journal

FADE IN: INT. STEIN HOME GREAT ROOM – NIGHT DAD is cooking dinner, chopping vegetables on a countertop facing toward the great room. ANN enters through a hallway on the side between the great room and the kitchen carrying a backpack which she tosses haphazardly on the floor. ANN ALEXA, turn off the downstairs lights. […]

Every year I struggle with how to set up the tables for Thanksgiving dinner. I like a long table where everyone can see each other and feel included. But I also like for people to have space and be able to get up as needed. This year’s arrangement seemed nice, although due to a few

For a long while the two showers upstairs had been leaking onto the ceiling below. After having a plumber come out a few times he finally managed to stop the leaks from one bathtub by cutting through the ceiling under it and working in tight spaces. But he said that my shower would have to

I am a fairly security-conscience person so it’s a bit of a surprise to me that my credit card number keeps getting stolen. My bank seems to be pretty good at catching fraud as they have always texted or called me to ask about certain charges without me having to catch it on my statement.

In Italy I guess it’s not uncommon to leave for dinner around 8PM. It wasn’t that I was especially hungry, but we had all day meetings starting in the morning and I was hoping to get to bed around 10:30. However, since we didn’t get to the restaurant until 8:30 or so I figured that

This morning I awoke from a dream with the strong idea of a hook. In my head I saw some old-fashioned music video shot in black and white that looked like it was played on a VCR. It featured a crowd dressed in hippie clothes swaying back and forth. Then came the hook. The crowd

I had never used airline miles and really did not have a firm understanding of what I could do with them. I had a notion that you could use them to purchase airplane tickets, but various commercials that I had seen left me with the impression that there were various restrictions on how the miles

When I picked up my rental car in Brussels the clerk asked where I was heading. I told him Liege and he said, “Oh, you’re going to the French part of Belgium. How’s your French?” I told him that it had been a while, which, as I would soon learn, meant that I had pretty

This is not a tale about prom and spinners or Starbucks and slime. This is a true story about reconciliation. On Friday, my daughter went to prom. When one kid gets to do something special where the other is not able to partake—be it prom, a sleepover, a birthday party, etc.—I do something with the