Boy, if I had a nickel for each time I’d started a post here and didn’t finish it … well, maybe I wouldn’t be rich, but I’d sure have a nice pocketful of nickels. It’s been an extraordinarily busy last few weeks for me. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and...
Looking Back: The First Year
So it’s been a year, more or less, for this blog. Always one for looking back and keeping track, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight some of my favorite posts from the first year, the ones I had the most fun writing, each for a different reason. Think of this as an...
A Birthday Party
I can hear you asking: John, how is it that you, who are so attuned to dates and anniversaries (more examples here and here and here ), how did you let your blog’s first birthday slip by uncelebrated? Excellent question, and thanks for asking. Actually, although I pledge allegiance to the Gregorian calendar —...
A Month, Lost
Yes, it has been more than a month since I last wrote here. The entire month of February didn’t see a single post from me — the first time that’s happened since I started this blog a year ago. And unfortunately, it wasn’t just the keyboard that I neglected last month; my running shoes...
On 5K Pace And Sympathy…
“In what was supposed to be kind of a long run, I had to crank it up to basically 5K race pace during the guitar solos on the YaYa’s version of Sympathy for the Devil.” This sentence appeared in my post earlier today. And I realize that for some readers, it might not have...
The Y In The Sky
The Post-Dispatch asks: Where were you when the Challenger exploded? I was in a job interview with the editor of the Clayton/West Citizen Journals. (“Do you mind if I smoke?” the editor asked at the beginning of the interview. “It’s your office,” I replied somewhat awkwardly. Am I going to say “yes, I mind,”...
Forecast: Snow, Ice, Slush, Snow, Slush…
Six inches of snow, followed by several days of temperatures in the teens or 20s. Rinse. Repeat. That’s January in St. Louis so far. Or at least the last couple of weeks. And although the driving portions of the roads have been cleared nicely, the edges of the roads and the sidewalks have been...
My Likes Are My Own, Thanks
I was cruising Facebook today, and there, over on the right side in the “ads” section, was something new: it was a picture of one of my FB “friends” (whose name I am editing out here, to protect the innocent), with the message, “XXX Likes Malaria No More.” Now, there’s an awful lot wrong...
Countdown To Zero
So Keith Olberman and MSNBC have parted ways. No word yet on what he’ll do next, but he’s obviously an eloquent, talented and passionate guy, and he’ll undoubtedly wind up with a good gig somewhere. Heck, maybe even back at ESPN, though I doubt it. The thing is, the three minutes and 12 seconds...
Refreshing My Music
At the beginning of this week, I trashed my entire iTunes music library on my computer at work. It consisted of 4,077 songs, which, if played consecutively, would go on for 13 days, three minutes and 20 seconds, according to the application’s statistics. Over the last couple of years I’ve imported a number of...