It’s the Fourth of July, which means Americans celebrate all things American. My family is flying our flag from the front porch, we’re grilling hamburgers later, and we’ll be picking up some sparklers for when it gets dark. Maybe we’ll even go to the fireworks show if we’re especially motivated. Maybe. Daddy’s got to work in the morning. Last night when I was looking in a neglected closet for something […]
God, that was fun. I couldn’t have asked for a better Saturday. It started when The Big M took the Boy garage sale-ing. For $6 they picked up a really cool record collection from the 1940’s put in the World War II-era version of a CD storage case. Then our college friends Bill and Sylvia came to spend the day with us. We got to catch up, our kids got […]
So The Big M and I went to SXSW. I am 22 months shy of my 40th birthday and I still have all of my teeth, so while I’m not *empirically* an old person, I’m old for hanging out outside of Antone’s on a Tuesday night during the biggest music festival probably anywhere. I had a few contemporaries around me, but still. A little incongruous with my stray gray hairs […]
Not blogging, obviously. 1) Listening to music. Current mix I’ve made and listened to a dozen times or more: Ultra Violet (Light My Way) — The Killers cover U2 The Dead Dog — Portugal. The Man. They Done Wrong/We Done Wrong — White Rabbits Apartment — Young the Giant Felicia — The Constellations Honest — Band of Skulls I Would Do For You — Slightly Stoopid Lasso — Phoenix Cough […]
Roughly ten years ago I read an article in Discover magazine about the technology of 3D printing. The printer takes data from a three-dimensional CAD drawing and translates it, layer by layer, into an object. At the time, its biggest use was in the military — using metal dust to manufacture screws and other parts on aircraft carriers. As you might expect, this technology was too expensive for any regular […]
We were blessed to enjoy a multi-generational family vacation in beautiful Hawaii recently. Below are a few of my photos from the trip. The flag flies over the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Looking out towards Turtle Island off the coast of Oahu. Bali Hai called to us from a restaurant on Kauai. At Haleakala National Park on Maui I look down at the cinder cones. Girls hula in […]
Happy New Year, friends! I’ve been reading (off and on) from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It’s wonderful, and I mean that in the classical sense that it provokes wonder within me. I hated Milton in college. Hated him. He bored me because I didn’t understand him. I can tell I didn’t understand him because I’ve been reading my handwritten notes on the pages of my college text, and they’re completely […]
In the spirit of getting back to the stated purpose of this blog, I will share with you a TED talk I finally had a chance to view last night. Last year at the Texas Book Festival I had the serendipitous opportunity of seeing Abraham Verghese, a medical doctor whose novel Cutting for Stone was featured in one of the forums. I had never heard of him or his novel, […]
I’ve been scanning more photos, and when my 7-year-old daughter dug these out of a box buried in a closet at my parents’ house, I flipped out. That’s me in the center, dressed as the camel. I was not quite four years old, and it was my pre-school’s Christmas pageant. I *loved* that camel costume. I mean LOVED it. Of all the costumes my extraordinarily talented mother ever made, this […]
Flabby Brain 