Sharon is using her vacation days to murder our children. I am certain of this. Back in May, she unfolded a map across our dining room table, mindless of the syrup drops and those tiny, dried end-bits of steamed broccoli that somehow escape from our children's dinner plates like green... Continue reading

My pen hovers over the check box on the yellow card, the ubiquitous yellow health card that I've had to fill out every year my kids have been in school. The yellow card they haven't updated in decades except to squeeze in a tiny spot for parents to write their... Continue reading

The perfect not-really-Mexican drink to celebrate the perfect not-really-Mexican holiday: Mexican Martini 3 to 4 oz. good tequila 1 oz. Cointreau 2 oz. sour mix juice of one lime jalapeño stuffed olives Place all but the olives in a shaker.... Continue reading

Summer posting will be light. That's unavoidable. To make it worthwhile to stop by anyway, I'm going to be randomly posting summer drink recipes, and by random I mean every Monday. Watermelon Mojito This recipe makes two tall glasses. Find... Continue reading

Just after 1 AM I stand in the wet grass behind my aunt and uncle's suburban home south of Minneapolis. I'm scanning the sky for shooting stars. For five minutes, maybe more, I see nothing. The sky is hazy and almost purple. A bat swoops low and I duck. Then,... Continue reading

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So yesterday, Kathryn's tarantula, Imelda, looked like this: It looked like that for a long time. I know it was a long time because it was my job to keep Kathryn from seeing it. Apparently even children who keep tarantulas have feelings. Though possibly not feelings you or I would... Continue reading

Warning: This in an anniversary post, where I say things about the woman I married fifteen years ago. It's short, but feel free to skip it anyway. God knows I wouldn't read it on your blog. Sharon and I got married fifteen years ago today, almost exactly six years after... Continue reading

This is what it was like at bottom of the canyon, on the banks of the Colorado River: And this is the weather near the rim, ten long miles up the Bright Angel trail: It's like hiking from Mexico to Canada in one day. We started hiking out at 9... Continue reading

Somewhere around here are two drawings of our cats' butts. My twins drew them and showed them to me and I immediately whipped the drawings from their little hands, ran downstairs, and placed them on my scanner, delighted to have something to post on this blog for once. That was... Continue reading

I have two daughters in the second grade. Once every two days, they go to gym class. Once every three days, they have music. Once every six days, they study Spanish, and once every eighteen days, they pretend people have come to their school to kill them. It's New Jersey... Continue reading

For a year, Sharon and I lived in what used to be an elementary school in a small town in the Czech Republic. It was an amazingly spacious place by Eastern European standards. We had three classrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom whose door opened up directly toward the front... Continue reading

The best place to watch the Olympics is the isolation ward of the local hospital in Usti nad Labem, a town located between Prague and Dresden in much the same way your anus is located between your butt cheeks. It... Continue reading