real world, and while I avoid blogs about the climate, politics, or other heavy topics, these issues have an affect on me, like they do on everyone.Listen, I work in downtown Clev... Read Full Story