• Reader’s Notebook, 8/12/26

    I’m spending my morning in a dentist’s waiting room while C gets the first of two crowns. What a way to wrap up her summer! With time to kill I figured I’d go ahead and do my next RN entry based on a single book. Fortunately it gave me a lot to think about and then share with you. Wearing…

  • Weekend Notes

    Our boring weekends got a little more boring over the one just completed. No college visits. Thick humidity rolling in contributed to that quite a bit. I bet I can still crank out 1000+ words about the last three days. We had friends over during the day Saturday for a pool gathering. These are two families we spent a lot…

  • Friday Playlist

    “All The Beauty” – Pete YornI like it better when Yorn makes B+ versions of his best songs than when he goes off on odd tangents. This is one of those good ones. “MMA” Hannah ColeWhen I read that Cole was based in Nashville, I was expecting something that was softer and gentler, closer to indie folk. I was NOT…

  • More European Vacation Notes

    I’ve been sitting on several leftover notes from our European vacation. At this point I doubt I’m going to remember anything interesting or important so seems like time to finally purge them from the notebook. Good grief, Europe is expensive! I know this isn’t a news flash or anything. It didn’t help that we were staying in bougie places, in…

  • Reader’s Notebook, 8/4/26

    Well, July was quite the reading month. I knocked out nine books. NINE BOOKS!!! Three were rather slight things I loaded onto the Kindle for our trip that I won’t bother to include here. This entry includes five of those July books and then the first book of August. Headstone, Purgatory, Green Hell – Ken Bruen Three more gritty, grimy…

  • Weekend Notes

    Another weekend that, honestly, not much exciting happened in our lives. Most of the weekend was dreary, from Friday evening until late Sunday afternoon. We got a decent downpour overnight into Saturday morning, enough that the pool cover pump was completely submerged when I tossed it out Saturday morning. Later in the day we got absolutely pounded, with flash flood…

  • July Media

    This is not as heavy as I thought it would be a few weeks ago. I didn’t watch nearly as many movies on our flights to/from Europe as I expected to. I had tickets to see The Odyssey last week, but a family snafu nixed that. Finally, I was lazy last week. I had a couple other movies lined up…

  • Friday Playlist

    For the second-straight week I am putting this together and scheduling it on Thursday evening, as I will be out of the house early Friday. Two throw back songs from the mid–90s mixed in with the new stuff, a tribute to a lost troubadour, and a summer classic to round it all out. Happy weekend to all! “Dark Summer” –…

  • Spending Like Drunken Sailors

    S and I have been cautiously counting down the various financial milestones we are about to check off as parents. Earlier this month we had a mini celebration when we paid CHS tuition for the final time. This is also the last year we will be paying tuition for three kids. As a family that chose to send our kids…

  • Weekend Notes

    It was nice to have a laid back weekend after several weeks of travel and other nonsense. Although a few of us spent time in the car. Unfortunately, I am still sick. Today will be day 14. I guess this is my punishment for going so long without being ill in any way. Last week I tried one batch of…