For months I resisted subscribing to Netflix, the online streaming video service, despite entreaties from our 16-year-old daughter.
“We have enough digital distractions in this household eating up our money,” I proclaimed. Satellite television with a kajillion channels and rarely anything worth watching. Wireless internet, of course. A monthly cell phone bill that is equal to some folks’ car payment. Good thing we don’t have any car payments.
But then I took pity when she was laid up convalescing after a mishap and went to its website to gather information. For $7.99 a month, we could...
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Since I am off for the summer, with classes ended, of course I have lined up some house projects to fill the time. While I happily spend hours researching and writing, processing photographs and otherwise attempting to be creative, my body also yearns for physical labor that shows more concrete results than knocking out 500 words on a manuscript still many months from completion. “You are a project guy,” someone once told me, and I plead guilty. Besides, this rambling house always has something that needs fixing or fixing up.
Thus, a few days after work ended I tackled refurbishing the deck....
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My hometown made the Huffington Post the other day with this item:
A car dealership in Longview, Texas, is seeing the writing on the wall after discovering a huge spelling error on a billboard.
Six months ago, Gorman McCracken Mazda put up a billboard announcing a "Piece Of Mind Warranty" for all customers.
Problem is, they meant a "Peace Of Mind Warranty."
The spelling error faces away from the building so it went unnoticed by employees until recently when typo-conscious customers have been giving the dealership a piece of their own minds, KLTV reports.
"We’ve had several people...
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A friend of mine who lives in Austin recently spent a weekend in Deep East Texas with his younger brother. A goodly amount of one day, according to his email account, was devoted to hunting wild turkey. Or at least that was the plan. It turns out turkey were not in the mood to be hunted that day, but a herd of wild hogs crossed his path. Long story short, my friend was shocked by the appearance of so many hogs that he reacted like a rational hunter trying to pick off a 10-point buck at 200 yards — the distance he says the hogs were from him. In other words, he aimed carefully at one decent-sized...
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The school year is all but over, my first stint of full-time college teaching about to draw to a close. Next week will contain a flurry of finals, posting grades, wrapping up newspaper contest entries and getting in all the required paperwork. Next Friday night I will don the regalia of a faculty member and participate in graduation — for the first time as a non-student. I am excited about watching a few of my students walk the stage and receive their associate degrees.
Then, for the most part, the summer is free — a bit more than three months with paychecks still arriving in my checking...
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