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Best of Times, Worst of Times
Winter in the city. When you enjoy some snow beers with your neighbors on a snowy evening before arm wrestling them for a parking space the next day.
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Survey Says
I get endless surveys. I get one each time I stop at CVS. I get one each time I go to the doctor’s office. Any doctor. We go to a restaurant near our house several times a week. I get one on every receipt. I’m a heavy user of Adobe products, and I get a […]
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Gift Horses
I just finished a Content Marketing class at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. This was just one of a series of Continuing Education classes they offer in the evenings and on weekends every semester. It’s a great way to increase arts education, serve the community, build a base of supporters and potential donors, […]
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We’ll Buy Your House
Signs of an overheated real estate market? When you get these cards weekly.
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Construction Continues
My neighbor Al died in April. I’ve written about his passing here and here for those who want the backstory. In short, Al was a great neighbor who diligently took care of his home, but he never updated it. As in never. One day last week, I caught the painter Lenny leaving the house, which […]
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Stuff
Last winter, I instituted a room by room cleaning project. I emptied closets and cupboards. Nothing was untouched. Nothing uncleaned. I got rid of boxes of stuff. In Brad Warner’s fantastic book, Sit Down and Shut Up, he writes this about things: Every object you acquire comes with a certain degree of responsibility for that […]
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Bulletproof
It’s been a year of change at my job, and at some point, one of our executives came by and told me that the door was open if I needed a dose of radical honesty. I appreciated that and indicated as much. “You strike me as the kind of person that empties your bucket for […]
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The View from My Neighborhood, Week of Sept 24 edition
Nextdoor.com “As I was posting some free furniture, I saw a number of posts of pets for free. This made me feel uncomfortable. Hope if people are looking for a good home, they can reach out to some of the local adoption folks, like Lost Paws or PAWS, both of which operate out of the […]
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The advantage of being a student for life
I began my graduate work a few weeks after receiving my undergraduate degree. I knew I didn’t want to leave school, and I kind of never have. You shouldn’t either. Here’s why. I work in technology. Everything changes all the time. Being ok with being a student turned out to be a huge advantage, and […]
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Schmaltzy
My mom called last Sunday. She got the self-portraits I sent for their 45th wedding anniversary. She cut her trip to the Oregon Coast short so she could say goodbye to her dad. “The pictures were a really nice surprise. Thanks for that.” My mom’s parents are divorced. They separated when she was 12, and […]