• Time Keeps On Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’

    Crazy few weeks here en La Casa del Blogger. I believe I’ve mentioned that we’ve been doing some renovations over the past two months. Well, I took my first shower in our completely remodeled bathroom Tuesday morning. We’re still waiting on some lighting and a mirror, but we’re almost done. But we’ve had contractors in the house for the better…

  • Cyber Stalking

    As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about Michael Jackson the last few days.* I’ll have some thoughts on the self-proclaimed King of Pop eventually, I promise. That third kid really is affecting my blogging, no? (Yeah, yeah, Farrah died too. And Billy Mays and Ed McMahon for that matter. I was about two years too young to…

  • Gearing Up For Superhero Season

    I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve received an e-mail from someone who happens upon the blog that goes along the lines of this: Dearest Blogger, I recently found your wonderful weblog and have enjoyed it immensely. I especially enjoyed your recent post about potty training your daughter / watching a sporting event on your couch / the…

  • Not What You Think

    So I bet you’re thinking, “Man, he’s got a new baby laying on his chest every night. He’s probably been watching a boatload of football and baseball.” Wrong. Unlike four years ago, when then three-month-old M. slept on me for hours at a time while I watched the Red Sox- Yankees and Cardinals – Astros do battle in their epic…

  • Paragons Of Customer Service

    We’ve been trying to sign the girls up for swimming lessons using the city’s parks & rec website. We kept getting an error saying we were already registered in their system that we couldn’t work around. So S. called and got a fairly young guy on the phone. After a couple minutes of fruitless explanations of what she wanted, basically…

  • Friday Notes

    I heard a rumor people are gathering in Kansas City tomorrow night to celebrate the life of one of the finest artists this nation has ever produced. I will not be making an appearance at this year’s Sinatra Party. I do hope all of you celebrate safely, though, and honor his memory in the proper way. I’ll find something nice…

  • Where Did The Week Go?

    I’m not sure what happened to this week. Seriously, it seems like it was just Sunday night and I had grand plans for a bunch of blog posts, a bunch of projects around the house, and so on, and here I am on Friday having accomplished little if any of that. That’s what a cold going through the house will…

  • The Lost Art (A Rant Of Sorts)

    Lost arts: The bounce pass. The stolen base. Good customer service. As we were working on our various projects around the house this winter and spring, I kept a mental list of customer service issues we had with the various contractors and businesses we worked with. There were a lot of unreturned phone calls, which are always annoying. To be…

  • IBM Presents You Make The Call

    Every baseball fan remembers You Make the Call. I think it should apply to real life as well. So here’s my conundrum. Friday, I was out running errands and sitting at a red light near a middle school as the kids were getting out. A series of buses were making the left turn onto my street. After my light turned…

  • Unloading

    A lot of ground to cover and, suddenly, nothing but time to do so. Here goes. 3000 words? We’ll see. Grab a beverage and dive in at your leisure. A commenter asked Friday how I was celebrating the end of my grad school classes. Well, here’s what I did. First, I grabbed a big, fat carnitas burrito at Chipotle. Normally,…