Protecting Your Mailbox
A very busy week around here, so not sure if I’ll get any more proper posts up until after the holiday weekend. I did run across this article this morning and it’s how I’ve been spending the last 30 minutes or so. If you’re sick of your mailbox being filled up with credit card offers, insurance spiels, and other unsolicited…
Graduation Weekend Notes
Grad Week We officially have a high school graduate! The week leading up to Sunday’s graduation ceremony was jam-packed for M. Her final day of school was last Monday. They were supposed to go in for first period Tuesday but she (and most of her classmates) opted to skip that.[1] She had little activities each day but Thursday was when…
Friday Playlist
Quite the mixed bag this week. We’ll begin with a couple tracks that owe a huge debt to ’90s Brit Pop, hear a classic from that era, dive into some Aussie music, and then get even more eclectic. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1aCRWYCQtr4fsR87jVmy2g?si=33cdad6f47774488 “Savior” – Siracuse I have a buddy who is super into all things Manchester. Man United. The whole music scene. But…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 85
Chart Week: April 23, 1983 Song: “Whirly Girl” – Oxo Chart Position: #28, 10th week on the chart. This was its chart peak. We love to celebrate the one hit wonders that made a big impact on the charts and the culture. Toni Basil. Nena. Tommy Tutone. Artists of that nature that you still hear today. Then there are the…
Tuesday Links
The Tech Toddler has struck again. Naturally it was McSweeney’s that called him out best. As a free speech absolutist, only death could stop me from defending the rights of Twitter users to speak without censorship. Well, either death or a request from an autocratic leader asking that I censor certain content that could be sensitive for their regime. Whichever…
Weekend Notes
Kid Hoops A great weekend for L’s team. They played in a one-day shootout Saturday about 30 minutes away from home. Our coach moved us up to the 8th–9th grade bracket, so we were worried going in. That was dumb; both teams we played were awful. The first was an all-freshman team. We hit two 3’s to open the game…
Friday Playlist + Mini Concert Review
My Friday Playlist pool has been pretty full this year. There was a little lull in the past month where I had to do some digging to fill out the weekly lists. Suddenly, though, I am overflowing once again. When I started working on today’s edition, I had 17 songs in the queue, only two of which were older tracks.…
My Podcast Life
We are coming up on the 20th anniversary of this blog. Or at least the original site the current iteration grew from. I’m sure I’ll whip together something to commemorate the proper anniversary in June. This morning I saw an article about podcasts and got to thinking about my history with them, which was somewhat tied to my blogging history.…
Reader’s Notebook, 5/9/23
Beat the Devils – Josh Weiss The genre of alternate histories can be very fun if done right. I recently ran across a list of best recent alt history novels and was amazed by how many were centered on World War II. I guess that era has a lot of opportunities for writing about What Ifs. Or people are just…
Weekend Notes
This weekend was certainly slower than the previous one. Doesn’t mean we didn’t pack a few things into it, one of them rather momentous. On the Road The family checked off another big milestone when C passed her driver’s test and got her license on Saturday. It has been a bit of a struggle with her; she was first eligible…