I was at my dad’s condo a couple of weeks ago, going through his files for some important papers, when I came across this gem: a promissory note for a PLUS loan my mother and I cosigned in February of 1989. That would have been the start of wi...
I don’t really make new year’s resolutions. Not anymore. Most years, they ended up slipping completely out of mind, only to creep back during those quiet overnight staring-at-the-ceiling sessions. “Oh, yeah, there’s a whole &...
The past year resists any attempt to weave a narrative or theme around it. There were some major ups and downs, which sets it apart from 2020, a year that had no ups. But I can’t say if it was better or worse. Different and less linear, for sur...
I mean, they’re all dark, kind of by definition.
For most of my adult life, especially since I understood the profound effects of seasonal affective disorder on me, the winter solstice has always been one of the biggest milestones of the year....
Eleven and a half years ago, when we moved into this house, we put together an ordered list of the various projects we’d be undertaking to make the place our own. It was a lengthy list, and right near the top was the living room.
This magnific...
For some of these kids, it's the last competitive game they're ever going to play. I’ve been toying with the idea of becoming certified (“patched,” in the vernacular) to umpire IHSA baseball games on and off for a few years.
When D...
I did a moderately-to-severely dumb thing today.
It started when I got into a wikihole and ended up on the page of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. It’s a fascinating piece of civil engineering, the thing that enabled the reversal of the C...
If you had told me on March 13, 2020, that I was done traveling for at least the next thirteen months, and that I’d be working from home every day during that time, I’d have probably been shocked at first. I thought we were just going to...
via today’s NYT
I’ve been watching that 70% dot move tantalizingly closer. As interesting and important as this graph is in its own right, perhaps more interesting has been how it has been changing over time. Two weeks ago, the Times was...
I spent much of the day sorting through Leah’s old toys to donate or junk, and it was every bit the emotional journey you’d expect. But at the moment, I just can’t bear to write another Big Feels thing about it. So let’s talk...
