Dog Ear
October 5, 2023
uddenly Curbside Libraries are popping up all over the place. Since I tend to walk a lot, I’ll pass them often and nose in, seeing if there is anything interesting. I hate to say it, but judging America’s reading levels, it is pretty bleak. Most of the time, it is grim. Generally there are two things in these boxes – children’s books (not beloved classics, but just general teach-a-lesson books) and utility books (cookbooks, self-help books, etc). Really, this is what you people read? A few years back, I was riding my bike and came across a stack of books […]
September 21, 2023
ne of my guilty pleasure are Webtoons, specifically found on the site of that name (search for it). This is an avenue for artists to easily post up their comic strips so the reader can follow them and enjoy them. Some of them occasionally get turned into low-budget movies. If I were an artist (and not a writer) I might consider it. I have subscribed to a dozen of these which post on different days. My little guilty pleasure was to ride my bike into work, have a shower, get a cup of coffee and since I was the first […]
September 14, 2023
‘m a student of media. I love all sorts of storytelling, from writing to joke-telling to chats with the barista at the local coffee house. My robot question is infamous. Stories aren’t only books or movies or shows. You can see stories everywhere. Even model railroading. On my own Tuscarora Branch Lines model railroad, I filled up a small siding area (a tiny triangle in something like a diagonal 5″ x 5″) with a junk yard. Specifically, Levine’s Iron and Metal, which exists in my locale (I drove by it but didn’t see it from the road, but I know […]
September 7, 2023
his is one of those strange things that occur, noticeable if you keep your eyes open. So yeah, I busted my shoulder. And yeah, I needed physical therapy. I had to go three times a week for months. Usually the appointments were either at 7:30 am or 9:00 am (I preferred the latter since I could hang out at the coffee shop and gas-bag with the baristas). Today was my finial session. As usual, I start on this thing very much like a stationary bike, but you pedal with your arms instead of your legs. It’s a six-minute warmup, three […]
August 30, 2023
like paper books. Kindles are nice and all but give me a nice solid book to put on the coffee house table and I’m set. Even today, the woman collecting the dishes asked me if I was enjoying my book. I don’t think she’d ask if I faced the glow of a kindle screen. However, today was a bit of a quandary. I was in the death throes of The Hero of Ages, a nearly 600 page phone book that rounds out the MistBorn trilogy. I was close to having that mother done. And next up, another hardback (more modest at 300 pages […]
August 11, 2023
nteresting thing happened to me today. I finally got signed up (I hope) for Medicare. It took four hours (and two help calls) to get this done. I was dragging by the time I finished. To celebrate, I grabbed the wife and our books and we headed over to our favorite Orlando coffee house, Framework. When we came in, there is one barista guy I always chat with for a bit. Today when we came in, he said, “It’s my favorite customers”. When I tried to downplay it, he responded that I always have something interesting to chat about, and […]
July 27, 2023
hen I was a young lad of twenty or so, I was in a long-distance (i.e. stupid) relationship. To talk to my west coast girl, I had to wait until 11pm Sunday night (8pm her time) to afford the crippling long distance changes. Turns out, in retrospect, I should have just flushed the money down the toilet. Oh well. But what bugs me is the world we live in now. People have phones that can instantly, cheaply connect you with anyone around the planet. Often in coffee shops, I’ll hear young people taking call after call, text after text, fully […]
July 20, 2023
ne thing that the wags are quick to point out is how much spare time I have in retirement. Yes, after thirty years of programming and management, I’m apparently lounging on a Nile barge, eating grapes, looking out over vast horizons and sighing. Or something like that. Let’s see. Right after I retired, the world went to shit with Covid. During that time, I built a brand new layout (fundamentally different from everything). I also biked about 4000 miles. And I reffed a role playing game online, and hosted a Scurvy Dice game weekly. Then, as Covid went into the […]
July 13, 2023
‘m not going to be specific on this event, lest someone spots the post and knows exactly who I am talking about. Be that as it may, my wife and I attend a class every week. It can be pretty difficult but afterwards we reward ourselves and walk across the street to get a pizza. We need to move fast since we finish at 8pm and the joint closes at 9pm. Of course, the waiter knows us so we cut down a lot of ordering time. Thing is, for this class, we had a visiting “export” who always likes to […]