Family
The best thing I ever wrote
An unusual weekend On Saturday morning I attended the funeral of family friend Russ Morgan, who in life had been (among many other things) my father’s best friend. I last spoke to Russ in 2006 on the night of my father’s funeral. I don’t remember much of what we discussed, only that we had the conversation…
Read MoreSome thoughts on a strange day
Marathon I live less than five miles from the finish line of the Boston Marathon, so it’s embarrassing to admit that the attacks had almost no tangible impact on me. I don’t watch the race– I have for the past 25 years now held a job in an industry (banking) that does not take Patriot…
Read MoreAustin memories (4)
Mondays are for trivia I have a few relatives in the South. I don’t talk about them all that often, but they’re there, and they live in portions of Louisiana (my mother grew up in Lake Charles) and parts of Texas, and probably a fair number of other places I’m less familiar with. So when…
Read MoreA little midday blasphemy
Verbatim Wife Deb likes to leave music playing for the pets during the day. She uses the Comcast music channels, and tries to mix it up. This morning she selected Christian Rock, of all things. Over lunch at Bisuteki: Deb: So did you change the channel right away? Me: No, I left it. I wasn’t…
Read MoreAuthorpalooza interview
A new interview There is a new interview with me available right now at the Lor Mandela blog run by author L. Carroll, as part of a month-long cross-promotional blog tour daringly entitled Authorpalooza. Read about me discussing Immortal and why I can’t pick a favorite all-time movie, and a bunch of other things. It’s a fun…
Read MoreWorking it out
We keep it in the basement We have an unfinished basement in our house that is decidedly awesome because, A: it is utterly dry, all the time, B: it is easily the largest single space in our home, C: it has no heat, finished flooring walls or ceiling, so the city’s property taxes ignore it.…
Read MoreParis bucket list
If you can’t give bad advice, what’s the point of giving any advice at all? Daughter Becky has a friend who is on her way to Paris for a semester abroad. On Facebook, she was tasked with drafting a “bucket list” of things her friend had to do while she was there. Perhaps foolishly, she…
Read MoreCatching up
Picking up various bits of story here and there Blogging is a funny thing. Sometimes a topic just hits you and you can’t wait to write it down. Sometimes, you have nothing, and then the fact that you have nothing becomes a Thing, because you know you should blog if only to keep people from…
Read MoreMiscellany
Losing my mind I’m going to go ahead and conclude that I am not wired properly to handle a gradual book roll-out. A week ago I was completely convinced Immortal wasn’t going to debut as scheduled, which is a terrifying thought for someone who’s already gone through that once. Now I’m completely preoccupied with the…
Read MoreWiFi WTF
Accessing the Internet in 100 easy steps On Friday morning, as I was preparing for my bike ride to the office, wife Deb informed me that the Internet was down. This was not an unusual occurrence. Our configuration was as follows: Using a Mac laptop, I reach the internet via WiFi, talking to the Airport…
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