A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
Every day after I finish up work (I work from home), I carry out what I call the Five o’Clock Tidy Up. This involves going from room to room in my apartment and, as you might have guessed, tidying things up. There are housekeeping tasks that have to be undertaken on a daily basis—kitchen counters […]
I wouldn’t describe myself as an early adopter of new technologies. I didn’t opt to receive my paycheck via direct deposit until an employer made it seem like I had no choice (is that legal, by the way?). I resisted the streaming of movies until my DVD player broke. I still have CDs. Mere mention […]
I learned of my maternal grandmother’s death while I was on a ghost tour at Lizzie Borden’s house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Don’t worry—a ghost didn’t tell me. My mom did, by cell phone. I was taking the tour as part of an assignment for my job as a travel editor. Ordinarily, I don’t court […]
What do the contents of a person’s wallet reveal about its owner? Let’s take a look inside my own billfold and see what we find. I don’t have any photos or other sentimental keepsakes in my wallet. As far as I recall, I have never felt the need to hold such items on my person […]
This summer I had an issue with my gums. They felt irritated in this one spot in the upper left quadrant of my mouth. I suspected a red chili flake had somehow gotten lodged up there. I went to my dentist about the matter, and he gave me a prescription for a terrible-tasting mouthwash. I […]
I’ve had my current cell phone ever since I had to replace the previous one because I dropped it into the ocean while trying to take a picture of a bear. This happened in British Columbia. I’m going to go ahead and assume bear encounters top the list of reasons cell phones get lost or […]
This blog turned 4 years old on August 6. Tradition dictates that I devote the annual anniversary post to 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 consulted the lottery, using my copy of Robert Fagles’s 2006 translation of […]
Turns out I was incorrect a month ago when I wrote that my dog, Lucy, hadn’t yet reached the final stages of her heart disease. She died on Wednesday, July 5, around 8:30am. It so happened that she was scheduled to get her annual leptospirosis vaccination later that day. But in the morning she began […]
¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? Este es mi libro de español. Estoy aprendiendo español en el Centro de Educación de Adultos de Cambridge. Quiero aprender español porque mi esposo es puertorriqueño, y cuando él está enojado conmigo, yo quiero comprender lo que está diciendo. (“Por favor, profesora, ¿qué significa ‘pendejo sucio’?”) Me gusta mucho mi clase de […]
My dog, Lucy, who turned 13 last month, takes two daily medications now—one for her skin allergy, the other for heart disease. The heart one is new. She had an echocardiogram a few weeks ago and the vet determined that the dog’s cardiac condition has worsened since the last check. I don’t think we’ve reached […]
Indirect Objects 