A catalog of the stuff in my apartment
Last year I joined a gay book club. The selections are all by and/or about LGBTQ+ people (broadly defined), and the club’s members are all gay nerds (narrowly defined). We usually meet at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square on the last Wednesday of the month. Since I joined in fall 2023, every book […]
Thanks to my ongoing Spanish classes, supplemented by daily Duolingo lessons and consistent pestering of my Puerto Rican spouse (who could stand to show a little more interest in the finer points of the subjunctive, if you ask me), I have progressed in my Spanish learning to the “High Beginner/Low Intermediate” stage, according to the […]
As of this month, I have maintained this blog about my belongings for 5 years. I am fairly pleased with how things are going, though the AI-generated feedback from WordPress, the platform I use to create this thing, seems less enthusiastic. Before publishing a post, WordPress now lets you click a button so that a […]
Since March, I’ve taken three regional trips—to Martha’s Vineyard; Rockport, Mass.; and Provincetown—and two trips to farther-afield destinations: El Salvador and Valdez, Alaska. Needless to say, this flitting around has left me concerned about my finances, my disrupted sleep schedule, and my chances of contracting the fungal skin infection evidently poised to ruin my “Hot […]
I received a fair amount of Dolly Parton merch for Christmas. I got to interview the country legend in the fall for a travel story I did on Dollywood, so I guess my loved ones were still associating me with her in their minds. I am not complaining. One of the Dolly-related items I got […]
In Portugal’s medieval legend of the Barcelos rooster, an innocent man is found guilty of theft and sentenced to hang. But before the execution, the guy persuades the authorities to let him see the judge while the latter is having dinner. As Portugal’s official tourism website tells it, the condemned man points “to a roast […]
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 […]
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 […]
The last time I was back home in Arkansas for a visit, my two younger sisters got into a long-drawn-out debate over the following passage from the instructions for the Rummikub game: In order to make an initial meld, each player must place tiles on the table in one or more sets that total at […]
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 […]
Indirect Objects 