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 […]
Category: library
Dining Chair
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 […]
Rick Steves’ Paris 2009
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 […]
Our Town
Did you know I’ve written like a million theater reviews? Back when I lived in Chicago, that was a side gig of mine. Most of my bylines appeared in the Chicago Reader, to which I contributed pieces of performing arts journalism on a weekly basis from 2005 to 2016. Then I moved to New York. […]
3,000-Piece Peanuts Puzzle
On the day before I was supposed to fly home to Arkansas with my husband, Frank, to spend Christmas with my family, I tested positive for Covid-19. Consequently, we had to cancel that trip as well as another one scheduled for the following week. The plan was to fly from Arkansas to Puerto Rico, where […]
2021 Holiday Card
On the front of the holiday card my husband, Frank, and I sent out this year there are five photos meant to represent our 2021. Here’s what the images depict: us in Boston Common ‘cause we moved to the Boston area over the summer Frank in his doctoral robes before his graduation ceremony after completing […]
Scrabble
Because I’m a writer, people sometimes assume I’ll like word games. Which makes no sense to me. Do you spend your leisure time human resourcing or whatever it is you do to earn a living? Thanks, but I get plenty of frustration and feelings of inadequacy from words during the day—I don’t need more in […]
Pencils of the World
Some people pick up refrigerator magnets or shot glasses or HPV during their travels. I collect pencils of the world. I used to have a lot more, but I’ve thinned the ranks. The collection is housed in a large cylindrical glass vase I keep on my desk, and I’d like to avoid expanding to a […]
The Aeneid (Yet Again)
August 6 was this site’s second birthday. As in the first post and the first anniversary post, I’m marking the date by trying the Virgilian lottery, a form of fortune-telling where you open Virgil’s works at random and point. Whatever passage your finger lands on supposedly foretells your future. I don’t own copies of all […]
Packing Tape
My parents divorced when I was an adult. After they divided their assets, my mom sold the house in order to move someplace not filled with painful memories. One night, I was helping her pack up her scrapbooking room. Okay, well, my then-boyfriend/now-husband, Frank, was helping her pack up her scrapbooking room. I was mostly […]