A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
The dumbest song ever written about Chicago is probably “My Kind of Town,” originally performed by Frank Sinatra in the 1964 Rat Pack musical Robin and the 7 Hoods. Lyricist Sammy Cahn intends to praise the city, but he never gets specific, so he sounds like someone who has never been there. (Jimmy Van Heusen […]
I recently canceled my Netflix subscription. I had stopped using it. Oh sure, I’d browse the selections now and then, but I hadn’t been a regular viewer since Orange Is the New Black was still in production. And I didn’t even finish watching that one. I thought the season where the prisoners took over the […]
This blog turned 3 years old on August 6. Tradition dictates that I mark the occasion by consulting the Virgilian lottery, a form of soothsaying where you open Virgil’s works at random and whatever passage you land on tells your fortune. I tried the exercise for the very first Indirect Objects post and then again […]
Some stuff that sounds like a lot of fun actually isn’t all that great. Outdoor dining is one example. Sex in the shower is another. In either instance, you usually wind up feeling chilly. Both of those experiences are better than going on a winery tour, though. Or, really, a tour of any booze-producing […]
Somehow I have come to a point in my life where I own no comfortable underpants. Every time I reach for a fresh pair—i.e., every morning—I think, Ugh, you again. I suspect this accounts for my negative outlook and frequent bouts of irritability. I wear boxer briefs, which is typical of me. I never could […]
Welcome to this blog’s 100th post. In the 99 preceding entries, I have given the show-and-tell treatment to 97 of my belongings. It would have been 99, but I’ve done The Aeneid three times. My original, self-imposed quota for this site when I started it in August 2019 was one post per week. Obviously, if […]
I got into Dolly Parton during the release of her extraordinary trilogy of bluegrassy albums: The Grass Is Blue (1999), Little Sparrow (2001), and Halos & Horns (2002). Before that, I didn’t know much about Dolly, though I was aware of a few of her country singles, the films 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias, […]
When my husband, Frank, and I lived in New York City, there wasn’t room in our apartment for a dining table. As a matter of fact, there was barely room for our 15-pound dog. But moving to a bigger place here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gave us an excuse to acquire more furniture to fill up […]
I think my dog, Lucy, is allergic to Massachusetts. She developed a skin problem not long after we moved here last June. On three separate occasions since then she has had rashes—twice on her belly and once on her business. In case you are unfamiliar with the medical definition of “business” in this context, allow […]
Provided there’s no plague on, my husband, Frank, and I take a Big Trip each year. It’s unlikely to be the only journey we undertake from January through December, but the annual Big Trip does occupy the central position in our travel calendar. The Big Trip tradition began in 2009, when we went to Paris […]
Indirect Objects 