On September 13th of last year, my wife and I were celebrating our anniversary with a fabulous meal in our favorite local restaurant. She was enjoying it, and I was trying my best to put on a good show. The fact of the matter is that I was miserable during what should have been a [...]
Some of you will recall a couple of posts I wrote last year about the ongoing health problems of our dogs Maggie and Grover. The original posts can be found here and here if you would like to start from the beginning. Maggie suffered from a variety of ailments, including a tumor on her spine [...]
The ads that the Census Bureau ran in the local papers a couple of months ago promised hourly wages of $12.00 to $20.00 and the ability to set your own schedule. Even though the starting wage was less than I earned in my first job over 20 years ago, I decided to apply and see [...]
I’ve spent the last few days trying to get ready for a major lifestyle adjustment. After a very long period of unemployment, I’m getting ready to start the worst job of my life on Monday working for the Census Bureau. I never thought I would stoop so low as to become a government employee. Someone [...]
I’m one of those people whose weight has fluctuated dramatically throughout my adult life. While I’ve never been truly obese, at any given time I’ve been more likely to be overweight than underweight. Since my early twenties, my weight has ranged from as much as 235 pounds to as little as 135. Neither of those [...]
Cooking is something I’ve enjoyed for as long as I can remember. My mother cooked out of a sense of maternal obligation, but it was obvious that she never got a moment of pleasure from it. I realized at a very early age that if I wanted something really good I was going to have [...]
For a three year old, my son is something of a computer expert. He has been playing educational games on his favorite websites for well over a year, and he has developed a pretty sound understanding of basic web navigation. His biggest problem is the fact that he can’t read, so he has to depend [...]
It’s hard to believe, but in a few short weeks I will mark the one year anniversary of my last day as a small business owner. I did hang around for a few months to help the new owners through the transition period, but I’ve basically been unemployed for all of 2008. Luckily my wife [...]
The street we live on is famous throughout the Roanoke Valley for being a great place for trick or treaters. It’s the kind of place parents drop off kids by the carload from other parts of town. Residents of the two block stretch of Stanley Avenue between 24th and 26th street will have upwards [...]
Yesterday I wrote about the son of Senator Ted Stevens making a lucrative career out of trading on his father’s name. The case of Ben Stevens is remarkable since he truly had nothing to offer his clients other than access to his dad. In return for this access, he was paid millions of dollars in [...]